Barbie can be anything — a nurse, an astronaut, even a relationship killer. Well, the last one is more about the movie than the doll.
Women are posting on social media how the blockbuster film is inspiring them to re-examine — and sometimes end — their relationships with toxic men, HuffPost pointed out.
“(D)id anyone watch Barbie and suddenly want to break up w their boyfriend or was that just me?” asked Theresa Arzate, who uses the handle @awhtee on X — formerly Twitter — in a July 23 post. “‘are you crying???’ you’re just a guy and you’ll never understand how difficult it is to be a woman in a man’s world. there’s this attention to detail that a lot of men don’t have.”
Although many supported her tweet, other commenters pretty much proved her point.
Pratik Biswal (@PratikBiswal8) replied: “Kudos to that guy. He is about to dodge a bullet. Lucky guy. You are replaceable like a barbie doll.”
Arzate, 27, of Dallas, told HuffPost the movie showed her how differently she and her now ex-boyfried see the world.
“Barbie has helped me graduate out of a cycle of overextending myself into spaces or around people I don’t truly resonate with, to get myself back to discovering what I want out of life,” she said.
Another woman went on TikTok to thank “Barbie” for giving her the strength to break up with her toxic boyfriend.
“Thank you, ‘Barbie’ for empowering me, for giving me the confidence, for making me realize I deserve better. I am amazing, and I deserve better,” she wrote.
Some women are posting how “Barbie” will be a litmus test for their dates.
“(Y)ou guys I just realized that the Barbie movie is a litmus test,” Megan “The Fangirl” Gotham said on TikTok. “If you go see it with a guy who’s like Ken did nothing wrong, patriarchy good, then you know that you need to get rid of him.
“(Greta Gerwig is) trying to save us all, through Barbie.”
Melanie Butler said she hopes straight women use the movie to get a read on the men they’re seeing.
“‘Barbie’ teaches us to empathize with other people as well as ourselves; if someone is able to express how the movie made them feel rather than just surface-level themes, it shows they can recognize their own feelings and communicate them,” the 27-year-old from Florida told HuffPost.
Women apparently aren’t the only ones using the movie as a test of compatibility.
Allison Panetta was unmatched on Hinge after her comparison of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”
Although Panetta said she understands every man won’t be excited to see “Barbie,” he should at least be able to spend a couple of hours with his girlfriend if she wants to see it.
“I do think if a guy has a strong negative reaction to just the idea of seeing the movie ― or feminine interests ― then that is a red flag,” she said.
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