The Based and Hilarious Reason Gen Z Bros Are Flocking to the New Barbie FlickBy Athena Thorne
July 23, 2023
It’s hilarious to see woke Millennials praising Barbie as a feminist icon. For the entirety of my Gen X lifespan, feminists have hated Barbie with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. Her figure was unrealistic! Mattel’s attempts to make her a career woman were patronizing! She was too blond and pretty!
* * *
But while Millennials are the children of the Boomer hippies, Gen Z was raised by Gen X, so naturally they’re turning out to be a pretty canny crew. They’ve looked at the garbage preached by their elders, the thoroughly brainwashed Millennials, and realized, Oh, my good Lord, they really do believe that. And to their credit, they point and laugh.
The young men of Gen Z had an especially tough time as they came of age. They’re the boys who were told they were “toxic” and “the future was female.” They watched mutely as girls were handed all the honors and awards at school. Their Boy Scout troops were opened up to girls, ending the last boys-only bastion in the country, even as girls-only spaces were praised, funded, and expanded.
Yet despite the efforts of third-wave feminists and their gelded allies’ best efforts, these boys managed to grow into young men who don’t hate themselves. On the contrary, they think they’re actually quite alright, while the angry, pink-hatted millennial women who couldn’t stop sobbing when Hillary lost and who ruined school, “Star Wars,” and comics are the ones with the problem.
But there’s something even worse and more dangerous to the Left than the boys of Gen Z’s refusal to become submissive and self-loathing eunuchs: they have an abiding, sardonic sense of humor.
* * *
Gen Z bros are going to see “Barbie” so they can emulate (for laughs) Ken’s character arc. Slate summarizes the plot:
Barbies and Kens alike are under the impression that their matriarchal utopia is a mirror of the real world; surely, decades of playing with highly accomplished dolls must have overcome whatever biases existed in darker pre-Mattel times. But when when Barbie and Ken make their way to Los Angeles in an attempt to track down the source of a disturbance in Barbieland’s perpetual bliss, they find themselves in a place that’s far less progressive, and far less pink, than their own. Barbie gets catcalled on the street and discovers that the company marketing her girl-power brand is run by an all-male board. But Ken discovers something different: a world where men hold power, where they are noticed and admired—a place where men matter.
Ken is the closest thing Barbie has to a villain, unless you count patriarchy itself. Upon returning to Barbieland, he and the other Kens (others Ken?) take control in a bloodless coup, and by the time Barbie makes her way back, she’s been literally displaced. Her dream home is now Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House, and the Barbies who once ruled the world wear frilly maid outfits and serve cocktails.
* * *
More at
https://pjmedia.com/culture/athena-thorne/2023/07/23/the-based-and-hilarious-reason-gen-z-bros-are-flocking-to-the-new-barbie-flick-n1712910
