Warning: Spoilers for Barbie follow…
America Ferrera delivers a show-stopping monologue near the end of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie that has some audiences applauding.
Ferrera, 39, performs one of the film’s signature moments as her character Gloria and her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) help save Barbie Land from a patriarchal takeover initiated by Ken (Ryan Gosling) by speaking to the complicated and difficult experience of being a woman in modern-day society.
Gloria, who is depicted in the movie as the only female employee at Mattel, inspires the rest of the Barbies in Barbie Land to snap out of brainwashing implemented by Ken’s “Kendom” with her monologue.
“I was just sobbing, and then I looked around, and I realized everybody’s crying on the set,” Gerwig recalled to The Atlantic of shooting the scene in a recent interview. “The men are crying too, because they have their own speech they feel they can’t ever give, you know? And they have their twin tightrope, which is also painful.”
Below, read the entirety of Gloria’s speech, as performed by Ferrera in the film and previously published by Entertainment Tonight.
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Warner Bros
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.
“You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
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“But 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. 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. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
“I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”
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Gerwig told The Cut that she wrote the monologue herself (the film was co-written by her partner Noah Baumbach), but she and Ferrera “would text each other anything related to it” as they refined it over several months until reaching the version that they filmed.
“It’s one of the first things Greta mentioned to me even before I read the script,” Ferrera told Vanity Fair of the scene. “She said, ‘I wrote this monologue for Gloria, and I’ve always imagined you saying this.’ “
The actress added to the outlet that she “probably [took] 30 to 50 full runs of it, top to bottom,” when she finally filmed the scene.
Barbie is in theaters now.
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Source: HIS Education