Diary of a Gen Z student: Lay off the cheap shots at Barbie — it's not a silly, girly thing

Koy’s Golden Globes ‘Barbie’ joke felt like a dismissal of women

Jane Cowan is a student at Trinity College Dublin, where she is in her second year, studying English. 

I remember the goosebumps I had listening to America Ferrera’s speech in the Barbie movie. “It is literally impossible to be a woman... We have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong... You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.”

I think every woman nodded their head knowingly, listening to that. I got quite emotional when I heard it the first time. It felt like she was reading from some sort of diary shared by all women. Because she so perfectly articulates a woman’s experience.

The insurmountable pressure that so many women feel to fit some unattainable image. Feeling like you don’t know if you’re running towards something or away from it.

I loved the Barbie movie. It felt like such a beautiful celebration of women and girls. That this celebration embraced the uniquely feminine was so important. Seeing crowds of people, dressed head-to-toe in pink, bringing young boys and girls to see Barbie was so joyful. I think a lot of us did a small exhale. The experience of girlhood felt so visible. It felt valuable. And that was cause for some relief. America Ferrera put words to women’s experience. It didn’t feel like people saw this as a silly, girly thing. It really meant something.

At the Golden Globes last week, it won the inaugural award for Outstanding Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. A well-earned acknowledgement of the success of the film. But that victory was soured somewhat by the words of the comedian presenting, Jo Koy.

A movie about a “plastic doll with big boobies’” as he described it. I inhaled, when I heard it. The cringing ugliness of his words. It was lazy. In those ill-considered words, he managed to reduce a movie that meant so much to so many people, to a silly, girly thing.

Now, it’s no easy gig to host the Golden Globes. A room full of A-list celebrities is certainly not an easy crowd to please. He booked the gig last minute. He didn’t write all the jokes himself. But excuses aside, describing Barbie as a movie about a “plastic doll with big boobies”, and in the same breath describing Oppenheimer as a movie based on a “721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning novel”, says something.

Sure, it was a joke. But what a wasted opportunity it was too. Koy could have used that opportunity to uplift, to recognise the movie for what it was. He took the cheap shot. The joke being met with the unimpressed face of Greta Gerwig was hardly surprising.

My disappointment is not even so much with Koy. It was a high-pressure situation. I was more so disappointed with the glaring truth: That flippant view of Barbie is not isolated. He voiced a common view. I think that is the most disappointing part of this whole thing: The message of Barbie just did not land with a lot of people.

This is a movie that attempts to show girls that they can do anything. Koy demonstrated, with painful ease, why this movie was needed in the first place. That joke expresses precisely what the movie was working against. The brazen dismissal of women, what matters to them, what their experience is. His words are so far from reality. Seeing women leave the cinema, tears in their eyes, made it abundantly clear that this movie was about so much more than a doll. It tapped into a tangible experience, lived by women, known intimately to us all. The fact that he mentioned the “big boobies” is also significant. A woman’s body being inappropriately sexualised? That’s nothing new. It never shocks us, but it stings every time.

I felt real pride in Barbie taking home a Golden Globe. Ferrera’s speech rang true for so many women. And the immense success of the movie is a testament to that. It was not a silly, girly thing. I am confident in that fact. That’s what matters here.

Barbie brought girlhood to the screen in an accessible way. Raising little girls up, showing them that they matter, that femininity should be praised.

Yes, the joke was cheap. But the global success of the film speaks far louder than an irresponsible remark, that failed to grasp the very premise of the movie it denigrated.