8/19/2023 0 Comments Indigo girls gay![]() If you are still not convinced this fashion choice is gay, please refer to this advertisement for “lesbian culture and politics” magazine DYKE A Quarterly from circa 1976. (It’s true that Barbie does initially try to choose the traditionally feminine pink heels but then, haven’t we all, in our own way, before finally accepting who we are?) With the sandal, Barbie is given the choice to reject the artifice of heteronormativity and embrace “the truth”. While in a 2004 episode of Will & Grace, Jack jokes “put yourself in her Birkenstocks” about a female character coming out as gay.Īs to why lesbians loved sensible Birkenstocks, long before they became the height of fashion, Sherrie A Inness writes in The Lesbian Menace: Ideology, Identity, and the Representation of Lesbian Life : “In the 1970s, many lesbians strove to appear as unfashionable as possible in protest against society’s beauty dictates.” Considered ugly and frumpy, the Birkenstock was a political statement against the patriarchy and societal expectations of women to be desirable for the male gaze. In an interview for Iowa State University’s exhibition on LGBTQ+ fashion, Fitting the Stereotype, one queer woman shared her experience being referred to as an “old-school dyke” because she was wearing Birkenstocks and a thumb ring. That’s where I first ran into Birkenstocks”. In an article tracing the history of the Birkenstock-lesbian stereotype, author Kate Clinton says at a 1979 women’s writing conference she went to with Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde, “it was all flannel. ![]() In 1992, a New York Times piece noted that “some people think that lesbian women wear only jeans and Birkenstocks”. Lesbians love a sturdy, sensible shoe and the Birkenstocks have traditionally been a short-hand way of referring to a woman as queer. Birkenstocks are a big lesbian stereotype. However, having it be her character – who, by the way, is not a polished high-femme Barbie like the other Barbies, but a broken one with marker all over her face and a safety-scissor haircut, which led queer women’s publication Autostraddle to call her character “GAY GAY” – presenting the Birkenstock does add a subtextual layer of queerness to the interaction. Of course, an actor’s sexuality doesn’t dictate what kind of characters they can play and just because McKinnon is gay doesn’t mean her Barbie is. Before being on SNL, she starred in The Big Gay Sketch Show and she has a very public long-time crush on Gillian Anderson. ![]() In 2020, while presenting Ellen DeGeneres with an award at the Golden Globes she thanked her for making it less scary to accept her sexuality and helping her feel like she wasn’t an alien. So why is this so gay? Let’s break down and unpack the evidence that Gerwig and the team made a series of seriously lesbian-coded creative choices. ![]() ![]() Margot Robbie’s Barbie first tries to choose the heels, but Kate McKinnon’s Barbie says she “has to want to know” and then we cut straight into a scene of Margot Robbie’s Barbie driving in her car singing her heart out to “Closer to Fine” before Ken pops out of the backseat and sings along too. Kate McKinnon’s Barbie then presents Margot Robbie’s Barbie with a Matrix-esque red pill/blue pill scenario: she can pick the classy, rhinestone baby-pink heels and “go back to her regular life” or she can pick the mocha-brown Arizona Birkenstocks and “know the truth about the universe”. The opening strums of the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” kick in as Margot Robbie’s Barbie arrives at the doorstep of Kate McKinnon’s Barbie. Yesterday, the new trailer for Greta Gerwig ’s hotly-anticipated Barbie movie was released and it’s an absolute pepto bismol-hued romp, filled with camp cowboy outfits, top-tier acting from Ryan Gosling and some quite unsubtle hints that Barbie is gay. ![]()
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