Let's go to the *movies*
Barbenheimer weekend was serving looks, honey!
Even if you know little to nothing about me, dear reader, you know that I went to see Barbie this weekend. To set the scene: I was dressed in a vintage hot pink organza mini dress and knee high white boots, with a black one piece underneath, and I had my period. But I would get my bloated ass into *anything* pink to see Barbie at The Grove (Fuck you Rick Caruso!!!) and you can take that to the bank.
Obviously the movie was a legitimate criterion collection-deserving masterpiece, which you certainly have heard from numerous media outlets, friends, enemies, and Tiktokers, but my favorite part about the night was actually the pre-show experience. As established, we saw the movie at the AMC in The Grove – the tacky European-style outdoor mall owned by Rick Caruso – so naturally, it was packed with Barbie-goers dressed head to toe in pink. Even those not wearing pink were very clearly dressed up, not donning the typical movie theater attire whose only criteria is “Must be able to withstand the aggressive air conditioning,” but instead fitted up in their Sunday Best. It was giving 1950s America in quite literally the only good way possible.
This, to me, was unity, bordering on national peace. A beautiful communal and cultural expression of effort. A mutual agreement to make this night not a fleeting experience but an event, even if we’re all just sitting in the dark eating tubs of popcorn and chuckling every few minutes.
Typically, going to the movies includes an “in-between” outfit, which Leandra Medine Cohen talked about in her recent Substack entry. She defines this world of wardrobe as “those outfits you put on to go out to get a coffee or to walk your dog or to drop your kids off or to grab something from the store across the street.”
My movie outfits have always been in-between dressing moments. Sometimes mildly elevated, say, if I get dinner beforehand, but even still they have the clear air of an ensemble that reads “I will be participating in nothing particularly special tonight.” And yet, as Leandra notes, these outfits often see those incredibly rich morsels of our true lives, participating in the liminal spaces between errands and well laid out plans.
But for the glorious Barbenheimer weekend, this in-between status of movie going was entirely forgone and redefined. Going to the movies became the point of the night, the ultimate location you were impatiently waiting to reach. Like a middle schooler getting dropped off by her parents at the local Regal for a first date with a boy named Jason, Barbieland was the titillating end of the rainbow that promised a life changing moment once the lights went down.
In the 50s, going to the movies was basically the most exciting event one could schedule on their calendar. This, I feel, is a safe assumption made from the various movies and TV shows I’ve consumed over the years about this era of heteronormative existence. You would do your hair, put on your newly pressed dress, lug all the excited children in tow, and literally experience *movie magic*!
While watching Barbie, I honestly felt that little twinge of magic coming back into the room. We cheered, we LOLed, we recited the Nicole Kidman monologue in unison, and we all looked Barbie-ready.
It might have been the Greta Gerwig of it all, but seeing Barbie was absolutely elevated by the experience of getting ready beforehand. If someone made a nationwide Getting Ready montage of everyone going to see the Barbie during opening weekend, I would watch it every morning for inspiration. It would become my visual national anthem. And this excitement about the fashion landscape of the Barbie viewing experience isn’t from me alone: even the respected street fashion Instagram account Watching New York excitedly documented outfits from outside of a theater on opening night.
This notion that our clothing is a defining part of experiencing a culturally or personally-significant event seems to be officially cemented today. When doing research for this entry, I was brought into the world of Renaissance and Eras Tour fashion, two very distinct cultural moments with personal significance for the participant, each with a clear aesthetic that is being religiously adhered to. After poking around these worlds for even a few minutes, I can’t imagine getting tickets to these events and not immediately starting to plan my outfit.
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What’s unique about the Barbie fashion experience is that while going to a concert has always been widely accepted as a “main stage event,” going to the movies has been relegated to the status of something you do on a rainy day, or when you have nothing better to do, or a very lame first date suggestion (rooftop movie theaters excluded – I love Rooftop Cinema Club dates). Concerts are a central part of the night (or day or weekend) that you very clearly organize around, going to the movies is something you stumble into.
Perhaps only a movie with a budget (production and marketing) as exorbitant as Mattel’s Barbie could push movie going into the aesthetically-centered world of concert going. Perhaps, like the Renaissance and Eras tours, the exclusivity, the looking-forward-to-it-ness is what makes this moment inspire in us an acute sense of style. But I hope this isn’t the case, that Barbie isn’t the end of this truly transformative cinematic experience that bring the world on the screen into the seats, the lobbies, and the shopping carts. While I can’t guarantee I’ll be wearing my hottest matching set the next time I head to AMC, if a new Bratz movie comes out… well… a bitch just might.