When I was in grade school, I desperately wanted a Barbie. My parents, opposed on principle, got me a Midge doll instead—brunette, freckled, and definitely not Barbie. I was devastated, but had to act grateful for this clearly inferior model. (The same held true when, instead of a Barbie Dreamhouse or even a normal center-hall colonial dollhouse, a play gas station awaited me under the Christmas tree.)

My second-rate Midge had a first-rate wardrobe, however. Not because my parents made up for their failures by buying lots of Mattel outfits, but because my friend Tim’s mother, an accomplished seamstress, constantly gave me exquisitely sewn miniature costumes. I don’t know why she did this. Did Tim have a crush on me? Was his much-older sister far too cool for Barbie? Did my parents secretly pay Tim’s mom to keep further profits out of Mattel’s dirty clutches?

Somehow I overcame my devastation. The Barbie years left little impact other than making me careful about how my husband and I handled our own daughters years later. Since I’d taken to heart that thwarting wishes for the real deal only increases desire, we bought no Midge dolls for our girls. Or possibly any Barbie’s—not out of principle, but because they got plenty as birthday presents. At any rate, the furor over Barbie Lust and the people who decried it had died down by the time our daughters were of age. Just as First Wave and Second Wave feminism evolved into something less compelling, Third Wave Barbieism just wasn’t as fervent.

In fact, the last time I remember my daughters playing with their Barbies was when they were 13 and 10. In honor of my recently joining Weight Watchers, Emma and Ally fashioned a hilarious skit with their Barbies seated around a coffee table, mimicking a day-time women’s talk show. The Barbies extolled the virtues of “FatZap,” a miracle new weight loss pill. “I lost 200 pounds overnight,” Ally’s Barbie gushed, as Emma’s doll enthused, “FatZap has changed my life!” The girls concluded the show with their best fast-talking disclaimer voice: “FatZap! Consult your doctor to see if it’s for you. Results not guaranteed. May result in serious complications, such as sagging skin, heart attack, vanishing, and death.” My mother would have been proud.

Now Barbie is back with a vengeance. In movie theaters near you, in every commentary piece in the country (here’s my favorite), in Mattel’s bottom line, in Greta Gerwig’s Oscar prospects.

So off I went to a theater near me, with Emma, her fiancé, and my husband in tow (Ally had persuaded him to give it a try instead of the latest Mission Impossible, which he’d planned to see in the adjacent theater before he ditched Tom Cruise in favor of family togetherness).

Mainly I thought Barbie was pretty dumb, enjoyable, and enormously clever. I loved the opening homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and no doubt missed many of the other cultural references. The production values were great, as was the acting. Ryan Gosling as Ken and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie were spectacularly funny (and marketable). The ending credits, featuring the entire stable of Mattel’s Barbie creations, were awe-inspiring (in a sick kind of way) in their own rights.

Mostly, though, I was deeply disturbed throughout because the movie Midge was pregnant, which my Midge—or the doll I thought was Midge—definitely was not. Had my entire childhood been premised on a lie?

Of course, a major theme of the movie is that everybody’s childhood is premised on a lie—if not the whole of society, both BarbieLand and IRL. So maybe Greta Gerwig was just blowing my mind as part of her five-dimensional-chess tour de force. Luckily, Wikipedia set me straight soon enough—Pregnant Midge was introduced in 1980, long after the days my Midge, with her brown hair, freckles, and clear inferiority had been abandoned in favor of other pursuits.

Lots of people, including my daughters and plenty of my friends, loved Barbie’s strong messaging about feminism and patriarchy. I personally found it lazily scripted. Through one pat diatribe after another, it was too much tell and not enough show. But then again, what did I expect from a plastic world, humans and dolls alike held hostage by it? A script by ChatGPT? Possibly Master Chesswoman Greta was weaving in meta messages about AI and the Hollywood strike. Or possibly she was just lazy, laughing her way to the bank. That’s the beauty of Barbie the Film and Barbie the Plastic Doll without Genitalia. She can be anything people want her to be, from adult-sex-doll-spin-off to the ruination of girls and women everywhere, to feminist icon, to a flagging Mattel’s latest cash cow. She can even be this:

No matter. I’m glad I saw the movie, and I’m even more glad that its success has given the less crowd-pleasing Oppenheimer a boost simply because they shared a release date. By the way, my husband and I later saw Mission Impossible. Don’t bother.

Recently I asked our daughters, now in their 30s, about their childhood experiences of Barbie.

“I mean, we had fun playing with them,” Emma said. “But no more than anything else. We liked the animals the best.”

And Ally? What did Barbie mean to her?

“Very little,” she replied.

Just as it should be.