Pop superstar Shakira, known for her songs “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Whenever, Wherever” shared her thoughts on Warner Bros. Pictures’ Barbie movie claiming it emasculates men.
Colombian pop star Shakira performs at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 2009, during the inaugural opening ceremonies. Photo Credit: Yeoman 1st Class Donna Lou Morgan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In an interview with Allure, Shakira was asked about the film and shared her thoughts, “My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent.”
She explained, “I’m raising two boys. I want ’em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide.”
America Ferrera as Gloria in Barbie (2023). Warner Bros. Pictures
She continued, “I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”
“Just because a woman can do it all doesn’t mean she should?”, Shakira questioned. “Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?”
Margot Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie in Barbie (2023), Warner Bros. Pictures
It’s not surprising that Shakira would find the film emasculating. The film’s director Greta Gerwig confirmed the film was feminist in an interview with Australia’s ABC News back in July 2023.
Gerwig said, “Well, it most certainly is a feminist film.”
The film’s star and producer Margot Robbie interjected when Gerwig was asked to explain. Robbie said, “To me that’s like one slice of the pie.”
Gerwig then said, “Super big slice.”
Robbie continued, “It’s a big slice, but I also wouldn’t call it a funny film because that discredits the fact that it’s got a lot of heart, and it’s got a lot of emotion, and it’s got a lot of movie references, you know, all this kind of stuff.”
“I’m like it is funny that is a huge part of it,” Robbie went on. “It is a comedy, but if you just call it a funny film it almost make[s] it sound like it doesn’t have a lot going on and it does.”
Gerwig went on to share, “When we talk about this stuff it almost sounds silly because you start talking about Barbie and Ken and then you’re having [a] very serious discussion about Barbie and Ken. But it’s also a humanist film because it’s like the humanity in so far as you can call it of like Barbie and Ken is what’s paramount in the film.”
“And at the beginning of the movie, you know, Ken is a person with no status in this world so in this kind of reversed world that person who has no status is in a completely untenable place long term,” she explained.
America Ferrara as Gloria in Barbie (2023), Warner Bros. Pictures
While discussing Ken and his character being transformed from a cipher into the real thing, Gerwig said, “Right, which is, you know, but in that way it’s giving him humanity as it were as a doll as you know whatever these kind of knots on knots that we have of the world of Barbie.”
“I also think, I will say, just the existence of this film in the way it does is pretty incredible and is pretty– I mean like when I think of it, this sort of as it stands, this is amazing that this movie is made and it’s made the way it is with Margot as a producer and a star. And what the story is of the movie, it sort of feels unbelievable that it’s been made,” she continued.
Gerwig then asserted, “It’s feminist in a way that includes everyone. It’s a rising tide lifts all boats version of it.”
Director Greta Gerwig at the Barbie movie reception at the British Embassy in Washington, DC. Photo Credit: UKinUSA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Feminism has its roots in the demonic as explained by Dr. Carrie Gress in the National Catholic Register, “Feminism’s core beliefs were first articulated by English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). While his wife, Mary Shelley, was writing Frankenstein, Percy Shelley was conjuring up his own creature — the first woman, whom he called Cythna, to be detached from husband or children entirely. Cythna’s only relationship, not accidentally, was with the devil.”
She added, “Shelley himself practiced the dark arts, going so far as to spend a night in a tomb to make contact with the devil. He also offered a new version of the book of Genesis and the fall of man.”
“In Shelley’s reimagined reading of it, based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, Eve is no longer the means of the fall, but through the serpent is given an opportunity for a special kind of knowledge,” Gress explained.
Margot Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie in Barbie (2023), Warner Bros. Pictures
What do you make of Shakira’s comments regarding Barbie?
NEXT: Margot Robbie Says ‘Barbie’ Not Built “To Be A Trilogy”
Shakira is an idiot. She was supporting feminism and suddenly realised that it’s an misandrist ideology, which will negatively affect her boys. Hopefully they are prepared to grow up in a world, which hates them.