Barbie, Western Feminism and The Invisible Women of Palestine
I’ve always been more of a Bratz girl, but I went to see Barbie with friends when the whole world was somewhat sucked in by the ‘barbenheimer’ phenomenon. It was great — delightful, funny with engaging visuals, but it was entirely two-dimensional and saved by America Ferrera’s seething, well crafted monologue towards the end. Even that was subtle. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and it’s most definitely not the hard-hitting feminist critique it has been lauded as.
But this is not a review of the movie, or a dig. When the Oscar nominations were announced earlier this year, people erupted into a fit after they found Barbie missing from the Best Director and Best Actress categories. Nevermind that the film sweeped 8 categories in nominations, including Best Picture and nabbed Best Original Song at the awards this week.
At the time, Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, was nominated while Gerwig wasn’t which suddenly became to Barbie stans the most pressing feminist endeavour worthy of immense attention and rage-fuelled input. Even Gosling himself released a statement saying in disapproval: "There's no Ken without Barbie, and there's no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.” America Ferrera’s nomination was shadowed entirely by Barbie stan’s tantrum over two white women not being recognised. I’ll admit that the Oscars are reluctant to recognise more female directors, despite three of the Best Picture nominees this year being directed by women. I don’t deny that award shows are inherently sexist and racist. My issue is with the so-called feminists and the media’s ability to prioritise this over the real, current and harrowing crisis for women in Gaza, Sudan and Congo are experiencing.
Since Israel’s bombardment on Gaza, humanitarian organisations have revealed that there are currently 50, 000 pregnant women in the strip classed as high risk, with at least 180 giving birth daily. Women and girls are using scraps of tents as menstrual pads or taking risky period-delaying tablets to mitigate toxic-shock syndrome. C-sections are being conducted without anaesthesia. Already struggling under occupation, Gaza’s health infrastructure has collapsed, mothers giving birth don’t have the support of midwives or nurses and there is no postnatal care. Along with this, Palestinian women make nearly 30 percent of the fatalities. If they survive, they meet with hunger and displacement. And since the outbreak of the war in Sudan, sexual assault cases have risen so rapidly that women fearing rape are asking for fatwas (a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognised authority) on suicide and displaced women and girls in DR Congo, which has been going through a silent genocide since 1996, are at an increased risk of assault.
Why is it more appropriate to be outraged about Barbie’s Oscar miss than the grotesque neglect of women outside of the West?
From the outset of this genocide, the media has done its best to dehumanise and reduce Palestinians, women, children and men alike into people deserving of this onslaught. They’ve been compared to animals, their civility questioned and their values and morals scrutinised for not adhering to that of the Western world’s. Meanwhile Israel has been championed as the paragon of civilisation in the Middle East.
So it’s not surprising when the media and the people focus on the rage around Barbie’s Oscar miss. It’s only indicative of white feminism. This type of surface-level feminism, bereft of any intersectionality, ignores the plight of women of colour who have to contend with not just their gender but race, socio-economics and colonial oppression. It’s both infuriating and not surprising that women, who usually remain thin-lipped on issues concerning women of colour, are suddenly piping up. Hillary Clinton — who has never uttered a word about the sufferings of women in Gaza, ironically tweeted in support of the Barbie creators, “you are Kenough.”
They are selective with their outrage, whether it’s about Barbie, or about the October 7 attacks and the slew of made up stories of assault. When Mahsa Amini’s arrest for “improper hijab” led to her death in Iran, Western women were quick to join the mass protests. Just last week, a former minister said Musim women in the UK should remove their hijabs for an hour to “show solidarity with their sisters” in Iran. Yet there is a resounding silence when it comes to women in Gaza. Evidently, the only time they are vocal about oppression against Muslim women is when it fits their narrative of Western liberation and we are in need of rescuing from the ‘oppressive clutches of Islam.’
Like Ruby Hamad said in White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color, “until white women reckon with this (intersectionality) mainstream Western feminism cannot be anything more than another iteration of white supremacy.”
by Ayan Omar