“What happens in the crowd is messy, wild, benevolent and beautiful,” Amanda Petrusich wrote in The New Yorker about a Swift concert. It’s too contradictory!”The important part of this monologue — spoilers ahead — is not only what it articulates, but what it accomplishes. “By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy you robbed it of its power!” exclaims the film’s heroine, Stereotypical Barbie, played by Margot Robbie. And, ultimately, as difficult as being an adult woman is, Robbie’s Barbie chooses it over remaining in the sexless girlhood idyll of Barbieland, as we learn in the film’s perfect last line. Given the evident hunger out there for entertainment that channels female angst, it would make sense for Hollywood, once the writers’ and actors’ strikes are over, to do more to cultivate female writers and directors.

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Persons: Amanda Petrusich, Barbie, Guardian she’d, “ I’ve, America, Gloria, “, Barbies, ”, Margot Robbie, Robbie’s Barbie, ’, “ Barbie, Swift, Greta Gerwig, “ Barbie ” Organizations: Yorker, Guardian, Hollywood, Center, Women, ” Searchlight Pictures