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Caution: The following story contain’s spoilers for ‘Barbie’.
From the moment Greta Gerwig deliciously supplanted the 1959 original Barbie doll as Stanley Kubrick’s alien monolith in her reference to the auteur’s science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, we knew that her Barbie live-action adaption would be nestled with hidden references and hard-to-spot Easter eggs.
The opening scenes alone were rife with homages to the classic sound stage movie musicals of Hollywood’s golden era (if you’re curious on which specific film’s Gerwig drew inspiration from, she very neatly packaged them all here in this Letterboxd watch list).
Yet. it was the more niche and subtle innuendos to classic film moments and iconic pop-culture references that drew the attention of netizens and cinephiles alike. We’re not referring to Barbie choosing between a Birkenstock Arizona sandals and a pink stiletto à la Neo in The Matrix, that mansplaining sequence of the Barbies distracting Kens by getting them to explain the plot of The Godfather or even the subtle nod to Buonarotti’s The Creation of Adam.
Indeed, we’re talking about the blink-and-you’ll miss it inclusion of the Bratz dolls, Barbie’s biggest fashion competition and the Y2K fashion dolls that threatened her reign as the leading sartorially-focused figurine for children in the noughties.
As social media users have theorised, Gerwig has included a reference to Barbie’s adversaries under our very noses, and the evidence is compelling enough to warrant an investigation. Yes, this Barbie is making this a case for the FBI.
The surmounting proof is mainly centralised to the scene in which Margot Robbie’s cowgirl Barbie heads to a local Los Angeles high school to track down the girl she thinks is causing her existential crisis. There, she finds Ariana Greenblatt’s Sasha—a sullen teen seemingly donned in the latest Heaven by Marc Jacobs x Blumarine garms.
As filmgoers would know, Sasha chastises Barbie for being everything wrong with women (rather than embracing her as our white feminist saviour, as Barbie expected her to be). Of course, the name Sasha is one of the four Bratz dolls, but this information alone isn’t enough to be convincing.
Allow us then to direct your attention to Sasha’s three friends; an athleisure-adjacent blonde, a sassy black haired girl of Asian descent, and a sweet African American girl supporting Barbie. Or, real life versions of Cloe, Jade and Yasmin, a.k.a the original Bratz dolls.
In the film, Sasha’s mother Gloria (America Ferrera) also calls the Y2K-inspired character “Bunny Boo”, a nickname that also happens to the moniker of Sasha’s pet rabbit in the Bratz-verse.
Gerwig nor representatives at Mattel have confirmed whether this parallel is indeed accurate, but it’s fun to speculate this Easter egg could in fact be productions way of reclaiming the Barbie vs. Bratz discourse by acknowledging their own downfalls. Or, getting their biggest competitor to call their creation a “fascist”, especially considering the dolls rivalled history.
Perhaps this is a case for the pastel-laden deceive Barbie to resolve. Someone get that silicon woman on the case.
