Greta Gerwig on Outraged Conservatives Burning Barbies

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie grossed a record-breaking $155 million domestically — and $377 million internationally — in its first weekend. The blockbuster film also crushed right-wing efforts to boycott the film for its “man-hating” and “woke feminism,” and Barbie has since driven her pink Corvette over the delicate egos of outraged conservatives to score the biggest film debut of 2023.

While Gerwig didn’t anticipate the right-wing backlash, she continues to maintain that Barbie is for all. “Certainly, there’s a lot of passion,” the director told The New York Times when asked about conservatives who have taken to publicly burning Mattel dolls in protest. “My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men.”

She continued, “I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people.”

Last week, Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro suspiciously claimed he had been “dragged” to watch the film by his producers — showing up to the theater with a notepad filled with what we can only assume was packed with Shakespearean critiques of Barbie (he was since been photoshopped into several meme classics). Afterwards, the devastated 39-year-old man opened his 43-minute review of the movie by setting Barbie and Ken dolls on fire.

Ginger Gaetz, the wife of Rep. Matt Gaetz (who can’t say Margot Robbie is hot without being transphobic), criticized Barbie for neglecting “to address any notion of faith or family,” and “disappointingly low T” (testosterone) and “beta energy” from Ryan Gosling’s Ken.

Yet despite the onslaught of conservative complaints, audiences around the globe have reached the general consensus that we’re living in a Barbie World.

“Love how Republican Congressmen are just now hating on Barbie because she’s ‘too woke’ …like hello this was a doll made for little girls who was a DOCTOR and an ASTRONAUT before women in the US were even allowed to have credit cards without their husband’s permission,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a Friday post on Meta’s Threads. “Of course they’re mad! They want the old days back.”