Musical icon Shakira has criticized the Barbie movie, stating that it
was emasculating for her two young sons,
who are nine and 11 years old.
- I mean. - How emasculating could they be?
I don't know.
I don't know how masculine a nine year old and 11 year
old should feel, but okay, fair.
Now, the funny thing about this story is it takes twists and turns, okay?
Because she says some stuff that I agree with, but she also says
some stuff I disagree with, namely her interpretation of the movie.
She says, quote, my sons absolutely hated it.
It might be because it was a movie targeted at millennial women,
but nonetheless, I'll continue.
They felt that it was emasculating, and I agree to a certain extent.
I'm raising two boys I want I want them 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.
So look, I actually agree with her worldview.
I just don't think that it fits with the movie.
I think it was misinterpreted. But look, that's the thing with art.
It has different interpretations depending on who views it.
So if that's what she felt about the movie, if that's
how she interpreted it, I guess, fine.
But again, I do agree with her in empowering both groups, right?
Yeah, I don't get it. So I agree with you, Anna.
So yeah, if you say hey, I want I don't think there's anything wrong with raising
my son to be a male, a strong male, and raising my daughter to be feminine,
as long as I'm not forcing that on them.
Right.
As long as it's organically coming in and try your hardest to make it,
have it be organic.
But if they are going in that direction, you want to support that, great.
I don't have any problem with that. Like some people say, no, no gender roles.
Okay.
That's you know, you want to raise your kids that way.
I believe in freedom. You do whatever you think is right, right.
But I think it's okay to say, hey, you know, that's who you are
or that's how you feel.
Terrific.
I'm willing to back that up 100% no matter how you feel,
whichever gender role that you pick.
Right.
So now, having said that, I just don't get it about Barbie and
why people catch so many feelings over it.
So I watched it and and Anna, you're right about it's mainly for millennial women
because and other women from a lot of different age categories.
But also, I would hope smart guys who get the the value of that movie and
the art of that movie and the story, etc..
But for my young daughter loves Barbie and she's 11, right?
But at times she was confused in the movie because it's actually for grown ups.
Yeah it is. It's not a child's movie.
Yeah.
My son, who's 13, loved the movie because he's a little bit more grown up
and he actually loved Ken.
And so afterwards, everybody together, all the girls and boys
that we went to the movie with and we went with a bunch of families,
we're, we were singing, I'm just Ken.
Okay.
Anywhere else I'd be it, don't make me sing.
And I probably got the words wrong.
Pausing here to deliver some honest truth, as we do in our news coverage as well.
Tight is facing challenges, guys, as the entire industry is.
You know who could make the difference? You.
If you hit the join button below, it's going to make all the difference
and keep us in business.
We appreciate you. Thank you.
When you watch the movie guys, in my the way that I saw it,
it wasn't putting men down.
It was saying that, yeah, men have been in charge for a while.
If you don't know that, come on guys, you don't think that men have been in charge?
Of course men have been in charge. Right.
And imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.
And how would you feel?
Oh, I love that, because that's like, we don't do enough empathy in the world.
And when whether it's Israel, Gaza or any other conflict,
I always keep saying, please, black and white issues here in America.
Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot.
And so that's what the movie does on gender roles.
It's really smart, really interesting. I don't think it's a shot at men at.
- All, I. Just listen. - Men want to protect and provide.
Do all the protecting and providing you want.
Okay, like I'm not against that at all. Now, with that in mind.
She also said, 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.
I totally agree with her on that as well.
And I did not get the sense at all that the movie gave us a different message.
She continues, though 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.
Yeah, I mean, I'm.
Overall fine with that statement and look, but.
That was kind of the point of the movie.
Like because they didn't say, oh, women should rule and we're
and men should be subservient to us.
That would have destroyed the whole point of the movie.
No, the movie was fighting for equality. Hey, no one should be just in charge.
In fact, when they were discriminating against Ken at the end
and some of the guys, they were doing it as a symbol of like what we do today
to women like, hey, you got to earn it and you got to go through the thing and we
can't give you a quota and just have half the Supreme Court be men now, right?
You got to earn your way up.
And that's what as a society, we did to for two women, for women, depending
on your perspective, that's just true.
So the interviewer and this is, by the way, an interview on for the
magazine allure, the interviewer responded to Shakira by saying, just because a woman
can do it all doesn't mean she should.
And Shakira stated, why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it,
who have a duty to carry it as well?
I 100%.
Yes. I would like to share my load.
Okay.
I'm not going to say the same thing because it could be misinterpreted.
No, I know, I know, but look. When I was coming up.
When I was growing up, I remember the dominant messaging
toward young girls was, you can do it all, you can do it all, you can do it all.
You can do it all.
Pursue the career, be a career woman, but also be a mother, a homemaker, a wife.
Listen, some women do do it all, and they're pretty miserable because
that's not a sustainable lifestyle.
You know, if that's really what you want, if you want to be a career woman
and you want to have a family on top, and a lot of women do do it, great.
But understand, it's not like I feel like the difficulty of it has been minimized
throughout my entire life.
Yeah, that's true. And it's annoying.
Yeah, okay. It is incredibly difficult.
And when you minimize how difficult it is, I think it actually takes away
from the women who are putting themselves through absolute hell to have it all.
Yeah.
So I don't think there should be any societal pressure to do X, Y or Z.
Just do whatever the hell you want.
And if you're a member of society, look, if you're a if you want to be grandparents
and you put pressure on your kids to have kids, I get it right,
because you're being a little bit selfish and you want it for yourself.
But at least I understand your motivation.
But if you're the rest of society, why don't you buzz off already?
Like, what do you care if I get married or I don't get married or a woman
gets married or not, has kids or not?
It's not your business.
So if she wants to have kids and have a job, great.
She wants to just have a job. Just have kids.
Great. Why do you care?
Why do you put constant pressure on people when it's none of your goddamn business?
Right. And so.
But I'm obsessed with the movie.
I'm going to go back to that because I'm obsessed with the weird criticism.
Do they?
I want to ask them, do you guys know that the women in Barbie were supposed
to represent the men, and the men were supposed to represent the women.
So if you're saying that Ken and the guys were being discriminated against,
that's not anti men, that's anti women, because it was they were symbolically
representing women in society.
Like, did you guys get it at all I don't know.
- Yeah. - No look I obviously I did get that.
The only like real critique I have is I feel that that movie came a little late
because as a woman living in America, who knows what it's like to, you know,
experience some discrimination, right?
Or, people underestimating me because I'm a woman.
Yes, sexism exists, but I think it's gotten a lot better for women,
with the exception of reproductive rights, of course.
- Right. - There's a massive.
Exception.
But in terms of treatment at the workplace, in terms of attainment
of higher education, in terms of working your way up that economic ladder
to, you know, management roles, executive roles, things have been
improving significantly for women.
So yeah. And look, we're on the left.
But we don't have to deny that. That's beautiful.
That's great.
Things have gotten better. It doesn't mean it's all fixed like it is.
So we live in such a nonsensical binary world, either everything is still wrong
and women are discriminated against 100% of the time, or everything is great and no
woman is ever discriminated against.
That's absurd. Of course that's not true on either side.
The answer somewhere in the middle.
Has it gotten better? Yes.
But one of the things, but I would argue just as important,
if you're concerned about men falling behind now, you're not that wrong, right?
If you said men didn't run the world, you're nuts.
Of course they ran the world and they ran it into the ground.
Let's be honest. And so, look, we can argue about that.
And obviously I'm a guy and I of course I believe in equality.
Right. But we have run the world into the ground.
We do nonstop wars for our own ego and pride anyways.
But.
Right now, guys are falling behind in education
and actually pretty significantly.
- So not just. - That.
I mean, you know, there's a real crisis with depression among young men.
There's a lot going on that should be addressed for sure.
Yeah.
And just because you're in favor of women's rights doesn't mean that you
should ignore your sons and and not worry about their legitimate concerns.
And the reality is that we've got to pull a lot of those kids back up to parity,
hopefully with their female counterparts, because right now, in an even playing
field, at least in an academic setting, girls are kicking guys asses.
And so we got to get help to the guys so they can try to keep up.
I'm keeping it real. Those are what the test scores indicate.
Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it.
Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships.
You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges.
You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun.
But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows
and specials right after they air.
So all that, all you got to do is click that join button
right underneath the video.
Thank you.