Barbie is event cinema. When I went to see it at Glasgow Film Theatre last weekend, I loved seeing people in the audience wearing pink. Scanning row by row, here a pink jumper, there a jacket. I joined in by wearing a pink hairband and lipstick and carrying a matching bag.

A box office hit, already making records, the man’s world satirised in Barbie is an up-to-date reflection of what mainstream feminism can agree on: a desire to escape from a world where men are elevated and women are dismissed. When Barbie ventures into the real world, breaking free of the Mattelverse, she is as surprised as Ken is delighted to discover that here, it’s a man’s world. To Sam Smith’s satirical, beefy-voiced Man I Am, he struts around delighting that he’s treated with respect rather than as mere arm candy. Barbie feels “an undertone of violence” as she’s cat-called. Against this backdrop, who wouldn’t want to escape back to the Barbie Dreamhouse?

The film doesn’t tie itself in knots trying to rationalise Barbie the doll’s own impact on body image and beauty standards. Instead, it pokes fun at the idea a doll – like the movie, presumably – should resolve all feminist issues, even if she does come in a President edition (as well as surgeon, teacher, and all kinds of brain-forward jobs). At the beginning of the film is an enjoyable sequence depicting young girls playing in a prehistoric landscape with dumpy dolls formed to look like babies. (I found baby dolls as boring as they did.) They are woken from their stone-age stupor by the arrival of Barbara Millicent Roberts, who arrived fully formed (if a little triangular in the breast area) in 1959.

The film gets away with brushing past Barbie’s own relationship with ‘real world’ body image because a perfectly proportioned doll now seems quaint against the backdrop of today’s complex, insidious challenges to the self-esteem of young people. In the hellscape of AI YouTubers and filtered faces, plastic surgery trends follow what looks good on social media. The dreamhouses and cars of today are digital instead of plastic.

On the soundtrack is Nicki Minaj’s remix of Barbie Girl by Aqua. It tempers the original’s sweetness, containing the line "All of the Barbies is pretty. All of the Barbies is bad. All of the Barbies is It girls, and they ain’t playing tag.” It’s a catchy hype song, a more knowing upgrade of the squeaky original, but is it saying the quiet part out loud? How different, really, are the rules of the neighbourhood committees supporting Barbie’s Dreamhouse and Ken’s Casa-whatever?

Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, a Barbie who has become off-kilter after being played with too hard, lives on the outskirts of town. After outgrowing dolls, my best friend took the scissors to one of hers not yet passed down to a girl sibling or cousin. Barbie became George Michael, with barbarously shorn hair, felt-tip pen stubble, and, selected from a pink wardrobe, a versatile denim waistcoat.

There may be ‘diverse’ Barbies now, but this is still a world where beauty is paramount. Stereotypical Barbie’s hegemony is never really questioned. Her beauty is explained away in the film as “well that’s different. She’s Barbie”, a line spoken by the character of Ruth Handler, Barbie’s inventor. Even in Barbie’s dream world, where every night is girls’ night, there’s something to aspire to, a quality always just beyond reach. For all the self-celebration and joy about dressing up in this universe, where the multitude of Barbies are kind and encouraging of one another, beauty is still something to be wistful about.

Margot Robbie poses on the pink carpet upon arrival for the European premiere of the film Barbie in central London (Picture: Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images)

The jokes made at Mattel’s expense are a good palate cleanser. But a movie about a doll is ultimately set in a world of aesthetic perfection and plastic excess; of finding shelter in consumerism – but for a while, it's a lot of fun to play in.

As a teenage girl, I shunned pink, rebelling against the colour assigned to us from birth. The militant categorisation of boys and girls into colour-coded cliches was especially apparent in that time period. With plastic toys and adverts for them at a peak in the 90s and 00s, our shops had pink shelves and blue shelves, dolls and accessories dominating the pink. In this social and consumer climate, I insisted grey was my favourite colour. I barely gave pink a chance.

Pink is beautiful: that wasn’t the problem. In advertising land, pink came to stand for everything men were not. While they were assigned markers of strength, we got softness. It was infantilising, boring, and reductive, and a concept of femininity straight from all-male corporate boards. Where men were marketed effective, hardy, five-bar razors women got… pink. A particularly cringe-worthy example of pinkified products was the Bic pen. A South African advert for Bic pens made the rounds on social media in 2015 with its tagline “Look like a girl… think like a man”.

Not so long ago a pink shirt was still considered a bold fashion choice for straight British men queasy at its proximity to femininity. Men’s clothing shops, the colour palette all sea and mud, are still a drab sight. (Ryan Gosling’s Ken sets a good example in bright tones and pastels.) I still get the ick when pink is foisted upon me, but as an adult I reclaimed the colour, welcoming it back into my life. Nobody should deprive themselves of bright colours. Pink can be hot, bold, and shocking; or soft, soothing, and intimate. Pink can be light, happy, and fun, and life needs more of that.

A few years ago, during a record-breaking heatwave, as a depressive’s joke, I bought pink-tinted glasses to see how wearing them would make me feel. Seeing the world in a rosier hue than usual is, it turns out, great escapism.

Barbie film's obsession with pink reclaims a colour I once rebelled against – Laura Waddell

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