The Barbie movie, according to conservative criticism

For months, the looming box office war between “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” has provided endless social media fodder. The flood of jokes, which have taken the form of Twitter threads and movie poster mash-ups, cash in on the supposedly radical difference between these two films: One is a grave, highly stylized biopic of the man who helped invent nuclear weapons, while the other is a whimsical live-action movie about a child’s toy. “Barbenheimer,” as the internet phenomenon has been dubbed, has generated its own Wikipedia page, not to mention an entire cottage industry of merchandise.

The Barbie movie, according to conservative criticism and based upon online comments of people who are mad about it (“Disappointingly low T from Ken,” complained Rep. Matt Gaetz’s spouse, Ginger Gaetz; “they’re trying to kiss up to the Chinese Communist Party,” complained Sen. Ted Cruz; “All you need to know about #BarbietheMovie is that it unironically uses the word ‘patriarchy’ more than 10 times,” complained Ben Shapiro), here is how I think it goes.

What Barbie’s many careers say about feminism and American girlhood

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