Growing up in the ’90s as a young girl meant that I was living in the time of Barbie. She was everything to me and my entire bedroom was Barbie themed. I had every new Barbie Jeep for Christmas and even though I almost died driving it, it was just my entire world. And for good reason. I was a Barbie girl living in a Barbie world.
So naturally, the newly released trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has now become my new personality. Starring Margot Robbie as Barbie along with a series of other Barbies played actors like Dua Lipa (who is a mermaid) or Issa Rae (who is president). Then there’s Emma Mackey’s Barbie who has a Noble Prize in physics. There are a lot of Barbies and they’re all powerful and beautiful. (And Ken is Ken).
What makes this trailer so special is that it is honoring what we love about the beautifully plastic queen herself. It is funny and super weird but it’s not making fun of Barbie or those who have loved her throughout her time. Instead, it captures the spirit of Barbie and the energy of our love for her.
It just feels like a fever dream that was perfection come to life and the new trailer really did just make all my Barbie fantasies a reality.
My Barbie Girl dream
Sometimes, you don’t know you need a movie until you have it nearly in your grasp. That’s kind of what Barbie feels like. I didn’t need a serious live-action Barbie movie. I had Life-Size as a kid and the animated Barbie movies. To me, that felt like enough. But then Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach brought us this masterpiece of a trailer and I realized that it is everything I’d been missing in my life.
And maybe this is the way that I have come to realize that I really did love all my Barbies and the joy they brought me growing up. Because for so long, we were taught that Barbies are for girls and thus weaker than the toys for the boys. And I became an adult woman who hid my love for Barbie because I thought it was, inherently, childish and less than. But seeing this trailer and the outpouring of love that it has ushered in for my girl weirdly has meant a lot.
I’m happy that Gerwig and company have given us our love for Barbie in a perfectly weird and hilarious trailer and I hope the movie just continues to share that love for our favorite girl. At least, for now, we have this trailer to scream about (and a series of hilarious character posters) for the next few months. Because it really is Barbie’s world.
(Featured image: Warner Bros.)
