As if that weren’t enough, there is a scene toward the end of the movie that totally did me in. Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, played masterfully by Rhea Perlman, tells Barbie how she was named after Handler’s own daughter, Barbara. Then she says just about the truest words I’ve ever heard spoken in a film:
“We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come.”
I couldn’t help it. I turned my head fully and looked at my daughter.
She kept her gaze fixed on the screen, but she couldn’t help herself. She felt me staring at her, and she smiled. She smiled really big.
I think she got me a little bit that day, and I’m grateful.
So yeah, this movie was about a doll. But it was about so much more that I didn’t expect. It was about the inherent challenges being a woman in America today, about crushing expectations, about loving yourself for who you were created to be, and perhaps most poignantly for me, it was about cutting your mom some slack, because after all, she’s a person, too.
