‘They felt that it was emasculating,’ music icon says
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Barbie might have been the most popular movie of 2023, but music icon Shakira wasn’t a fan, agreeing with her two boys who felt the dramedy robbed “men of their possibility to be men.”
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“My sons absolutely hated it,” Shakira said in a new interview with Allure magazine. “They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I’m raising two boys. I want ’em to feel powerful too (while) respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity.”
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The film, which became a box office phenomenon last summer, follows Barbie’s (played by Margot Robbie) journey from Barbie Land to the human world where she discovers that that women’s lives are completely different in the real world due to male dominance.
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The pop star, who shares her two boys, Milan, 11 and Sasha, 9, with ex Gerard Pique, said the movie missed the mark and that women and men should “share the load.”
“I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity,” the singer added. “I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost.”
Shakira’s comments come as she prepares to make her musical return after a seven-year hiatus. Her new songs on Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran come following her split from Pique, with whom she was in a relationship with for over a decade.
“I’ve been through so much in these past few years that I had to literally pick up the pieces of myself and put them back together,” Shakira told The Associated Press. “And during that process, I think that music was the glue.”
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But the three-time Grammy winner was careful to not call Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran a “divorce album.”
“It’s an album that gathers many different life experiences, that gathers the transformation of vulnerability into resilience, the empowerment of finding your strength,” she said.
Shakira is not the first public figure to call Barbie emasculating.
Elon Musk took a swipe at the film’s popularity writing on X: “If you take a shot every time Barbie says the word ‘Patriarchy,’ you will pass out before the movie ends.”
The Tesla founder was joining a chorus that included conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who found himself trending after he launched into a 43-minute rant against the movie and the number of times “patriarchy” is uttered by the actors.
“All you need to know about #BarbieTheMovie is that it unironically uses the word ‘patriarchy’ more than 10 times,” Shapiro said on Twitter, calling the movie a “flaming garbage heap of a film.”
Shapiro added, “Margot Robbie is playing the lead. In fact, the entire cast aside from basically Ryan Gosling is women, so it seems like women are doing OK.”
Bill Maher later slammed the film as “man-hating” in a post on X.
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“OK, Barbie: I was hoping it wouldn’t be preachy, man-hating, and a #ZombieLie — alas, it was all three,” Maher wrote. “What is a Zombie Lie? Something that never was true, but certain people refuse to stop saying it (tax cuts for the rich increase revenues, e.g.); OR something that used to be true but no longer is, but certain people pretend it’s still true. Barbie is this kind of #ZombieLie.”
But while Shakira and others may have not liked the movie, Barbie was a worldwide hit, becoming the first movie in history to gross over $1 billion directed solely by a woman. The film was also nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won best original song.
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