The Barbie Movie feels a bit like real life, except for the happy ending. I keep thinking about the part where the accomplished Barbies ride around town rounding up all the Barbies that have been brainwashed by the Kens in Barbie Land and trying to reprogram them to remember who they were before Ken discovered patriarchy. There is no reprogramming in real life, and we’re all stuck living in a Mojo Dojo Casa Society for years to come, whether we like it or not. It’s frustrating because we were making so much progress before real-life Barbie Land fell, but if this election taught us anything, it was that intersectional feminism is a lie and the real world was way worse than Barbie thought it was.

Women watched the Barbie Movie and still showed up to the polls in November and voted for a toxic patriarch, knowing that they were voting against their own interests. It’s almost as if women who voted Republican in 2024 were okay with the Mojo Dojo Casa and only living to serve Kens. They wouldn’t have survived a feminism course, let alone know what intersectionality meant. It gave “pick me” behavior to side with someone hell-bent on oppression. They did all that and denounced DEI policies just to turn around and cry on Beyonce’s internet once they realized that they were the DEI hires upon losing their jobs. I can’t in good conscience agree with these behaviors as I graduated from a women’s women-centered liberal arts university that taught me the strength in empowering women and that we are more than servants. We are leaders, doctors, business owners, mayors, and hopefully one day presidents.

Women for Trump feels a lot like Mojo Dojo Casa Behavior but this is no movie. There are no do-overs. What these Barbies did in November affected the entire Barbie Land for decades to come and they will have metaphorical blood on their hands in exchange for broken promises they believed would actually happen because a con man told them so.

It’s not a male loneliness epidemic, it’s women realizing that they would rather be alone than deal with toxic masculinity and or fragile men lashing out instead of going to therapy.

The Dream House will never be rebuilt; that feeling we had when the movie dropped is long gone to never return, and it all feels like a performative sisterhood now, as a year ago, there was no male loneliness epidemic; there were simply men being held accountable for their behavior. As a woman who was raised on Barbie, I was told that I could be anything I wanted, and I’m still doing all of the things with passion and perseverance, knowing that I am expected to make less than my counterparts for the same exact jobs. It’s hard to justify this sisterhood ideology when there are women who purposely voted against helping level the playing field and still vow that they would do it again if they had to.

“The real world isn’t what I thought it was.” — Barbie.