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I, like everyone else, went to see Barbie and left feeling emotionally annihilated. In a good way.
Saturated in hot pink and camouflaged in a flamboyant frivolity, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is an instant feminist classic. It’s clever and hilarious and flirts with silliness just enough; aesthetically, it’s like bubblegum for the eyes, but as I sat in the theatre last July and stared up at this incredible cast of women, my heart burned in my chest.
If you are one of the exceptionally small number of people yet to watch it, the bare bones of the plot tracks Margot Robbie – ‘Stereotypical Barbie’ – as she and Ryan Gosling’s Ken leave Dreamland behind in order to restore some order to their perfect lives. Ken — manufactured to be arm candy and little to nothing more – discovers what the patriarchy is, brings the good word back to the other Kens, and chaos naturally ensues.
America Ferrera plays the character of Gloria, a real-life, human Mattel employee, and mother to a jaded teen. One, two, skip a few, she and her daughter end up accompanying Barbie back to Barbie Land, only to discover that Ken’s newfound ideology has ruined everything and brainwashed all the other Barbies into becoming subservient, oppressed, and compliant citizens of the Kendom.
Just as all hope is about to be lost, Gloria delivers a rallying cry against the patriarchy in the form of a heart-shattering monologue that speaks to the unbearable weight of womanhood that we’re all somehow expected to roll up and carry around in our Jacquemus Minis. It pinpoints all of the impossible expectations and unfathomable contradictions of just existing as a woman, and it has allowed so many people to feel seen and understood in so many unexpected ways. The Academy may not have seen that as worthy of a win (no shade to Da’Vine Joy Randolph who did win), but that monologue continues to leave a lasting impression.
It’s just quintessentially Greta Gerwig. “You’re interested in what you’re interested in, and I’m interested in women,” the writer and director said in an interview with The Atlantic. “When America was giving her beautiful speech, I was just sobbing, and then I looked around, and I realised everybody’s crying on the set. The men are crying too.”
Talking to Vanity Fair about the epic monologue, Ferrera said, “It’s one of the first things Greta mentioned to me even before I read the script. She said, ‘I wrote this monologue for Gloria, and I’ve always imagined you saying this’. While that was flattering, it also felt like pressure in the nicest way.”
“I read the monologue and it hit me as powerful and meaningful. It also felt like, wow, what a gift as an actor to get to deliver something that feels so cathartic and truthful. But it also felt like this pivotal moment that I obviously didn’t want to mess up. There was a little bit of healthy pressure around it.”
To The Cut, Ferrera revealed that Gerwig wrote the original monologue, and the pair spent months together refining it. “We would text each other anything related to it,” she explained, revealing that they made edits together, drawing on songs, articles, and movie scenes that got at “what Gloria’s talking about.”
They wanted it to resonate and that’s exactly what it did. I could go on and talk about the love I feel for this piece of writing, how I adamantly believe that it should be taught in schools (it’s been added to the 2026 Leaving Certificate English syllabus), how I will read and recite it nightly, how enamoured I am with Gerwig and Ferrera and Robbie, but I won’t. It speaks for itself.
So, no, it didn’t win America Ferrera an Oscar but that doesn’t make it any less important.
Brace yourself, dear reader, because it hits hard…
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.
You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.
It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
Featured image via @americaferrera on Instagram. This is an updated version of an article originally published in July 2023.