Did anyone else absolutely get their socks knocked off by the Barbie movie? I feel like the emotional response has been a lot since the release. Is there a post-Barbie movie support group? Or a group chat? Maybe a pen pal club? Do we all need a big Zoom call to process it together? I was not expecting to ever go see a Barbie movie in theaters, much less to leave the theater afterward a Barbie fan who’d healed her relationship with the color pink?? Greta, what are you doing to us?

As a little girl growing up in the South being raised by Southern women, I had Barbies and dolls whether I wanted them or not. That was fine by me. I loved dressing them up in their Barbie clothes or and crocheted clothes my aunt made for them. I loved pretending they could fly. I mostly loved stacking them all up in the back of my metal Tonka dump truck and driving them around my imaginary construction site or making them ride my toy horses around whatever imaginary racetrack or obstacle course was on the books that day. My Barbies were definitely Weird Barbies, but they got plenty of playtime and were well loved. There was always one thing I didn’t love about them though: they didn’t look like me.

First, let me acknowledge that on the surface my Barbies did look like me. I had the privilege of growing up and seeing dolls and toys who matched my complexion everywhere. I’m blonde haired and blue eyed and had long hair so to some extent I was well represented by Barbie. But Barbie was also thin and had an hourglass waist and no cellulite. I have never not had cellulite, even as a kid. My thighs have always touched each other. My waist has always been more boxy than hourglass. My chin has always had an extra curve to it regardless of how healthy or thin I was. So beyond my blue hair and blue eyes, I never saw myself in Barbie, but I did see what I was expected to look like if I wanted to be pretty. I have a vivid memory of being about 7 years old sitting on the faded blue carpet in my grandparents’ house staring down at one of my naked Barbie dolls and analyzing the shape of her legs and arms and waist, even her feet that had natural arches, and comparing my own body to hers. Even at that young age I knew I didn’t look enough like Barbie to be considered pretty by society and it was a devastating realization. Barbie did not invent the idea of conventional beauty, a patriarchal society did (or at least it figured out how to wield it), but she did perpetuate it.

As I got older, I put down the dolls I didn’t see myself in and moved on to toy horses, then real horses, then band and writing and eventually scuba diving and kayaking and camping and all sorts of adventurous stuff. I didn’t necessarily always see myself in the stars of those worlds either, but it matters much less how much your thighs rub or your belly wiggles when you’re setting up a tent or swimming with sharks or paddling against the wind at the end of a kayaking trip. I found hobbies I love and representation that makes me feel good and discovered that nobody naturally actually looks like Barbie. Seeing that (and finding a good therapist) helped me heal a lot of those wounds on my own and repair my relationship with my body as an adult, but I’ve always hurt for little me who imagined cutting her extra self off with kitchen scissors just to look more like the pretty, pink Barbie dolls.

Then one day I saw that a new Barbie movie was being released. My first thought was, “psh. No thanks.” Up to that point, every Barbie movie I knew about had just been more pink and girly, so I almost instinctively opted out of going to this new one. Then I started hearing that this Barbie movie would be different. That this time it would be inclusive. That Greta Gerwig was directing it (love) and that it wouldn’t be your ‘typical’ Barbie movie. That it would have representation. Then the trailer dropped and I decided it would at least be a fun thing to do on a Saturday, so I bought a ticket.

The next thing I knew I was dressed up in head-to-toe pink sitting in the theater surrounded by an ocean of other pink-clad people watching the pinkest opening scenes I’ve ever seen roll across the screen. I wondered what I’d gotten myself into, but I didn’t have to wonder for long. Over the next two hours, my inner 7-year-old healed more wounds than I knew still existed. The introductions of the different Barbies alone, just seeing Barbies who looked like me and my friends for the first time, immediately sent me on a feels trip. I cried when Barbie realized her whole life had been a lie and she hadn’t actually saved the world. I cried for Ken when he realized his existence revolved around Barbie and he didn’t know who he was without her validation. I cried when Sasha bullied Barbie in the cafeteria. I cried again, of course, when America Ferrera dropped her monologue that healed the inner child of 90s kids around the world: “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.” UGH. My heart.

I related heavily to Ken’s rollercoaster with the patriarchy (especially the part about not being interested if it’s not about horses). My heart hurt for Allan as he confronted and tried to escape a life where he felt like he was only ever going to be a background character, second to the Kens no matter what. Then, after Greta and Crew had obliterated my inner child, they came after grown-up me when Barbie realized she didn’t want to be what she’d been told she had to be and that she’d never needed permission to be herself. PHEW. In between tear sessions I also laughed genuine, full laughs at jokes that were far more intelligent than I think anyone expected from a movie about Barbies. I saw all of myself and my friends on the screen during a Barbie movie and loved every minute of it.

So no, I was not a Barbie kid beyond turning all of mine into horsey versions of Kate McKinnon’s character in the movie. I never dreamed I’d be a Barbie adult either, but here I am counting down to when I can stream this new movie on my own tv, spending my spare time shopping for merch on Etsy, and incidentally, not at all hating that every bit of it is so very pink.