Barbie is now streaming on Max and we’re taking a look back at one of the most iconic moments from the movie – America Ferrera‘s big monologue!
The Emmy-winning actress plays the role of Gloria, a human in the real world, in Greta Gerwig‘s smash hit film.
Gloria is an employee at Mattel who has a connection to Margot Robbie‘s character Stereotypical Barbie, leading her to leave Barbie Land and travel to the real world to restore her utopia.
SPOILER ALERT! Do not continue reading the rest of the post if you don’t want to know what happens in the movie.
Keep reading to find out more…
While in the real world, Ryan Gosling‘s Ken becomes obsessed with the idea of the patriarchy and leads an uprising of the Kens in Barbie Land. All the other Barbies become brainwashed by the Kens, so Stereotypical Barbie and Gloria work together to kidnap them all and break the spell.
Gloria delivers an iconic monologue that does indeed break the spell. And it has been earning applause in tons of movie theaters around the world!
Read the monologue below, which was transcribed by Los Angeles Times.
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. 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.
So, what did America say about the monologue?
“I mostly tried to forget about it ’till I had to do it,” America told EW. “Greta didn’t make it easy. You were like, ‘There’s a monologue. Meryl Streep says she would like to do this monologue. I was like cool, no pressure!’”
“My experience of the moment was that Greta gave me so much space and so much trust. I obviously didn’t wanna eff it up. I wanted to do it justice,” she added. “There’s no woman in my life that this isn’t true for. So like, how do you tell the truth? That was the goal. I felt like I could go to all the places because I had so much trust that you would know what was right for the movie… I felt like that was freedom, to have so much trust in the leader of like, ‘She’ll know, so I’m free to do what I want and she’ll make it right.’”
America revealed how many takes it took to get the monologue right.
“It was probably 30 to 50 full runs of it, top to bottom. By the end, [co-star Ariana Greenblatt] recited the monologue to me because she had memorized it because that’s how many times I had said it,” she told Variety, adding that it took two days of filming for the scene.
America recently got a lot of attention while talking about her personal hygiene.
