This is the weekly Amplify newsletter, where you can be inspired and challenged by the voices, opinions and insights of women at The Globe and Mail and our contributor community.
This week’s newsletter was written by Amberly McAteer, a freelance writer and editor in Toronto, and former editor at The Globe and Mail.
When my three-year-old daughter, Lucy, asked her teacher what she thought of her art project in preschool, the teacher answered: I won’t tell you what I think, it’s about what you think. How does the art make you feel?
Lucy was hurt, and came to me after school asking why her teacher wouldn’t say nice things about her art.
Her teacher told me afterward that she often sees this need to be praised, as she put it, in her female students, and she tries to curb it. She said that Lucy needed to learn the only worthy recognition comes from within and not to seek external validation.
What I took from that conversation was that, as young as three years old, girls seeking validation and recognition were somehow being told they were unworthy. And it wasn’t a good look to ask for it.
Women are routinely less rewarded, in boardrooms, medicine and science. There is a whole world of research dedicated to this recognition gender gap – but I didn’t think it would start in preschool.
I remembered my ridiculous exchange with her teacher when I watched America Ferrera give her iconic monologue in Barbie, about the impossibility of womanhood.
“It is literally impossible to be a woman,” she tells Barbie about life in the real world. “Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong…”
“Always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.”
She could have added: Make exceptional art, but don’t seek external validation.
The impossibility of it all is something the film’s director, Greta Gerwig, and its lead star, Margot Robbie, must be feeling after they were passed over for Oscar nominations, while the film’s male lead, Ryan Gosling, received one for his performance.
Infuriatingly, it’s as if the actual plot of the film has come to life, where Barbie realizes that, in the real world, being a woman makes you immediately less likely to receive recognition for your work. Even if you directed or starred as the title character in a film that is nominated for Best Picture, one that sparked conversations and broke global records, you are not worthy of recognition. You’re – still – doing it wrong.
The irony of it all would almost be laughable, if it weren’t so cruel.
Greta Gerwig, right, directs Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie on the set of Barbie.Jaap Buitendijk/The Associated Press
The Academy might be hanging its hat on the fact that three of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture were directed by women – which is the most ever, in Oscar’s 96 years. But that statistic is hardly anything to celebrate, and says more about its boys’ club past than anything else. (Also overlooked were Celine Song, director of Past Lives, and Greta Lee, the movie’s lead – despite the film getting a Best Picture nod.)
Ferrera, who was indeed nominated for Best Supporting Actress, said she was “incredibly disappointed” about the snubs. “Greta has done just about everything that a director could do to deserve it… What Margot achieved as an actress is truly unbelievable.”
And Gosling didn’t hold back either: “Against all odds… they made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and they made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.”
To be honest, I may have been one of the few millennial women who wasn’t immediately lining up to see Barbie. My relationship with the doll was never positive; I was more drawn to building Lego and playing G.I. Joes with my older brother than living in some Barbie dream world. And as an adult, I always viewed Barbie as a terribly outdated toy. Did we really need a film celebrating “perfect,” blonde, physically impossibly proportioned thinness?
How wrong I was. Thanks to Gerwig’s and Robbie’s brilliance, it’s a film that is anything but surface. It’s about how it feels – really, deeply, core-revealing feels – to be a woman. To be overlooked and objectified, to have your accomplishments diminished. “Everything basically exists to elevate the presence of men,” Ken says in one of the film’s most honest moments.
Although none of this was a surprise to me, the way the message was conveyed was truly special – and it hasn’t left my brain since.
The question of how women are supposed to excel in a world that literally favours Kens is a constant question for me as a mother to two young daughters. Teaching them that they are physically perfect, and also appearances don’t matter. Teaching them that they are special, and so is everyone else. Be leaders, but don’t speak out of turn. Teaching them to be polite and use their manners, and also never to be afraid to speak up and use their voices for change.
I’ll also teach them that they may have to work twice as hard for half the recognition – but that doesn’t take away from their worth.
Lucy asks me often if I like her drawings; rainbows are her latest obsession. I’m always going to tell her that her art is beautiful and unique. I tell her she is so creative to choose the vibrant colours she does. And she deserves a world of recognition for it.
What else we’re thinking about:
Taylor Alison Swift and the National Football League. As the Chiefs prepare to take on the Ravens this weekend, I’m ready to tune in – that’s something I never thought I’d say, much less be excited about. I’m a baseball nut, but have never been into football, until, like many Swifties, I’ve been drawn in. There’s long been an outdated idea that women need a storyline to enjoy sports – and it’s one I’ve pushed back against. Women can – and do, obviously – love football for football’s sake. But I needed my queen in the suite to get excited. Sue me. This is a love story, and I’m saying yes.
Marianne
Marianne Kushmaniuk for The Globe and Mail
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