#one being the comparison of the kens implementing patriarchy to barbieland to the smallpox blankets and hence the wider genocide of natives

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

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#so #maybe a week ago #there was a post about the doll commercial movie on my dash #and it was about how yeah the movies feminism was like 101 babys first feminism #because the audience it was aimed at arent people who have read feminist theory #so of course it was just The Basics #so that critique of it wasnt really valid or whatever #kinda like the ''are you trying to buy ice cream at the hardware store?'' idea #but more ''why are you trying to sell ice cream at the hardware store?'' #and the post annoyed me but im a mature adult who does not have the energy to get into fights on tumblr so i just scrolled past #and i was trying to parse through the annoyance to figure out why it annoyed me so much #and i was thinking ''did it annoy me because i was in this post and i didnt like it?'' #but i kept coming back to the two references to native americans in the film and how both were insensitive #one being the comparison of the kens implementing patriarchy to barbieland to the smallpox blankets and hence the wider genocide of natives #and the other being the barbie version of mount rushmore which you know was settlers desecrating the black hills which legally belonged to #natives and was a sacred mountain (going off memory i think the sioux the cheyenne and the lakota people all had claim) #and it was thinking about thst mixed with watching a leftist youtuber cover a prageru video that i realised why that post annoyed me so much #BECAUSE #the criticism wasnt just that the feminism in it is babys first feminism with the training wheels on #(which i also still kinda have a bone to pick with tbh but thats another post for another day) #a major part of the criticsm of the films feminist themes is that they were white feminist themes #the entire film was from the perspective of a white audience #the film was assumedly white if that makes any sense #like barbie is just Original Barbie because she just is. she was the first one and everyone came after her #at no point is her whiteness even acknowledged let alone explored #the film explores things like beauty standards and workplace misogyny and motherhood and the patriarchy in general but it dares not even #tiptoe around race. it just blatantly ignores it the way second wave feminism did. and oh does that coincide so unfortunately with the kens #strike back plot which lowkey perpetuates the myth that giving equal rights to an oppressed group will lead to them oppressing you #the lens from which the film views the world is one of whiteness and ignorance and privilege. white feminism is not feminism 101 #basic feminism should not exclude women of colour.