Is the Barbie movie foidslop?
Greta Gerwig's 2023 movie about a doll who starts thinking about death, which made over a billion dollars and turned half the country pink for a summer.
Barbie came out in July 2023, directed by Greta Gerwig, with Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken. It's about a Barbie in Barbieland who suddenly starts having thoughts about death and cellulite, and travels to the real world to figure out why. It opened the same weekend as Oppenheimer, people made a whole event out of seeing both, and Barbie ended up as the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide, at around $1.4 billion.
The marketing was the part that made it feel like foidslop before anyone had seen it. Theaters filled up with groups of women dressed head to toe in pink, there were Barbie collabs on everything from rollerblades to a Malibu Airbnb, and a lot of men treated it like something they were being dragged to. When Slate listed examples of foidslop in October 2026, Barbie was one of them.
The movie itself is weirder than the marketing. It's a comedy about a toy company, with a long subplot about Ken discovering patriarchy and horses, a musical number about being Kenough, and a closing monologue that a lot of people quoted for months. Plenty of men who went reluctantly came out with "I'm Just Ken" stuck in their heads.
Yes, because
- It's a movie about Barbie, and the dress code for seeing it was pink
- Slate used it as an example of foidslop
- It sold more merch than some movies sell tickets
No, because
- It made $1.4 billion, so a lot of men saw it too
- Ken gets most of the funny scenes, and the song
- A Greta Gerwig movie that got Oscar nominations isn't slop
New to the word? Here's what foidslop means. More like this in foidslop shows, books and movies.