Barbie 2023
as a transguy, I watched the Barbiefilm with a great sense of both belonging and disconnect. It's an incredible movie about feminism, the way that men see the world and how women exist in an unfair world. It's a movie about the beauty of life and what it means to be human.
There is a line in the movie: “We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they have come.”
Which for most people was a gutpunch. For me it was that too but after a small while, I realized that for me it applies differently. Because my mother also has that mindset. In her mind, she has three daughters. I have to live with the fact that she'll always see me as her daughter, not her son. Never a boy, who still knows and understands the struggles of being raised as a woman.
And that hurt.
Because while I know who I am, my mother thinks of me as an idea in her head that is never going to change, an idea that has disappointed her beyond measure.
