“It is literally impossible to be a woman.”
If you were at all engaged with popular culture in 2023, you’ll recognize these words as the start to a speech America Ferrera’s character gives in Barbie. It’s a rallying cry about the unfair expectations society places on women that eventually builds to an extremely relatable point: “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”
Almost as soon as the movie came out in July, audiences and critics pointed to the speech as one of the movie’s standout moments. Though it garnered some criticism as well, it’s fair to say that when Ferrera earned a surprise nomination for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, it was due in no small part to what’s come to be known as “the Barbie monologue.”
But in the months since Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster dominated movie theaters, another feminist movie monologue has quietly emerged as a kind of foil to Barbie’s. Imagine that: Most years give us zero viral feminist monologues, so it’s pretty notable that 2023 brought us at least two major ones. The other speech occurs in a movie that on the surface could not be more distant from the hot-pink plastic world of Barbie: It’s from Anatomy of a Fall, a French film directed by Justine Triet about a woman who’s on trial after being accused of murdering her husband. If you were one of the people who decried the Barbie monologue as basic 101-level gender politics, chin up, because maybe you’re just an Anatomy of a Fall monologue girl in a Barbie monologue world.
The Anatomy of a Fall monologue requires a little more context than the Barbie monologue, but the main thing you need to know is that it happens during a fight that couple Sandra and Samuel—she a successful author, he a writer whose career has stalled—have prior to Samuel’s death. It’s a key scene in the movie because a recording of it is played in the trial as an important piece of evidence, but for me, it’s pivotal because it’s the scene that swayed me from having no real opinion on the marriage at the center of the movie to wanting to join a vigilante mob on behalf of the wife character. (As to whether she killed him, one of the movie’s central questions, I have less certainty; all I know is I was fully on her side for this speech.) Sandra Hüller plays Sandra, and her work here shows why she earned a Best Actress nomination for the film. In the scene, Sandra and Samuel are having an impassioned argument about their young son, Daniel, but also about Samuel’s unwillingness to take responsibility for his choices:
You leave Daniel out of the game here. This is not about Daniel. I do not impose anything on Daniel. You made us live here among the goats. You complain about the life that you chose! You’re not a victim. Not at all! Your generosity conceals something dirtier and meaner. You’re incapable of facing your ambitions and you resent me for it. But I’m not the one who put you where you are. I’ve nothing to do with it! You’re not sacrificing yourself, as you say. You choose to sit on the sidelines because you’re afraid! Because your pride makes your head explode before you can even come up with a little germ of an idea! And now you wake up and you’re 40 and you need someone to blame, and you’re the one to blame! You’re petrified by your own fucking standards and your fear of failure. This is the truth. You’re smart. I know you know I’m right. And Daniel has nothing to do with it. Stop it!
On first read, you might think this makes for a strange analogue to the Barbie speech. Where that feels like a wide-reaching statement about womankind, this is one couple’s deeply personal fight, right? But even though the Anatomy of a Fall speech doesn’t announce itself as a thesis on feminism the way the Barbie one does, both have things to say about gender politics and the harsh demands placed on women. During the Anatomy of a Fall argument, Sandra seems like a woman who’s done with wanting to please everyone. The trouble is that her husband (along with maybe all of society) silently resents her success and lack of feminine guilt. In a way, the Anatomy of a Fall speech is like if the Barbie speech went a step further: Yes, being a woman is so impossible that if you don’t sufficiently tie yourself in knots over it, you just might wind up on trial for murder.
One speech offers rah-rah feminism, while the other is a callout of veiled misogyny, delivered with a conviction that will have you pumping your fist. Some of the Anatomy of a Fall monologue’s popularity feels like a backlash to all the hoopla over the Barbie monologue, but even if we remove the context, there’s a satisfying rhythm to much of the speech that has contributed to it becoming a meme on TikTok and elsewhere. Everyone can think of someone at whom they’d like to yell, “You’re not a victim. Not at all!” One needn’t have actually been forced to live among the goats to have the urge to bitterly sniff at an opponent, “You made us live here among the goats.” And who doesn’t long to bellow, “Your generosity conceals something dirtier and meaner” at a loved one who you think is only being nice to you because they want something or is otherwise doing you dirty? As the speech as a whole has been meme-ified, it’s that line in particular that’s gotten the most traction. Did you know, for instance, that Monday was “Your Generosity Conceals Something Dirtier and Meaner” Day? This week, one X user shared a screenshot referring to the fight as having taken place on March 4, making it an unofficial holiday for people who hear a never-ending loop of Sandra Hüller exquisitely excoriating them in their heads.
You don’t have to choose between the dueling feminist speeches, of course; it’s possible to appreciate both. In fact, I like to picture the main characters from both movies taking in the other one’s feminist speech. Sandra would nod along to “You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people,” and if nothing else, it would provide her with many opportunities to take long drags of a cigarette. Barbie would burst into tears at Sandra’s raw anger—“Not a victim? Not at all?”—but ultimately search for common ground. She too, after all, fell out of a dreamhouse not too long ago.
Should we take the presence and popularity of both monologues as a sign that Hollywood is finally giving female directors and audiences their due? I wouldn’t go quite that far, but on Sunday, we’ll get to see if anyone completes the full-circle journey from viral feminist movie speech to Academy Awards acceptance speech.
