The True Feminist American Hero: Barbie & Bella Baxter
By Genavive Rutter
Still from Barbie (2023)
The 2023 Greta Gerwig blockbuster hit Barbie grazed the silver screen and captured the hearts of women, children, and men in all her pink glittery greatness. Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, taught us that women can be anything, from a doctor to a president, to an astronaut all while staying stunningly gorgeous without a hair out of place! The film introduced a whole new generation to girl power and the impossible impending doom/ever-ticking clock that comes with being a woman! I mean she basically cracked the code to feminism!
In all seriousness, Barbie, for the first time in a long time, addressed women directly—giving them a pat on the back for surviving the unrealistic standards set for them and reassurance that they're still allowed to relish in the simplicity of girlhood, even as an adult.
Still from Poor Things (2023)
In the same breath the 2023 Yorgos Lanthimos film Poor Things, set out on the same quest of female empowerment. With a coat of Victorian paint and long black extensions, Bella Baxter, played by Emma Stone, enchanted audiences all around the world with her girlish glow to educated woman journey across Europe. Poor Things celebrates Bella’s need for liberation, and teaches audiences that women are more than just creatures to be held captive in binary boxes and confined to traditional roles in society. Both Barbie and Bella serve as American Heros in the least traditional way possible, they aren't rugged men with a perfect track record of moral choices, but they are a breath of fresh air that takes us on journeys unlike any other through the lens of womanhood and all the complications that come along with it.
Of course, at a very quick first glance, these two characters could not be more opposite with Barbie’s dazzling blonde dream life and Bella Baxter’s stunted solitary existence, but with a double take it is easy to see the glaring similarities between the two of them. Both of the girls grapple with the societal pressure of what it means to be a woman, a convoluted and heavy question, especially for two women who at the start of their films have never experienced the “real world”. They are shackled in the same cell of confusion one is just pink while the other is black and white.
Bella Baxtor was created as a Frankenstein experiment at the hands of Godwin after she killed herself and her unborn child. To save her life, Godwin replaces her brain with her unborn child's brain. She is unaware of who she is, her past life, or even how she got to where she is currently. Whereas Barbie has lived her whole life in the plastic bubble that is the “Barbie Dreamland”, but she herself was also created at the hands of someone else, that being the Mattel company. Both characters set to leave their respective prisons when they suddenly crave the liberation they need. Bella is sexually awoken while Barbie has sudden thoughts of death, two sides of the same coin really. The two of them set out to figure out why they had this sudden wake-up call to the real world. Both women never had autonomy from the beginning but go on the hero's journey to gain it, whether they know it or not.
How do these two qualify as heroes though? The qualities we as a society have identified as “heroic” are things like strength, resilience, bravery, independence, moral soundness, and so on, it is any stereotypically “ good” adjective. Both Barbie and Bella are innately good characters, they haven't had the chance to be anything but. Bella Baxter is hell-bent on establishing her independence in a world that is fundamentally against her, she takes a leap of faith to discover who she is and where her place in the world resides. I cannot think of anything braver than taking that risk, considering her entire existence she has been shut out from the outside world. She has no clue what could happen once she leaves the safety of Godwin's property, and yet she embarks on the journey of self-discovery anyway. Similarly, Barbie is tasked with finding the girl who is playing with her in the real world so she can stop her thoughts of impending doom and death. Her entire life she lived in a big cushion of nothing but girls' nights and dazzling discos, but she decides to leave that all behind when she figures out that her girl needs her in the real world. She drives to the real world in her pink convertible, leaving behind everything she's ever known for the sake of someone she's never met, a rather heroic act.
In addition to wearing the pink roller skates and puffy sleeves of the American hero, both Barbie and Bella embody fundamentally American ideals and values. Bella’s entire quest for independence and autonomy resonates deeply with the longstanding American dream of independence and individualism. All her life Bella has been told what to do, how to be, where to sit, and how to think, and she finally had enough of men controlling her, so she changed it. Granted was it under the guidance of a man infantilizing her? Yes. However, she came out on top in the end, and he ended up in a literal asylum. She chased a goal that was never promised without anything but blind optimism and the few dollars Godwin slipped her before she left. She embodies the very essence of what it means to be American when you truly breakdown what she stands for.
Similarly, Barbie also embodies American ideals just in a different way. Barbie is the walking American ideal of consumerism, her very existence is for profit, being the poster child for a capitalistic dream scenario. This is made clear when she ends up at the Mattel headquarters and she is not celebrated as the feminist icon she thought she was going to be, but rather she is regarded as a product that must get back in her box. Barbie also represents this never-ending American quest for perfectionism. She is regarded as “Stereotypical Barbie”, the perfect American picture of what a woman should be. Blonde, sweet, talkative, but not TOO talkative. In the film, you see this reality hit her when she has a full-blown crying breakdown about not being good enough for a standard that was set by herself. It magnifies how Americans are always on this never-ending quest for the perfect life, but they cannot even live up to the standards they set for themselves, as it is simply not realistic to keep up a perfect facade.
Still from Poor Things (2023)
Throughout their respective hero’s journeys both women are faced with challenges, trials, tribulations, and enough misogyny and infantilization to last a lifetime. The obstacles they both get through differ from what a “typical” American hero would be trying to overcome, as it's a fundamentally denser subject matter. Their hero’s journeys are a commentary on the typical experience every woman has had. It's simply not comparable to a hero like “Indiana Jones” because there isn't just an evil force guarding an artifact our hero needs to retrieve, but rather what they need to recover is their autonomy as human beings.
Bella’s entire goal is to reclaim her independence, and the thing she needs to overcome is men in her way. Godwin, Max, Duncan, and Alfie are all men in her life who have ulterior motives and stand in her way of gaining her personhood back. Godwin, though he loves her, sees her as his science experiment. Max when tasked with watching over her, falls in love with her rather than respecting her as a person. Duncan is an oaf who infantilizes her and takes her away from her home to control her. Alfie, her husband from her past life is the human embodiment of evil whom she quite literally kills herself to get away from. Her whole life her biggest obstacle has been the men around her, which is eerily similar to the common woman's experience.
Still from Barbie (2023)
In the same breath, Barbie has to overcome similar challenges. Her entire life is a facade painted by the men in suits at Mattel, specifically the CEO. Mr. CEO man chases her down when she refuses to conform to his wants. When she doesn't get back in her box he throws a fit and calls her a j*zebel. She is instantly put down and called a derogatory term because she doesn't let him control her. Again an ever too common experience for the everyday woman. In addition to that, the moment she gets to the real world and washes up on Venice beach in her 80s leotard, high ponytail, and roller skates she is met with instant objectification from the construction men. Immediately after a man slaps her ass, and she rightfully punches him in the face. She is then arrested and objectified by the police officers, they make comments on her body letting their gross locker room talk slip. Similarly to Bella, what is always in her way is the men around her.
Both these characters have left a significant impact on the world’s culture adding to the ever-growing conversation around feminism. Bella and Barbie represent the complicated nature of navigating womanhood and the less-than-savory facets that come along with that. Both characters spearhead the difficult conversations around an exclusively female experience, just in different ways. Having autonomy is not a birthright for women in the same way it is for men, and though these films may feel like hyperbole, the unfortunate truth is that they are not. I have never seen two films that mirror the female experience as well as these two. Barbie has been a cultural icon for over 60 years with a not-so-great track record for uplifting women and celebrating their differences. But Barbie in the sense of the 2023 film is an entirely different characterization to the doll most girls grew up playing with, in turn rewriting the narrative that Barbie is a dumb plastic doll with “big boobies”. (Thank you Jo Koy for that comment at the 2024 Golden Globes.) I also think that Bella Baxter as a character will have a lasting impact on the conversation of female characters for a long time to come. Poor Things is proof that female characters can be deeply multifaceted and more than just sexy eye candy. Bella can enjoy sex while still learning how to navigate life. She can cry, be angry, and be fascinated by the world around her without being watered down to a stereotype. Bella’s characterization will be ruffling feathers and progressing the conversation around feminism for years to come, and that's just what she would want.
I wanted to discuss these two characters through the lens of being heroes because it isn't a conversation I am seeing enough. Poor Things and Barbie are mirrors of each other, one just being more commercially acceptable than the other. I always say Barbie is the intro to feminism, and Poor Things is a 400-level study, both are necessary and both are valid.
I've seen conversations online watering down Poor Things to a “born-sexy-yesterday” film, and Barbie being a surface-level “women are cool too!” narrative. Frankly, I think both of these conclusions are harmful and entirely miss the point of both Barbie’s and Bella’s character arcs. Barbie did what Hollywood couldn't seem to do for decades, addressing women directly without talking down to them. Yes, Barbie is pink, girly, and glittery, but the film also calls an elderly woman beautiful, it addresses how women are usually never CEOs, and it pats women on the back for surviving the patriarchy every single day. Even though these things SEEM surface-level it's things that Hollywood simply never bothered even addressing in the first place. Barbie is a hero for becoming her own person and uplifting every woman around her along the way, point blank. Poor Things, though heavily revolving around sex, at no point is it sexy. The audience is never meant to think that what Duncan is doing to her is a good thing, or even sympathize with him like many other films that handle similar content do. Even when Bella gets a job at the Brothel, she is fully aware of what she is doing and wants to do it. Bella’s story, while told through the lens of an absurdist Victorian gothic fairy tale is a story that is all too common with women. Her journey to autonomy and getting her life back is a hero's journey that needs to continue to be platformed and shared. If either of these films inspired just one woman to be her own hero and be proud of the person she is whether that's through wearing a pink 70s cowboy outfit or journeying to Paris to start a new life, I would say our heroes did their jobs.
To conclude, Bella Baxter and Barbie represent American heroism by challenging the fundamentals of what a hero can be. They have all the qualities that make up an American hero, they are brave, determined, intelligent, and resilient in their journeys to regain their autonomy. Barbie and Poor Things, though divisive among the masses, have cemented themselves in history as iconic modern feminist tales, that put women at the forefront. Barbie taught us that women really can do anything, though it may be a surface-level message for some, for others it was the first time they heard anything like that. It reassured women that they are valid in their everyday struggles and that they can conquer anything they put their minds to… even going to their gynecologists. Bella Baxter took us on a journey of self-discovery teaching us that women are more than the binary boxes society puts them in, they are more than mothers, they are more than daughters, they are people even when they are not in relation to a man. It's a pretty cool thing that the world gets to have heroes like Barbie and Bella, and I can only hope they are paving the way for a whole new generation of heroes like them in all their pink and gothic glory.
