‘First I got one tear, and then I got a whole bunch’: fluidity and plasticine solidity in the world of <i>Barbie</i>

I consider the role of fluidity in Barbie (2023) as a mode of exploring femininity and ecological connections through embodiment. Barbie's relationship to fluid changes throughout the film. She learns to drink, learns to cry and thus, I argue in this article, slowly moves from plastic to flesh by opening into fluidity. Through attention to the fluidity inherent within the very definition of plastic, as well as the necessary taking in and leaking out of fluid exchange within the body, the plasticine world of Barbie, positions fluidity as a vital object of power within both feminine embodiment and feminist spaces. Using Barbie's relations with embodied fluidity through its plasticine solidity, I develop the notion of fluid relations to highlight the labour of our fluid interactions as well as their environmental tendrils. For feminist theory in the age of the Anthropocene, this article highlights the ways that biological, fluid relations take labour, leave traces, happen across shifting membranes and are both altered by and alter all they touch. Through this reading, I argue for a reinvigoration of our reading of bodily fluids in relation to a feminine excess within our embodied material world. But I also suggest that such a reinvigorated fluid reading must not forget our environmental relations: the fluidity at the heart of the plastic and the plastic at the heart of fluidity.