Shakira covers the latest issue of Allure, all to promote her new album, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. This is her first studio album since 2017, and obviously, there’s a lot in this album about her split from Gerard Pique and her newfound independence. She moved from Spain to Miami with her two sons and she’s moving on in every way. This Allure piece is mostly good, mostly rah-rah-feminist, up until the point when Shakira complains that the Barbie movie emasculated men. Whoops. So close and yet so far. Some highlights from Allure:
Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran: “I want this music to build bridges, to empower people, to help women discover their own strengths. I was in the mud,” she says, referring to her very public and messy breakup with Piqué, “I had to reconstruct myself, to reunite all the pieces that had fallen apart. Making this music has shown me that my pain can be transformed into creativity.” (She is crying diamonds on the cover.) “The songs are full of anecdotes and some very intense emotions I have experienced in these two years. But creating this album has been a transformation in which I have been reborn as a woman. I have rebuilt myself in the ways I believe are appropriate. No one tells me how to cry or when to cry, no one tells me how to raise my children, no one tells me how I become a better version of myself. I decide that.”
No one will control women: “In the past, when women went through a difficult situation, they were expected to mind their manners, to hide the pain, to cry in silence. That’s over. Now, no one will control us. No one will tell us how to heal, how to clean our wounds.”
The story of Adam and Eve. “Eve was a story created by misogynists to put women in the little box where we have to remain silent, not speak our minds, and not be a catalyst for change. To keep things as they are. I think there’s something refreshing about women when they get to be themselves and be unapologetic. Because we’ve had to apologize so many damn times in the past.”
Growing up in Colombia: “My idol was Wonder Woman. I think I was drawn to her because she had black hair like mine, but also because she was a symbol of empowerment and strength in a decade where women were not playing the most important roles. I remember my mom stopped working at some point. She stopped wearing miniskirts, and the length of her skirts got longer because my dad said so.”
Her thoughts on ‘Barbie’: “My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I’m raising two boys. I want ’em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost… Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?”
“I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity.” All of this about a film where the heroine wears cute pink outfits, is traditionally beautiful, gets so frustrated with patriarchy that she briefly gives up, then works with other women/Barbies to reclaim their power within a female-centric fantasy Barbieland. Like… what movie did Shakira think she was watching? Who goes into Barbie and thinks “I wish there were better roles for men?” Or: “I wish the Kens were more three-dimensional?” And even then, everyone feel all over themselves to PRAISE RYAN GOSLING for his bold “take” on Ken, all while minimizing what Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie did! Anyway, I’m not going to write another treatise about Barbie again.
The rest of the interview is meh… Shakira says so much about female empowerment, but really, she’s all about heteronormative gender roles and she has absolutely said sh-t like “Not All Men” in her life.
Cover courtesy of Allure, additional photos courtesy of IMAGO/Regina Wagner / Avalon
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- Shakira is seen during day 3 of Billboard Latin Music Week on October 4, 2023 in Miami, Florida,Image: 811027495, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Shakira, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- Shakira is seen during day 3 of Billboard Latin Music Week on October 4, 2023 in Miami, Florida,Image: 811027672, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Shakira, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
I don’t necessarily agree with what she said about Barbie, but I also think it’s a pretty bad movie. Terrible acting, cringe plot, cheap looking production. Like I had second hand embarrassment watching it. Keep in mind that I loved almost everything that Greta directed or starred in before that- ladybug, frances ha, etc
Cheap looking production??? It was so well done and executed to the highest level. It was stylized for sure, but hardly cheap.
I mostly agree Gwen. I was really looking forward to it, but I ended up thinking the production design was the best part. I was so thoroughly unengaged by the story and acting, I thought it’d be funny? Or something? The sets were amazing though.
Gwen, I agree that the plot was cringeworthy, and the movie did not engage me at all. However, I did think the production design and acting were good. But the story was a no-go for me.
I found the movie was terrible and I wish we could get to the point of accepting that Barbie can be disliked by a woman and she can still be a feminist. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I don’t agree with what Shakira says here and she’s not the best advocate for feminism, but she’s entitled to dislike Barbie without being attacked, right?
Who is attacking her? Much like Shakira is entitled to her opinion, people are also entitled to see her comments as a bit of internalized misogyny.
I Didn’t enjoy Barbie at all. The plot was weak, the message was from my mom’s generation (nothing novel or exciting). BORING. My mom is also a 1970’s university educated, armpit hair growing, my body my choice lady; she also thought the message, and the approach of the film, was super basic. Nothing new to see for most women who have been evolving since the 60’s.
Further, Ken was an exciting part of my Barbie’s world, more important than the car accessories, clothes, and the babies. Ken added spark to my little girl narratives. This film did him dirty!
It’s actually refreshing for me to read Shakira’s take. I like her more now.
Runneth at me….
It wasn’t Kenough for you?
She should have left it as not liking it … but the whole lot of reducing men… blah blah…. Seriously ? Yeah….. being with Pique all those years messed up her head for sure. This is not the first time she says 💩 like this. She likes to submit to her men and clearly doesn’t learn cause look all that pain and grief that it brings her.
( she has said nonsense like this throughout the years in Spanish interviews )
I wonder was role culture differences play in this, though. Not every country has the same worship of toxic masculinity much (all?) of the US, and women with power are more normalized. The US really is very difficult for women, and so foreigners might see the Barbie theme as overkill.
I wonder how it was received in, say, France or Germany? Food for thought.
France is still incredibly misogynistic and the only major female politician is a right wing wacko. They have had very few female leaders of the major parties. Europe is not a monolith or a feminist wonderland. And the prevailing of culture of the Romance nations remains very male centric and very machismo and sexual harassment remains the currency.
As far as I can tell it didn’t make a blip here in Italy. We all talked about Montalbano a lot, especially his sexism in that horrible last episode. I haven’t heard anyone here, Italian or foreigners, talk about Barbie. I watched it with a Chinese/ Sicilian friend and he didn’t understand the male sexism stuff in it. It was too foreign for him. I explained the Film Bro joke and then he laughed and was like “that’s real?!” Yes, as an American woman, I know all too well that it’s real, but it truly doesn’t seem real in this context.
France is one of the most misogynistic countries I’ve ever visited. Well, I should say Paris, I didn’t go to every place in France. I was sexually harassed every day (I was there for a month). A man asked me out while we were waiting for the Metro, I said no, and he started screaming and cursing at me. I was groped while on the Metro more than once. I went out with some friends and their male French friends and one of the men who had been interested in me drugged my drink and then, when I started vomiting profusely after one glass of champagne, offered to drive me home (I only realized what happened the next day). Thank god for another male friend who saw something was up and said he was coming along too. This was all 15 years ago and I’ve never gone back and don’t think I ever will again.
I have a family member from Colombia and he’s very machismo and strict about traditional gender roles. His whole family is like that. He’s a millennial, for reference. Totally anecdotal, so take with a giant grain of salt.
I am a little embarrassed to say I have not watched Barbie, so I can’t comment on the movie being emasculating to men. A straight dude told me that Ken was the best character in the movie. Do her children already understand English so well they can watch a movie in English? Shakira has been through a lot in the past several years and she did an incredible job overcoming the adversity in Spain and from her own partner,
You don’t need to see it though to know that emasculation isn’t a real thing because it’s not a woman’s job to make herself small so a man has someone to “protect and provide” for. If maleness is defined by being a protector, get a dog. Problem solved.
Well said!
Well said, Bettyrose! I need this on a T-shirt. A large shirt with small print so I can get every word on it 😁
Dogs are better anyway.
Exactly. And it’s so strange to hear her complaining about women being put in a box and in the next breath upholding all these archaic tropes about traditional male/female roles. Bizarre, really. Someone mentioned cultural differences/attitudes above and from my understanding, her perception is not uncommon in Colombia so maybe it’s just ingrained at this point…
Thank you.
I have a different perception of emasculation. To me emasculation is when a girlfriend or wife tries to make her partner feel less than other successful men. I am not by any stretch of the imagination well versed in the matter so that is why I am here to learn from others who are educated. I agree with you that emasculation happens so rarely that it is not a thing. It’s like voter fraud; it’s so rare that it doesn’t affect the final election results. We no longer live in caves so women don’t need a man to protect them anymore.
@Lolo86lf – What you’re describing is called abuse. Yes, men absolutely experience abuse from women partners. But why the term “emasculation” is wrong is that abuse is gender neutral. Physical abuse is more likely from men, but I don’t know the statistics on verbal/emotional abuse. Still, if a man abuses a women, physically or verbally, we don’t say she’s been “effeminated.” If anything, we treat a woman like she’s even more feminine for having suffered abuse. So why is a man “emasculated” for having an identical experience?
She may have watched the movie, but she clearly didn’t understand the movie if she thought it emasculated men.
Her sons are 9 and 11 so pretty confident they didn’t use the word “emasculating ”. It’s also a PG-13 movie, so they aren’t really the target audience. So Shakira seems to be the one who has a problem with the film.
That is exactly what I was thinking. What little kids knows the word “emasculate”? Unlikely.
I learned the word when I was about 11. It’s kind of a Catholic thing, gotta put those babymakers in their place early! /s
Umm. A) it’s very possible and likely her kids are bi or multilingual B) how do you think people in other countries watch American movies? They are usually dubbed or they can watch in English with (insert language here) subtitles.
Do the kids even speak English fluently yet? They must have watched the movie dubbed into Spanish.
Betcha they heard it from their Dad.
There are so many articles and studies about how men who have daughters become more feminist, but crickets about women with sons who start caping for the patriarchy. Yet you see it all the time. The weakness of girl power feminism – it dissolves when husbands and sons arrive on the scene.
I totally agree, the “boy mom” thing is so obnoxious and needs to be addressed. I can’t be friends with anyone where that is their sole identity, it’s gross.
Such a great point about boy moms. My god, the dismissive comments I’ve received as a mom of two daughters. Like, how happy they are that they don’t have all these unicorns, dolls and glitter in their house (my girls love all that) like for sure girls can’t be interested in anything else and it’s beneath playing with toy cars and bulldozers, which they proceed to brag about.
So that means there is just one movie made in the last year/decade not aimed at young males and the don’t like it and their mom isn’t happy about that.
“haha”
EVERY other movie centers men. someone makes ONE film that centers women and the poor babies can’t take it!
who’s the snowflake now?
And this movie centered Ken and The Kens.
@NikkiK, no, it didn’t. The movie absolutely centred Barbie. Ryan Gosling was great as Ken, but no, the movie did not centre the Kens.
Yup. The only moment in the movie that really resonated with me was when Barbie and Ken first went into the real world and stereotypical construction workers hooted at them. Ken felt flattered and Barbie felt physically threatened. Every woman and sadly most little girls know that feeling.
I love Shaki, yet she completely missed the whole point of the movie. Did she think she was taking her two young sons to a kids movie?!?
The new album is good, listened to it in its entirety this weekend. I’m glad it was so cathartic for her – she clearly went through hell with Pique in Spain.
For all her mentions of female empowerment and misogyny, she reduces her own remarks to nothing when expecting gender equality and male empowerment in a movie about Barbie. She’s also getting roasted pretty hard on social media for this…
She also implies that men and women have distinct roles which complement each other. I don’t know anything about her religious beliefs (or about her, for that matter), but the business about having distinct, complementary roles is very much Roman Catholic indoctrination. It sounded so familiar that I can’t help thinking that’s where this is coming from.
@brassy rebel I said something very similar upthread. You learn very early in Catholicism to not make men feel “less than.” It’s been a lifetime of unlearning for me
Ah still a pick me after all this time…. “I’m going to say all these words about feminism, but only if it doesn’t inconvenience you stereotypical, manly men!” She has a long way to go…
Every movie doesn’t have to be about men. Her boys need to learn that.
Right, and why turn a blind eye to all teh women bashing movies– all the demeaning characters and third rate roles we get in movies….. the tropes that are constantly put out there
As a girl, I was able to find myself somewhere in whatever media I was consuming. Maybe if more media was focused on girls, more boys would learn to develop empathy.
So she didnt like Barbie, not everyone like the same movies, and people take art and messages of art differently. Not a big deal, or any need to bash her for this.
That being said, i feel like people who say that barbie was emasculating walked into the movie with a wrong mindset.
If you think that it was just about bashing the movie, you missed the entire point.
I too have not watched Barbie. But for the love of God, it’s a BARBIE movie. I wish people would speak up about the atrocities going on in the world today as they do beating up a movie about a doll.
Shakira has always had traditional views of ‘men’s and women’s roles’. The Barbie comments and the remark about her childhood reminded me of things she has said over the years.
I always felt she wasn’t a good person because of her tax dodging and this just confirms it.
💯
typical boy mom, she should raise them better. i was wrong some ppl really need the basic feminism barbie was about, and they still failed to understand the message.
“typical boy mom” how is bashing, or stereotyping other moms/women feminist?
Yep. I took my son and daughter to Barbie. We all wore something pink and enjoyed the movie. My son (8) didn’t want to be left out of the fun. 🙂
Nope, not typical “boy mom”. Most moms try to raise their boys better than the shit men they’ve had to put up with. Pique basically “boys will boys”d his cheating and here she is…
Sadly, I think most women fail at this. Mothers are typically their children’s (regardless of gender) primary caregivers and teachers. Patriarchy thrives because women enforce it as much if not more than men.
NikkiK I’ll take it one further. Mothers *are* typically the primary caregiver. MEN/DADS need to step up and set the example how to be good men. Women can only do so much and need to stop being blamed for men’s shortcomings.
I agree that men need to be more present in their son’s lives to model healthy attitudes toward women. It absolutely IS an issue that moms are expected to do all the heavy lifting and emotional labor when so many young men are CRAVING a male role model and more engagement from their fathers in general.
We do have an issue in this country with toxic masculinity and from what I’ve seen, that’s not usually the mindset that moms instill in their sons but rather modeled by their dads and/or peers. Additionally, girls are so often the focus of their parents while boys are met with “boys will be boys” and a shoulder shrug. Like, young men need attention and care too and as a society, we really should be fostering this idea that boys have permission to be emotional, empathetic, vulnerable, and kind–characteristics that our society typically associates with women. That’s one of the first steps needed to achieve true equality.
“Boy mom” is a phrase used for a certain type of mom who centers her identity around “raising boys.” The “boy mom” typically has weird regressive ideas about gender and hates other women–especially anyone their son might date or marry potentially. “Boy mom” has a specific meaning and isn’t about “mothers to boys” in general.
@pyritedigger-exactly, there is a difference. Just go on any social media and look up the hashtag #boymom and you will see.
No, they sadly don’t. Some of the biggest supporters of conservative lifestyles and patriarchy are women, sadly. That was also in the movie, and kind of ironic for Shakira to not realize herself.
Men stay at the top because women have interalized certain “values” and “behaviors” as positive and they reinforce them onto others. Slut shaming, machism, violence as “protection”, female “honor”, “proper” behavior, etc. are all mostly enforced by women.
I did not like Barbie very much – mostly because I felt it was a very watered-down, consumerism-oriented take on feminism that barely scrapped the surface of the concept while being aggressively marketed as a water-shed moment for the movement. That said, when I’m reading this “I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity.”, I want to scream. The “possibility of being a man” is not to “protect and provide.” And whoever can define “the essence” of women, and even better, provide a scientific definition of “femininity” is going to win a Nobel prize. That movie made a decent case that stereotypical genders are not terribly helpful – maybe Shakira could reflect on that a little bit.
Meh, not every movie is going to resonate with every person in the same way. I have never been on board with the idea that all true feminists appreciate Barbie and if you don’t think Barbie is the greatest movie ever, then you’re……anti-woman or something. so if she didn’t like it, then fine, whatever. It sounds like she has a different take on women’s roles than I do 🤷♀️
watched the movie, and liked parts of it, and of course, loved Ryan Gosling as Ken, but did not feel the movie was all that great
Hmm…I’m a SAHM, caregiver to elderly family members and now to my sick husband and yet I am probably the least feminine person one could imagine in that role. Idk what I’m trying to say because I’ve had no coffee yet and barely any sleep. Lol but I don’t know what Shakira is trying to say, either, except she better worry more about what the incel movement on social media will do to her sons’ self images than one movie geared towards women and girls will do. And if the Barbie movie can emasculate them, then how are all the little girls supposed to feel surrounded by decades of movies, TV shows, songs, magazines and stories telling them they’re only fit to be dependent on men, bear children, and be sex objects or victims of violence/rape/mutilation/humiliation for entertainment purposes. Anytime a woman tries to complain about any of that, we get told by even other women we are repressed or prudes or emotional, or feminazi if we can’t handle it. Or just told flat out to shut up.
I’m not saying Shakira’s sons need to shut up about how the movie makes them feel. But Shakira herself can steer them to the eleven billionty movies that are made for their gaze and leave alone the movie that made some women and girls, like my daughter, just plain happy, if only for a couple of hours.
I’m sick and tired of anytime women get something intended for their gaze, people get all intent on analyzing it out of existence. Usually it’s men doing this. So it pisses me off a woman is talking this smack “for her sons.”
Her sons are going to be just fine because not only is the patriarchy still entrenched, the younger generation of young men coming up are downright scary in how effectively they’re being brainwashed and brainwashing each other to outright hate women and girls, not even regarding women and girls as humans with any rights. And their willfully ignorance of human biology is alarming and dangerous.
The stuff my daughter tells me she and her boyfriend overhear on their respective campuses from indoctrinated male students actually scares the hell out of me for the safety of women and girls in the coming DECADES.
Sorry this is not my most eloquent post. But neither is that mess that came outta Shakira’s mouth.
Now excuse me everyone , I need to get my coffee so I can figure out what the hell Kensington Palace is up to today.
I I think you expressed your point well (would love to see your work after a good rest and some coffee!). I got that you’re primarily a caregiver for family but you’re not stereotypically feminine or in need of protection. As a caregiver, you are the protector and Shakira can suck on her own shallow understanding of gender roles.
Understood and agreed with your point @schrodinger’s kate. Let’s be real, anyone who benefits or has benefited from “toxic masculinity” and the patriarchy will share her sentiment.
She absolutely nailed her analysis of the Adam & Eve allegory so why the inability to see this movie makes the exact same point?
Because in between Adam and Eve and the Barbie movie, lives a Shakira who decided to put her entire career on hold (or take a back seat) to a raggedy ass man who brought another woman into their shared bed and let her eat Shakira’s jam.
“Shakira was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools.” I don’t know if she is still religious or not, but I think that is her religious side talking. Some people would never get over the religious teaching they got when they are so young. It is indoctrination at the end of the day, accepting something uncritically. So, to her, women and men have a strict defined roles and they shouldn’t move away from them. But, I am sure she found a way to explain away of being ambitious and having dreams outside of home as a woman.
BS, I’m a born and bred Catholic raised in a traditional European household. Guess what, I grew up at some point and learned to think for myself and question the simplistic narrative I was being told.
Dear Shakira
I haven’t gotten around to see Barbie yet (me and like 1 other person in the world I think) but my son did see it. As did a few of my male friends/family members. Not one of them came out feeling “less of a man.”
instead of going out of your way to criticize last year’s movie…why don’t you go out of your way to raise more secure sons?
I skipped on commenting on previous Barbie posts because I was too angry at the naysayers here who “didn’t get it” or thought it was poorly made or stupid somehow. I wrote several scorching responses and then realized that I needed to get a grip. Yelling at internet strangers is a waste of time and mental energy and, if Kaiser couldn’t convince you that Barbie is a masterpiece, then I probably can’t either. For those who didn’t like the movie, I suggest a second viewing.
To put a finer point on it, Barbie accomplished something no other pro-woman film has ever been able to do. It was a commentary about feminism, a complicated and sometimes thorny topic, boiled down to a single character who literally everyone on earth knows about — Barbie — and demonstrates back to viewers how shitty the patriarchy is to women and *at the same time* points out how a purely matriarchial society would also be unfair to men. It’s Barbie AND it’s Ken, see? The fact that Greta could package this tricky idea into a pink, bubbly fantasy world that traditionally appeals to girls is a masterstroke. That part – the incredible set, actors, toys and clothes, is what got people into the theaters. It was brilliant, full stop.
As far as Shakira goes, maybe the boys didn’t finish the movie to see where equality comes out on top? Who knows, but it’s galling that she (or anyone for that matter) bad mouths a film that opened a lot of eyes to the plight of women dealing with the bs of patriarchy. People should stop and think how their negative comments might influence people to avoid the film. Saying ‘see it and let me know what you think’ is the least you can do to support feminism these days. I know, it’s just a movie, but maybe saving your terrible take on this film will allow for more people to see it.
This was beautifully put. I originally didn’t want to see Barbie because I thought it would be fluff. I finally watched it about 4 months ago on an airplane because nothing else interested me and I was hooked. This movie carries so much water for women! And if they watched it to the end, Shakira and her sons would see that it was the opposite of emasculated.
It would be so much better if she just explained to her sons the struggles that women face such that a movie with this plot line resonates with so many women. They would grow to be better men if she did that rather than allowing them to dismiss the entire movie as “emasculating” ( not that I really believe her young sons have the words to express that even without using the actual term “emasculating”). This is entirely her projecting her own hangups onto her sons. I say this as the mother of a daughter AND son about the same age as Shakira’s.
Not everyone has the same tastes either. I thought the movie was terrible, but hey I didn’t like, for other reasons, Oppenheimer either.
To each their own, you shouldn’t get angry if people don’t like the same things you (and others) do. Peace ♥️
Oh, the poor mens! How hard it must have been to watch a single f*cking movie centered on a strong woman that calls out the patriarchy. I hope they’ve recovered.
thots and prayers!
I know! Think of all the men who were traumatized by the mere idea of not being equal to others in fiction! How will they ever recover?
If that was the stand out message she got from the movie, we weren’t watching the same film. Ya some was cringe, but also adorable. She wasn’t truly seeing the forest through the trees.
Shakira is from another country and another culture. Do Barbie dolls occupy the same place in Colombian culture as they do in the US? I don’t know. Is feminism expressed the same way in Colombia as it is in the US? I don’t know that, either.
I like your question, Becks1 – I don’t think it’s a trivial question at all. I think part of the answer is that many people, often for good reasons, project a lot on this movie. So it’s no longer a discussion about experiencing art or an artist’s vision in a film form, it’s about feminism, patriarchy, recognizing the business acumen of women (I don’t think Margot Robbie deserved an Oscar for her performance in the movie, but I do think she deserved much more recognition as an Executive Producer – the numbers are just there!) etc – political concepts we all feel very strongly about (on this website). And it’s become this blended discussion where you can’t really distinguish between the two, making this conversation probably more polarized that it needs to be. But then again, as I said above: the movie was aggressively marketed as a feminist vehicle, and that will color expectations and responses, in a good and less good way.
A film was emasculating to her boys? This is a woman who has just admitted she gave up her life for a man who was unfaithful to her over and over again. Let me just say a movie cannot emasculate a man. That is something that lies deep inside of the individual. It cannot be emasculating to say women can be equals and do the same jobs that men do. Barbie begins with all the feelings women have as girls, the “we can do anything”, feelings, that’s because we still feel pretty equal to boys when we are young. But the world teaches us otherwise. I was explaining to some folks just yesterday about myself, because admittedly in the early 90s I was an affirmative action hire when I started teaching college. I did at one point in my career Computer Science. But when I started teaching i was assigned lots of classes like teaching senior citizens how to use a computer and then worked my way up to other classes as some of the older men died off. But you get worn down, you know the folks in charge don’t see you as equals, you know by your class load. So whatever, eventually I quit teaching and just worked and worked my way up, but it was a fight, it was always such a fight. Because you know one thing for sure, those men in charge don’t believe you are their equal and it’s a constant fight to claim your ground. I’ve never made up for the money I lost early in my career, even though I make a good living. I cried uncontrollably during this movie. I still can barely watch it without sobbing. When the Ken’s say, we can change anything whenever we want, they aren’t kidding, this isn’t a joke, it’s so true and we are living it right now. How can it be emasculating to merely describe what world women live in? The one created by men, the one that still needs some change, even though, yes over my lifetime things have improved. Maybe I saw more in that movie than I was supposed to, but I don’t’ think I did. And just a snarky side note, my own adult male children survived the movie with their masculinity in tact!
My boys are 9 and 6 and have no concept of “emasculation”. If her children know the meaning of that concept (or the linguistic/cultural equivalent) and identify it on their own, at that age, they’ve been indoctrinated.
@teresa,
I don’t know if you’ll see my reply, but Thank You for your comment. I have the same career issues, and it just feels good to hear someone else’s frustration articlulated so clearly. I work in a male-dominated industry, and I was assigned to handle the “sensitive” clients such as elderly and women, and I resented it. They also kept the big-money assignments for the men, despite that I outperformed them on every relevant metric. I now work solo, but like you said, the amount of money I missed out on in those years make it so I can never catch up. The Barbie movie also dredged up those feeling for me, so you were not alone, and it was not projecting.
I now have a wonderful and powerful support group of forward-thinking people, and I have not given up. I plan to make up for those lost years of income and MORE. And every step of the way, I hire amazing, kick-ass women who have been overlooked. They will succeed WITH me. There is still hope. Not just for me, but the younger women starting out. We will slowly change the narrative. HUGS to all the women here. We are in this together. We WILL make a difference.
Barf. In one interview she’s complaining about how much she regrets putting her life and career on the back-burner for her ex-husband because he was insecure and toxic. Now she’s giving peak “Not like the other girls!” energy. I always cringe when people say Barbie is emasculating. One of the major character arcs was Ken realizing that he’s more than an accessory to Barbie and that he needed to “find himself” independent of Barbie. It’s, quite literally, the opposite of emasculating.
I think this is cultural. In the Mexican culture, the men are seen as the head of the family, but a matriarch runs the show behind the scenes. I can’t speak to the Columbian culture, but I can’t imagine that it’s too far off.
I don’t get this excuse though. Just because subjugation of women is part of someone’s culture doesn’t mean it should be lauded and forgiven.
Patriarchy is also a dominant element of my culture, and men are the heads of families who make money and “provide” while women run the show back home while being disrespected and seen as less than a man.
So what? I still hate it, and am desperately trying to change it by criticizing this aspect of my culture.
Just because something is tradition and culture doesn’t make it right.
Breaking News: Shakira’s a f*cking idiot.
Damn, I had no idea Shakira was a “pick me.” 🤦🏻♀️
Am I supposed to care what Shakira’s sons think about the “Barbie” movie LOL?
Shoutout to all the parents who bought their sons the “I Am Kenough” sweatshirt.
I’m surprised she was asked about Barbie. Seems strange to ask a singer about it, unless it’s someone who actually sang on the soundtrack like Billie Eilish or Dua Lipa.
I don’t agree with her opinion, but I’m not up in arms about it either. I’m just surprised the interviewer would ask her about that specific movie.
I agree with Shakira in that the Barbie movie as not about equality. It was HUGELY disappointing when President Barbie didn’t give any Kens a seat on the supreme court. And “only after women get equal representation” or something.. but there are currently four women out of nine Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a bad correlation.. Like what was the message?
Ummm…have you missed the absence of female representation in government (around the word, too), Fortune 500 companies, or at the top of the payscale in virtually any profession (including education and academia)?
Or do you just look around and see a lot of women at the bottom/middle rungs of employment and figure everything is at it should be because women innately prefer less money in life? Just curious.
Believing that a man’s role is to “protect and provide” is the same as believing that a woman’s role is to be protected and provided for.
Those beliefs are inherently sexist and insulting.
It is also inherently sexist to believe all women have the same “essence,” and that essence is threatened when we “do it all.” I guess when we do it all, we no longer need a man to provide for us, and men find that threatening.
I see someone forgot to deprogram this brainwashed Barbie, lol.