“There was a lot of crying in that film.” This was the first thing my friend said to me when we left the cinema after seeing Barbie. And she was right. Greta Gerwig's film is, on the surface, a work of endlessly giddy fun – an effervescent, colourful tapestry of joyous girl power and knowing self-referential jibes. But beneath this glittering, Pantone pink surface, there is an unmistakable darkness.

In Gerwig's film, depression and mental ill health are presented as being simply part and parcel of being a 'real' woman. We are, she seems to say, all a bit depressed.

The film follows Margot Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie. Her life in Barbie Land takes a turn when the girl (or, in this case, woman – it is America Ferrera's Gloria) playing with her develops complex feelings that seep into Barbie's own psyche, giving her irrepressible thoughts of death, messy hair and – gasp – flat feet. Barbie travels to the Real World. There, she meets Real Women, discovers Real Problems and has a few Real Feelings. She develops a new kind of awareness – “I feel conscious, the thing I am conscious of is myself?” She experiences anxiety – “fear with no specific object” (these, it seems, develop very quickly once you enter the Real World). When she returns to Barbie Land to find that Ken (Ryan Gosling) has taken over the former female paradise and turned her Dream House into a stallion-themed Mojo Dojo Casa House, she sinks to the floor and rolls onto her stomach, giving up.

Cut to an ad for Depression Barbie. “She wears sweatpants all day and night,” chirps the child's voiceover. “She spent seven hours today on Instagram looking at her estranged best friend's engagement photos while eating a family sized pack of Starburst and now her jaw is killing her! And now she's going to watch the BBC's Pride and Prejudice for the seventh time, until she falls asleep! Anxiety, panic attacks and OCD are sold separately.”

“What Barbie captures is the idea that bouts of depression, anxiety and low moods have somehow become an intrinsic part of contemporary womanhood. In other words, according to Barbie, we are all a bit sad.”

I, for one, let out a screech when Colin Firth's face appeared on the screen – why yes, Greta, I have watched the BBC's six-part Pride and Prejudice miniseries dozens of times and return to it whenever I feel low, how did you know? And, if the packed cinema where I saw Barbie is any indication, I am not alone. This pretend ad, though painfully, minutely specific, was, apparently, one of the most relatable moments of the film. The entire audience was roaring at these jokes more than any of the others. Evidently, they saw something —or someone — they recognised.

What Barbie captures is the idea that bouts of depression, anxiety and low moods have somehow become an intrinsic part of contemporary womanhood. In other words, according to Barbie, we are all a bit sad. And, in a way, Gerwig is onto something – a cultural preoccupation with female sadness has been seeping through our psyches for a while now.

Dating back to the Tumblr era, the contemporary version of the 'sad girl' has been around for over a decade. She has cropped up in different forms – the emo, the e-girl, the Lana Del Rey fan, the Mitski fan, the Phoebe Bridgers fan. From Fleabag to Normal People, television has been giving us versions of her, too. Cases of depression and anxiety are also on the rise – especially for women.

The term 'Sad Girl Summer' a play on Hot Girl Summer, has been around since 2020. Last year, crying makeup and nostalgic depression became TikTok trends.

Where does this cultural brand of female sadness come from?

Gerwig seems to suggest it's a result of the utter exhaustion that comes from the performance of womanhood – Ferrera's character's already infamous speech forms her thesis. "You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line," she says. "It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!" (Indeed, its underlying message isn't that dissimilar from the also-famous speeches by both Jo and Amy in her previous work, Little Women).

Being a woman is often, as Ferrera's character sums up, "literally impossible". And, as Gerwig's film suggests, we all know it. As one 2019 BuzzFeed article entitled "The Smartest Women I Know Are Dissociating" noted, modern feminism has taken on a deadpan, sadistic, knowing tone – we're all sad, and we're all aware of it, and now, we smirk at it.

In this cultural climate, it's no wonder Depression Barbie, with its knowing, winking brand of sadistic humor, was greeted like an old friend. We have all been her – deep down, we all want to kick off our heels, throw on our sweatpants and switch on Pride and Prejudice (the right one please, yes I am looking at you 2005 fans) and just be sad.

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