Relationship Spotlight: Barbie & Gloria (Barbie)

*Spoilers.*

I watched Barbie again recently and was reminded how much I enjoy these two. Whether you ship it or not, their relationship is something special.

Barbie has been acting strangely. She can’t stop thinking about death, her heels are touching the ground, and imperfections have been intruding on her perfect world. She’s sent to the Real World to find the girl who’s playing with her, the only way to fix things—only it all goes wrong. Sasha wants nothing to do with her and reads her the riot act.

Then Sasha’s mom picks her up from school and hears her talking about the “reality-challenged” woman who thinks she’s Barbie. And Gloria isn’t thrown by that for longer than a second. As she looks out and sees Barbie getting into one of the black Mattel trucks, she doesn’t question it. That’s Barbie. Of course it’s Barbie.

What Gloria doesn’t know yet, though, is that it’s her Barbie. Sasha’s Barbie that she’s been nostalgically, sadly playing with on her own, using as inspiration for her drawings. Feeling the distance that’s grown between her and Sasha, Gloria has been trying to recapture the magic of that easier time, when Sasha was little and they had fun together. She doesn’t know how her own sadness has been affecting Barbie.

She just knows she has to go after her. Even though I twigged it before the reveal, I love the simultaneous realization between Barbie and Gloria, that, “I came here for you.” I love that Barbie’s troubles are tied to the sad, weird mom that she’s become entangled with, and I love that Gloria believes and understands all of this. Granted, Mattel is fully aware of Barbie Land and knows that dolls have crossed into the Real World before, but Gloria doesn’t seem to have known that. While the discovery of this magic hits her like a brick wall, she believes in it, because she needs magic.

I really like that both Barbie and Gloria have such a delightful time on their trip back to Barbie Land, complete with singing along to the Indigo Girls. As Gloria says, she never gets to do anything for herself, and she relishes her long-overdue chance to have silly fun while wearing fabulous outfits. And when they arrive at Barbie Land and discover the Ken takeover, when Barbie freaks out and gives up, Gloria doesn’t turn her back on her. Sasha may think that Barbie has just validated all her judgments about the doll, but Gloria doesn’t write her off. Despite how wildly different their life experiences have been, Gloria recognizes that Barbie is going through something that’s completely beyond her conception, but she also believes that Barbie has it in her to step up and face it.

Barbie goes on her wild journey to the Real World because she wants to put everything back the way it’s “supposed” to be. She’s always just wanted things to stay the same, and the thought of change and unpredictability terrifies her. But over the course of her adventure—and most crucially, through getting to know Gloria—she learns how to embrace just that. By the end of the film, she’s decided that being human is what she really wants, and that wouldn’t have happened if her journey had been a matter of finding the sad little girl playing with her and figuring out how to make her happy again. The story is so much better for Gloria’s place in it, and both characters become better through knowing one another.