MRS THERAPY GIRL

If you haven’t seen the Barbie movie by now, you should. This is not a paid promotion. I just love the movie times a million. It awakened some childhood joy within me, it brought renewed longing for dreams that started to seem far off in recent years, and honestly it was just so FUN! If you are a product of the early 2000s media, you will love every second of this movie as it delivers on all our quirky desires in a movie about Barbie. The movie also definitely brought many of us back to our long discarded LOVE OF PINK! I have spent the better part of my 28 years avoiding being “that girl” who never got over the signature “girly” color. For some reason, as I grew up, it felt like embracing my girly nature was not cool, and eventually not adult enough. What a load of patriarchal nonsense. Pink has 100% taken over my heart again, and it is showing in my wardrobe! Peep my new favorite cardigan from Amazon here! I have even gone so far as to buy special pink office scissors (left handed of course, because I feel empowered to stop forcing myself into using the normal right handed ones provided at work), actual barbie espresso mugs, and the perfect subtle funky pink phone case! The simple experience of a movie inspired nostalgia, named the difficulties of being a woman in a man’s world, and featured the greatest Ken power ballad ever. All of it empowered me in ways I didn’t know I needed, and I felt myself returning to who I really am. I am sure you’re tired of hearing about how the Barbie movie changed my life, so I digress. You know what else rocked my world and changed my life in 2023? Taylor Swift and the epic masterpiece that is the Eras Tour!

In recent years, I have continued down the rabbit hole of becoming a die hard Swiftie. I really went from “she’s not my favorite. I don’t like country music” to “this woman is truly a lyrical genius with the depth and width of talent to kill it in every musical genre she attempts”! It is not just her music, intelligence, kindness, or sparkly dresses and billionaire glamour that makes me feel empowered and changed, but the fact that she truly was just a little girl with a dream who walked the halls of my husband’s high school. YES it’s true, Taylor and my husband shared a high school his senior year, and I will never forgive him for not befriending her so that I could meet and hug her someday and tell her how inspiring she is to me. But, that fact does not just create the sadness of loss for me, it really lights a sense of possibility and hope in my heart and mind. She came from just a normal life like mine, and she has chased the dreams she had since she was a little girl learning how to play guitar and singing her heart out in every home video. I think that is something a lot of Swifties grab onto when they fall in love with her music. They are finding belonging in her story because she makes you truly believe that it could be possible to achieve your dream if you have the drive to press on through difficult circumstances and media bias toward men. I don’t know if I will ever get to live my dream of being an actress for Disney and singing Disney classics for my career, but somehow I get a glimpse into that possibility when I watch Taylor shine.

This leads me to the third and final 2023 women’s first that really made me feel like empowerment and representation for women is on the rise–The Marvels! I am a huuuuuge Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) nerd, and it absolutely blew my mind and made my YEAR to have an MCU masterpiece that was WOMEN LEAD ALL AROUND! This film elevated women to every level a Marvel man has always had the privilege of embodying. We had an anti hero like we saw in Tony Stark and Bucky when we saw that Captain Marvel made critical errors and felt those regrets just as deeply as we saw Tony bear the burdens of his past. We had a FEMALE MAIN VILLIAN who was just barely scratched the surface of our empathy like Thanos by having the complicated backstory that makes a villain more compelling than merely being evil for the sake of evil. We had a spunky, intelligent, excitable Ms Marvel in Kamala Khan that was reminiscent of the Peter Parker we have always loved and cheered on. We had the woman who wanted to just be the scientist she set out to be, the best astronaut turned into superhero much like our Hulk who was the best nuclear scientist turned mutant. WE LET THESE WOMEN TAKE ON THE ROLES WE HAVE GIVEN MEN FOR YEARS! WE LET THEM DO IT ON THE BIG SCREEN AND NOT JUST THE COMIC STRIP PAGES. It may not have been the box office hit that Endgame or even Captain America was, but what did we expect after years of men taking up the most space in our movies of the year? We want to blame the “flop” on Marvel going downhill since the incredible 11-years-in-the-making payoff of storytelling leading up to this Phase of the MCU. I think there is a much less obvious reason the MCU is going downhill in its revenue, and it can be summed up in that final ending of The Marvels where Kamala is getting together the new Avengers–it is primarily women now.

Honestly, I am not discouraged by this. I am feeling more empowered to chase after opportunities to take up space in this world like so many women did this year in our media. I think we took some huge leaps forward with our incredible women directors, creators, actresses, artists and leaders last year and I am determined to find my own way to step into the spaces I never allowed myself to think of being before now. Want to join me?

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