Female Identity Under Pressure: What Barbie Reveals About Conformity
Jaeheon Lee
On September 8, 2026, Human Rights Watch released a report showing that gender expectations continue to shape women’s lives in ways that are often difficult to escape. The report found that women in South Korea face disadvantages throughout their working lives, from hiring and promotion to expectations surrounding family responsibilities. It also found that some employment programs continue to direct women toward traditionally feminine fields such as care work, beauty, and education. Although women today have more freedom to choose their own paths, these findings show that their choices can still be shaped by expectations of what women are supposed to be.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) is a fantasy film that follows the stereotypical Barbie’s journey of self-discovery. By using the Barbie doll, the controversial subject that has been at the center of feminist discourses, the director illuminates gender expectations as oppression. Gerwig traces the Barbies and real women’s journey to realization as they grapple with toxic masculinity, the burdened expectations of women. This begs the question, how does Gerwig’s Barbie utilize characterization of Barbies and real women to present female identity to construct female identity as a negotiation between conformity and individuality? Through the characterization of Stereotypical Barbie and Gloria, Gerwig ultimately represents female identity not as liberation through choice, but as survival through negotiation within patriarchal systems that reward compliance and penalize deviation.
At the beginning of the film, Gerwig characterizes Stereotypical Barbie as a figure who reflects internalized conformity by showing her empowerment sustained through repeated routines and the absence of self-reflection.
[Fig. 1. Barbie starting her “perfect day,” 4:53, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)]
The color symbolism of pink in the setting mirrors rigid gender norms in society that operate on dichotomies. A series of long shots frame Barbies enjoying their world filled with pink, displaying how women come to internalize patriarchal norms. Also, Gerwig shows the irony of the Barbies who live in conformity to ideal femininity in the pink covered world feeling deeply gratified believing they helped women realize feminism. The overture states, “Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved. At least that’s what the Barbies think (2:42).” This creates a deep sense of irony to the readers faced with the problems of feminism and equal rights. The narrator’s judgmental aside, “At least that’s what the Barbies think” anticipates the upcoming conflict between what Barbies believe and the sense of individuality they are compelled to pursue. The Barbies’ sameness deepens that irony. Although each Barbie carries a distinct title, their behaviors align so closely that individuality becomes decorative. Gerwig layers the Stereotypical Barbie in the foreground and another Barbie in the background, synchronizing their movements to suggest parallel lives unfolding on the same script (5:28). The repeated greeting, “Hi, Barbie!”, functions as a verbal motif that reinforces sameness (Gerwig 8:36). By circulating the same name in the same cadence, the film flattens identity into a collective label, and it reveals the conformity that can sound warm, familiar, and celebratory while still erasing differences. Gerwig’s opening frames Stereotypical Barbie as confident only within the limits that Barbieland permits. Her happiness depends on perfect alignment with expectation, leaving no space for doubt, complexity, or self-reflection. The film exposes how internalized conformity can masquerade as fulfillment, and it establishes a central struggle against external power and the comfort that makes consciousness feel unnecessary.
Gerwig characterizes Stereotypical Barbie as a figure whose suppressed individuality surfaces through existential discomfort. The sudden intrusion of death into Barbie’s routine marks the first rupture in her conformist identity. The diegetic tape jam sound aligns with the protagonist Barbie’s abrupt remark, “Do you guys think about dying?” The sound violently disrupts the choreographed harmony in Barbieland, stopping the music and freezing the synchronized dance. Through this auditory burst, Gerwig transforms Barbie from a passive participant in uniform and illusory happiness into a destabilizing presence within her own world. In doing so, Gerwig juxtaposes the vitality in Barbieland and death motif, exposing the fragility of the conformity that sustains the delusional happiness and the belief that they have achieved feminism. Critic Bradshaw notes that the film frequently acknowledges its own contradictions through self-aware references. As Bradshaw mentions, Gerwig’s choice to show the contradictions reflects her intention to reveal the contradictions women need to struggle with. This reflexivity foregrounds the film's overall cinematic execution, making the awareness of its own cultural contradictions visible. The self-consciousness reinforces Barbie’s shift from passive conformity to reflective awareness of her crisis emerging from a system already aware of its artificial harmony.
[Fig 2. The Dance Party, 13:37, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)]
By allowing death to infiltrate Barbie and letting her experience self-awareness within a culture structured to avoid reflection of reality, Gerwig signals the awakening of individuality in a system of uniformity. In this way, Barbie’s existential anxiety becomes the catalyst for narrative movement, suggesting that consciousness begins as discomfort. Also, Gerwig juxtaposes the protagonist Barbie’s facial expression before and after her awareness. Barbie’s abrupt remark of death shocks other Barbies. Their confounded facial expression suggests the inconceivability of the topic. The stillness of other Barbies body movement, and the use of bluish hue suggest the rejection of challenging thoughts in favor of conformed happiness. By conveying their confusion and rejection visually, Gerwig reveals that the illusion of universal empowerment rests upon strict adherence to prescribed identities. Following the confusion, Gerwing captures the resumed dance party using an aerial shot, presenting Barbie dancing to their choreographed moves uniformly within the circle, presenting Barbie once again moving in synchrony. This return to uniformity does not suggest the perfect restoration of social order. Instead, Gerwig subtly characterizes Barbie as no longer fully integrated within that order. While her body resumes the movement, her earlier expression lingers, implying an internal rupture that the synchronized choreography cannot conceal.
[Fig. 4. Sascha’s drawing of Barbie holding negative thoughts, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)]
Another character that shows the female identity as a site of internal conflict is Gloria, a woman residing in the real world working in Mattel. Gerwig constructs Gloria as a relatable everywoman whose life is defined by negotiation rather than resolution. Gerwig assigns the roles traditionally associated with stability and conformity like a mother, a wife, and a female employee. Yet, she harbors her own dark thoughts, beneath the surface, which she only expresses through private drawings of a cellulite Barbie and a Barbie who cannot stop thinking about death (0:35:42). Those drawings symbolize Gloria as a woman whose awareness of female imperfection exists, but must remain hidden, showing that her individuality is not absent, but merely confined to the private sphere, suggesting that deviation from ideal femininity is tolerated only when invisible. Gerwig also characterizes Gloria through her conflicted relationship with Barbie through the contrast between Gloria and Shasha. As a young generation, Sasha criticizes Barbie, while Gloria remains emotionally attached to the doll, despite her awareness of feminist critiques of Barbie as a symbol that has constrained women. Gerwig shows this through the use of faded flashbacks that Gloria and the protagonist Barbie share. Through this Gerwig characterizes Gloria as a woman caught between critique and nostalgia, revealing feminism not as a clean rejection of femininity, but as an ongoing negotiation with it.
Through her monologue, Gerwig characterizes Gloria as a woman who articulates contradictions she has long been forced to endure, showing how women grapple with contradictions. The parallel structure “you have to…, but …” exposes the irreconcilable demands imposed on women; “You have to be thin, but not too thin...” (1:14:13–1:14:27). This syntactic repetition mirrors the cyclical nature of Gloria’s own negotiation with expectations around women, characterizing her as someone who is lucid and aware even if she is not liberated. Her emotional honesty contrasts sharply with Kens’ empty slogans, reinforcing her grounding in lived experience rather than ideological performance of the Kens which seems ridiculous. By allowing her to upset the simplified rhetoric of patriarchy, Gerwig characterizes her as a medium that verbalizes suppressed female experience.
[Fig. 7. Gloria’s speech to the Barbies, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)]
Gloria’s monologue marks a turning point, revealing identity shaped not by easy liberation, but by the articulation of internalized contradictions. Rather than presenting Gloria as an authoritative feminist voice, Gerwig characterizes her as someone verbalizing double oppressions: expectations too complex to meet, yet still enforced through judgment. Gerwig utilizes reverse shots to capture Gloria and the other Barbies in an alternating manner, using the same close-up camera distance to visualize their collective epiphany (1:14:32). This framing effectively delivers the speech’s impact on Barbies, characterizing Gloria as a catalyst whose language enables awareness. As she is grounded in lived struggle as a woman in modern society, she embodies how clear articulation becomes the first step toward resistance and liberation.
In conclusion, Barbie presents women’s struggle between conformity and individuality as an ongoing negotiation shaped by patriarchal ideology. Through the characterization of Stereotypical and Gloria Gerwig exposes how women are compelled to conform to restrictive norms. The director also shows how awareness of this oppression is also liberating yet unsettling. Gerwig depicts conformity as a comfort and individuality as disruption to reflect the emotional cost of self-awareness women experience, inviting audiences to see their own participation in systems that reward compliance and punish resistance. However, Gersig does not frame the formation of female identity as a narrative of despair. Instead, both Stereotypical Barbie and Gloria’s journey show that growth emerges through articulation and solidarity. Barbie’s journey from unquestioned conformity to self-reflection and Gloria’s ability to articulate lived contradictions compellingly show that agency is forged through consciousness not through perfect liberation. Therefore, Barbie reframes empowerment as the courage to inhabit uncertainty and embrace struggle, ultimately proposing that female identity is not something that is discovered in a perfect and intact state, but rather something that is in the process of being shaped by awareness, resistance, and choice.
Works Cited
Bradshaw, Peter. “Barbie Review – Ryan Gosling Is Plastic Fantastic in Ragged Doll Comedy.” The
Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 July 2023, www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/19/barbie-review-greta-gerwig-delirious-bubblegum-fantasy.
Gerwig, Greta. Barbie. Warner Bros, 2023.
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