Greta Gerwig Had The Excellent Response To Sexist ‘Barbie’ Jab

Greta Gerwig should be protected in any respect prices. The multi-hyphenated actress and director delivered the right response to Jo Koy’s panned opening monologue from the 2024 Golden Globes, wherein he whittled the triumphant and box-office-breaking Barbie film all the way down to being a couple of “doll with large boobies”.

For the uninitiated, the veteran stand-up comedian handed down what’s now being labelled as a sexist jab in his introductory speech on the 81st annual trade occasion. He touched on the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon and the surprising double-billing that resulted in unprecedented fanfare in regards to the polar reverse movies.

Koy congratulated the Gerwig-helmed feminist retelling of the silicon icon and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for his or her respective “Best Motion Picture” nominations. Like many earlier than him, Koy in contrast the movies, joking that, “Oppenheimer relies on the 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning ebook in regards to the Manhattan Undertaking — and Barbie is a couple of plastic doll with big boobies.”

Watch Jo Koy’s Barbie jab from his opening monologue on the 81st Golden Globe awards.

Given Gerwig so deftly wove themes of gender inequality, feminine empowerment, patriarchy and the importance of girlhood beneath the guise of a saccharine, family-friendly musical comedy, many discovered Koy’s barb to be inappropriate, pointless and albeit sexist.

Throughout a two-shot within the ceremony, the digicam honed in on Gerwig to seize her response to the poorly-delivered jest. She was seen nodding with a dispirited look on her face, realizing that every one of Hollywood simply heard her billion-dollar and glass-ceiling-shattering movie diminished to a humourless punchline.

However Gerwig has had the final snicker, acknowledging that Barbie’s look was partly the impetus for her recognition. “Effectively, he’s not flawed,” Gerwig mentioned. “She’s the primary doll that was mass-produced with breasts, so he was proper on,” she continued.

“I feel that a lot of the venture of the film was unlikely as a result of it’s a couple of plastic doll…The perception that Ruth Handler [Barbie’s inverter] had when she was watching her daughter play with child dolls, is she realised, ‘My daughter doesn’t need to faux to be a mom. She needs to faux to be a grown girl.’” The acme of dealing with issues with aplomb.

As Gerwig honed dwelling throughout the movie, Barbie is each an excellent and a automobile for embodying the innate contradictions inherent to what society expects from ladies. (As you might have gleaned, America Ferrera’s monologue within the movie’s second act is symbolic of this tightrope we stroll in a society working beneath patriarchy).

So sure, Koy, Barbie is greater than a movie a couple of doll with boobs. To borrow Saoirse Ronan’s speech as Jo March in Gerwig’s Little Girls, “Girls have minds and souls in addition to hearts, ambition and expertise in addition to magnificence.” And apparently, breasts value commenting on, too.