Here's Every Word of America Ferrera's Big ‘Barbie’ Monologue

Are we overtly or covertly telling our daughters that thin, nice, and modest are prerequisites for worthiness? Are we teaching our girls to respect boys as tender and loving beings? Are we sending messages to our sons that we expect them to be emotionally stoic, to put money and status first, and to be aggressive? Are we teaching our sons to respec

Pressures for women to position themselves as “normal” and “nice” are almost always a constraint, no matter who’s listening. “None of us is ever free of the need to keep up some sort of front,” Coates says.

Notably, Barbie’s first home, which was made of cardboard, had no kitchen.

This was contrary to many early dollhouses, which were made with the intent of teaching young girls domestic tasks.

Instead, Barbie had a television set and record player. She was here to have fun . Not be a homemaker.

Perhaps the cleverest thing our patriarchal society ever achieved was to rehash this bricks-and-mortar anti-woman rhetoric with something a hundred times more vague and harder to shoot down: now, instead of women’s compliance being enforced as an imperative from above, it trickles down as a kind of pervasive doubt, finding a voice in the very women