Welcome to #TransTuesday! Tillyvision, full speed ahead, right into THE INTENTIONAL (!) TRANS ALLEGORY OF BARBIE (the movie), PART 6! Flashbacks and overcompensation ahoy!
The context from PART 1.
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The beginning of the journey in PART 2.
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The awakening in PART 3.
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The discovery of PART 4.
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And the complications of PART 5.
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53:07 – I want you to pay close attention to the flashbacks, visually, because they’re showing you everything. THEY’RE SHOWING YOU EVERYTHING. On the swing, PINK AND BLUE on little Sasha (Barbie was always trans).
Look at the PINK AND BLUE as they play with Barbies, and the colors are now also worn by Gloria. The trans kid you were (or could have been) is now an adult.
There is life in this transness. You can live in it, and find love (the hug). Look at the PINK AND BLUE WALLS, the BLUE DOOR in front of the PINK WALL.
You can hold on to that truth, that love, that transness, as an adult. The BLUE JACKET with the PINK BARBIE. Look at the EARTH TONES around Gloria, the EARTH TONES of her dress. This is the TRUTH.
But to do that, you’ve got to let that little girl go. She’s pulling away from you because that’s not who you are. It hurts like HELL that you didn’t get to be her, but you can’t go back to that. And if you don’t let that go, you can’t become the woman you are. PINK JACKET, BLUE JEANS.
And what all of this is showing you is that, once you know you’re trans, you can look back at your life and see that THE SIGNS WERE ALWAYS THERE, you just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recognize them. See the applicable trans tuesday!
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54:17 – The freeway chase. Also a visual connection to the freeway chase in MATRIX RELOADED, where Neo tried to escape the past that haunted him. Maybe a past like… thinking about the little girl he never got to be! So it’s the perfect place to reference it.
54:11 – Barbie: “… the real world is forever and irrevocably messed up.” Heyyyyyy guess what waking up to the explicit and implicit transphobia of compulsory cishet patriarchy feels like?
Barbie: “I love women. I want to help women.” Sasha: “Women hate women. Men hate women. It’s the one thing we can agree on.” Imagine realizing this when you’re a trans woman who hasn’t transitioned yet, and what that might feel like for you.
Gloria: “I am wide awake Sasha!” I mean, yeah, she is. Transition isn’t too far off, Barbie’s realizing her truth, and the truth of the world. It’s very much like waking up.
56:10 – Barbie: “Ken is totally superfluous.”
I MEAN.
SUPERtext.
Look how their trip back to Barbie Land is filled with them IN PINK. Barbie’s trying to re-embrace the lies, deny her truth. Even Gloria shifts to being in pink. She’s trying to pretend her inner woman is the lie. But what’s Barbie in? BLUE AND PINK. Transness remains.
And now it’s mixed with a little green, and an off-white. EARTH TONES. Transness is her truth, and she’s about to find that out. Also look at Gloria doing the little upward point like Barbie did when singing the song before. Because they’re intrinsically linked.
56:53 – The CEO and executives discover Barbie, Gloria, and Sasha went back to Barbie Land. “This could mean extremely weird things for our world. Nothing our collective imaginations could ever dream of.”
If someone who knows the truth goes back to the world under the veneer of lies, what’s going to happen to those lies? They’re gonna get dispelled and proven to be false. Trans existence is, by its nature, proof of the lies of the white cishet patriarchy.
57:20 – Barbie, driving through Barbie Land: “I can practically feel my heels lifting already. Yes! This is what I’m supposed to do. Bring you back here.” Gloria: “This feels right.” Yes, we’ll go back to upholding the lies. This should be fine, right?
Ken is in earth tones. This is the truth of what she’d be heading back to by pretending to be a man and re-adopting the false simulacra of a man. She’d be upholding and participating in the oppression of people like her: WOMEN (and other trans people).
Listen to how the Kens say and name everything with redundant words. Why? They’re saying more without adding anything useful, trying to seem more important. Again, it’s a front. A show. A lie to appear as something you’re not. Simulacra of men.
59:00 – Barbie confronts Ken about the masculinization of Barbie Land. Ken: “Don’t question it, just roll with it, tiny baby.” Barbie: “Don’t call me baby.” Women are infantilized (routinely), and Barbie’s realizing that would include her true self. And that’s uncomfortable (for good reason!).
Also, remember Weird Barbie (Barbie’s subconscious) initially called Barbie “baby girl.” Her false male shell pointedly does not gender her, just infantilizes her. She’s had enough of that, and is growing beyond the “baby trans” stage.
In the real world, Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House is taking off, it’s a huge seller. The CEO is upset by this because he got into the business for “little girls and their dreams.” But that’s not true at all, right? We learned that from his words before, in the executive office…
And we’ll learn that again, in a little bit. But what this is showing you is that their desires are not about financial success, because if they were, they’d be stoked. They care less about that than they do *controlling women* (and trans people) and feeling like they have power over us.
Just look at BARBIE itself, and all the money it made. Did studios immediately launch into tons of women-led tentpoles? Nope. Did studios immediately hire more women directors? Nope.
We see this again and again with other marginalized communities too, where it doesn’t matter how good their movies do, one “financial disappointment” is enough for studios to say “that doesn’t sell” and not make more of them.
Meanwhile, how many movies written by, starring, directed by, and about cishet white men have been financial disappointments? Did they stop making those movies? Or… did they not apply those failures to the identities of the people making them?
They only do that for marginalized people. Why? It’s the same reason. CONTROL. It allows them to stay in control and as the decision makers, even in the face of success and making tons of money. That’s less important to them than maintaining the cishet white man-led status quo.
1:01:48 – Ken says the “real world” (Century City! ha) has it all figured out. Barbie says no they don’t because, “we failed them.” Ken: “No, YOU failed ME.” I think this is one of the most important lines in the entire movie.
If Ken is the false shell Barbie had to live in for her whole life, but falling into stereotypical gender roles and expectations was not the kind of woman Barbie wanted to be, then this becomes very easy to understand.
As an example, for a long time cis people would only ~LET~ you medically transition if you conformed to every gender stereotype in their head, and if you were gay pre-transition and would be straight post-transition (ie going from gay cis “man” to straight trans woman).
I’ve said this so many times you’re probably tired of it, but cis folks, hey… imagine how trans people feel! This has all too often been the reality for us.
Soooooo, see AGAIN the trans tuesday on TRANSMEDICALISM (and WPATH standards of care 1) for more on where that particular strain of nastiness originated, and how the trans community still struggles with it today.
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Okay! So, if you think you’re a trans woman, but think that means you’d have to dress and act and be in a certain kind of relationship and uphold the false cishet binary, and those things ARE NOT WHAT YOU WANT, you can’t see how transition would help.
See my book BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX, specifically the section on MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, for more on this and how difficult it can make things for us.
If you’re a lesbian trans woman (transbians represent!), or a butch trans woman, or a bi trans woman, or a bi butch trans woman, it’s so much tougher to figure out because people will legit say, for example, “if you want to be a butch woman why not just stay as a man.”
But we don’t have to conform to ANYONE else’s idea of who we are or how we should live. That’s all bullshit. And we can’t “stay” as what we never were, especially when it’s painful!
But damn if it doesn’t make it exponentially more difficult for us to figure things out.
Also that line is one hundo percent a TRANS MICROAGGRESSION, learn about those in the trans tuesday all about ‘em!
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1:05:32 – Barbie cries, talks to Gloria. Barbie: “Why did you wish me to your messed up world using your complicated human thoughts and feelings? … Barbieland was perfect before. I was perfect before.”
Life was so much easier to move through when I pretended to be cis. True! But dysphoria made life miserable. So when you do something about dysphoria and then transphobic cis society makes it so hard for you to exist… it’s a really difficult thing to process.
And yes, THE MATRIX deals with this directly too, right in the first film. And thus so does Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix! (did I mention I have a book? It’s a book! You should read it! Book book book!)
1:05:59 – Barbie – “I’ve never wanted anything to change.” Why did this happen to me? Why did I have to be trans? It’d be so much easier for us if we weren’t.
Gloria: “Oh honey, that’s life. It’s all change.” True! Listen to the woman inside, she knows.
Barbie: “That’s terrifying. I don’t want that. Not my life, no thank you.” You don’t even know how many times most of us try to talk ourselves out of our transness. It doesn’t work. We might as well try and talk ourselves out of being humans.
Sasha: “I almost feel bad for you, but you are exactly what I thought you were.” Barbie’s letting down that little girl she never got to be, by not giving her the chance to exist as an adult either. It’s heartbreaking. Sasha: “Come on Mom, she doesn’t deserve you.” OUCH.
1:08:01 – Weird Barbie arrives to wake Barbie up. Barbie: “I’m like you now.” Weird Barbie is Barbie’s subconscious, that knows the truth of her transness. DO YOU SEE WHAT THIS IS SAYING? Barbie’s fully accepting her transness.
And in our highly transphobic cishet compulsory society, how does Barbie describe her transness? “Ugly and unwanted.” Ouch ouch ouch fucking ouch.
But this is what society teaches us to think about ourselves. See the trans tuesday on INTERNALIZED TRANSPHOBIA for more on that particular monster, and ways to recognize it and fight it.
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1:08:28 – Gloria and Sasha are driving out of Barbie Land, singing “Closer to Fine” again, and they smile. Barbie’s inner woman is connecting with that inner child, the one she doesn’t want to let down.
1:08:44 – It’s interrupted with Ken’s favorite song, Matchbox 20’s “Push.” Allan stowed away in the car with them. He wants out, he hates Kendom. You can clearly see how a place like that is nothing but misery for a gender-nonconforming man (and trans women!).
1:10:03 – Sasha wants to go back and save Barbie. Gloria says Sasha hates Barbie. Sasha: “Yeah but you don’t. You always believed in what she could be.” GLORIA believed in what Barbie could be… namely, LIKE GLORIA. Her inner woman.
Gloria: “Barbie gave up. The Kens won.” Sasha: “You have to try. Even if you can’t make it perfect, you can make it better.”
EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT SURE YOU CAN BE THE PERFECT IDEAL OF WHO YOU WANT TO BE, YOU HAVE TO TRY. TRANSITION CAN MAKE IT BETTER.
1:11:02 – They go back to save Barbie, and Allan is dismayed he’ll never get to leave. Gloria tells him to shut up. Which seems a bit harsh, but I think this is Barbie’s inner true woman saying being a gender-nonconforming man isn’t enough! NO. Not who she is.
1:12:30 – Weird Barbie to Barbie: “The fork in my soup is this Barb, why didn’t the brainwashing work on you?” Barbie’s subconscious is the first one in the entire movie to NOT CALL HER “BARBIE.” She knows that’s not her true name.
Barbie: “My exposure to the real world must have made me immune. Either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly, there is no in between.” Weird Barbie: “Sing it, sister.”
Okay, like… DO YOU GET IT? It’s so hard to wake up to the matrix, to the false cis binary, to the prison for your mind they put you in at birth, WHEN IT FITS YOU SO PERFECTLY. This is why it’s so hard for cis people to truly understand how compulsory cisness is in society.
But ONCE YOU SEE IT, you cannot unsee it. You know the truth. And there’s no unknowing a truth of existence. Once you know it, you know it. You can’t be fooled in the same way again.
1:12:59 Gloria: “What’s wrong?” Barbie: “I’m not pretty anymore.” Gloria: “You’re so pretty.” Barbie: “I’m not Stereotypical Barbie pretty.” Few of us are!
But you have NO IDEA how many trans women are hurt by the fact that they don’t look like cis women, and worry they never will. Passing is, again, a very complicated issue, which you can learn more about in the trans tuesday on MISGENDERING AND PASSING.
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When Gloria has her big, amazing speech about being a woman, listen… I’m not going to quote the entire thing here, but it’s brilliant. And it’s no mistake it’s given by a woman from a historically marginalized community, showing you it applies to ALL women.
But there’s something I want you to do.
I want you to watch it again, and realize that everything she says, EVERYTHING, applies to trans women just as much as cis women. And it compounds upon us in ways you might not expect.
Because while society says all of those terrible, conflicting things to cis women, society says all of those to trans women and tells us we’re NOT women if we’re not ALSO EXACTLY all of those things. If we falter at ANY of them, our womanhood gets called into question.
Are cis women punished by society for not conforming to all of those impossible standards? Unquestionably! And that’s horrible. But are they treated as NOT WOMEN when they can’t meet all of those standards?
Are they treated as UNWANTED MALE INTERLOPERS who must be ABUSERS and TRICKSTERS out to hurt you?
NO. THEY. ARE. NOT.
And I just want to be sure that you, yes YOU, dear reader, are aware that trans women suffer in all those same ways, but are punished even more severely when we cannot meet those impossible standards.
Next week we’re gonna see Barbie try to reject the false male simulacra for good, and attempt to figure out where to go from there.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com