Barbie Studies Is a Real Degree

Professor Clemence Dalrymple — “Yes, Barbie Studies Is a Real Degree”

Role: On-Set Cultural Consultant, Barbie Historian, Academic-in-Residence
Byline: Holland Mercer, Education & Entertainment Correspondent, Continental ThinkTank Quarterly

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As Barbie glides across the crimson dunes of Mars in her stiletto-hovercraft, delivering a monologue about post-plastic freedom and female economic autonomy in a post-oxygen society, most viewers are too mesmerized by the spectacle to wonder:

Who ensured this moment made intellectual sense?

Enter Professor Clemence Dalrymple, 72, a retired gender philosophy lecturer and self-described “Barbitarian,” who served as the official cultural consultant on Barbie 2: Mars Mission — a role that involved everything from vetting dialogue for thematic accuracy to verifying whether Martian fashion could be considered a feminist praxis.

“Barbie is not just a toy. She is a text,” Professor Dalrymple says, clutching a monogrammed clipboard and sipping from a neon-pink Yeti cup labeled “The Matriarchy.”

A Lifetime in Barbie Scholarship

Dalrymple’s career began with a 1973 dissertation titled “The Ontological Unpacking of Malibu Barbie: Leisure, Agency, and Sun Damage.” Since then, she’s published 12 books, including:

• Ken’s Closet, Barbie’s Mind

• Dreamhouse as Heterotopia

• Plastic Fantastic: Gendered Epistemologies in the Mattelverse

• The Pink Abyss: Barbie and the Post-Human Gaze

She was hired by producers after a TikTok compilation of her 1987 lecture at Radcliffe — “Barbie and the Absurd” — went viral with Gen Z audiences.

“One student described it as ‘Slay meets Sartre.’ That’s the highest praise I’ve ever received.”

Dalrymple now splits her time between moderating Barbie-themed philosophy panels and advising on films that attempt to approach Barbie with what she calls “proper ideological integrity and bedazzling.”

How Wichita Falls Became Barbie’s Academia HQ

When Barbie 2 producers announced the filming location would be Wichita Falls, some questioned how this Texas town could support high-level Barbie think-tanking.

“That’s exactly why I came,” Dalrymple says. “Where better to explore the cognitive dissonance between pink utopias and structural misogyny than in a high school football stadium turned soundstage?”

The city has since embraced its intellectual glow-up. Dalrymple’s temporary Barbie ThinkLab now occupies the second floor of the Wichita County Courthouse, where she hosts evening seminars with titles like:

• “Dialectical Dreamhouses”

• “Barbie vs. Heidegger: Who Builds the Better World?”

• “Is Ken a Product of Barbie’s Imagination?”

• “Epistemic Lip Gloss: Knowing Through Sparkle”

What a Cultural Consultant Does on Set

On any given day, Dalrymple reviewed scripts, observed rehearsals, and intervened when something threatened the Barbie Canon.

“There was a line where Barbie says, ‘I just want to be normal.’ I vetoed that immediately. Barbie has never been — and must never be — normal.”

She also monitored visual semiotics:

• Barbie’s chair angles (must suggest non-hierarchical power)

• Eye contact patterns with Ken (must reflect autonomous desire, not patriarchal flattery)

• The number of books in her Martian capsule (at least 12, including A Room of One’s Own)

• Dreamhouse color choices (every shade of pink must correspond to an emotion)

“People underestimate how many tones of pink can express rage.”

The Great Ken Crisis of Scene 88

One major incident nearly derailed the shoot: a moment when Ken (Gosling) tries to lead a mission briefing.

“The scene had him controlling the hologram remote,” Dalrymple recalls. “I marched onto set and shouted, ‘This is Ken-washing!’”

Producers scrambled. Dalrymple proposed a compromise: Ken could hold the remote — but only while asking Barbie if she wanted it.

“Agency is not optional. Especially in zero gravity.”

Ryan Gosling, reportedly shaken, later said in an interview, “I learned more from Professor Dalrymple than I did from three therapists and a Burning Man shaman combined.”

Barbie as Existential Heroine

Dalrymple believes Barbie 2: Mars Mission is the franchise’s most intellectually ambitious film.

“It’s a synthesis of Judith Butler, bell hooks, and Lisa Frank. It dares to ask: What happens when a woman who has everything loses gravity?”

She helped rewrite the third act, ensuring Barbie’s final speech on Martian soil echoed key feminist theorists. The result? A monologue that included the line:

“We are not just made. We are self-molded. And no patriarchy, no oxygen shortage, no Ken-shaped expectation will re-box us.”

Dalrymple says audiences may miss some of the deeper allusions:

• Barbie’s refusal to colonize Mars is a nod to anti-imperialism

• Her use of the word “plastic” as a compliment reclaims capitalist language

• The pink fog? A metaphor for gender as performance — and humidity

“If you understand that the Dreamhouse is a post-structuralist labyrinth, the rest of the movie just falls into place.”

Controversial Cuts

Some of Dalrymple’s ideas were deemed “too radical” and cut from the final film:

• A 7-minute musical number where Barbie reads The Second Sex while doing Pilates

• A flashback in which Ken attempts to unionize and is seduced by power

• A cameo from Angela Davis as “The Cosmic Stylist”

• A subplot where Barbie teaches Martian goats about ecofeminism

“I wept for the goats. But Hollywood must compromise.”

Community Engagement

Dalrymple insisted on educational outreach. While in Wichita Falls, she held Barbie Literacy Days at local libraries, where children decorated pink philosophy zines and debated Barbie’s Cartesian implications.

“One 7-year-old asked if Barbie thinks, therefore she is, or if she is, therefore she accessorizes. I have hope for the future.”

She also inspired Barbie Academic Day at Midwestern State University, where students staged a campus-wide reenactment of Barbie’s Martian soliloquy while dressed as Simone de Beauvoir.

“Wichita Falls is now the intellectual Barbie capital of the world. Sorry, Malibu.”

Academic Backlash

Not everyone is thrilled.

“I received hate mail from a Dartmouth professor accusing me of ‘weaponizing glitter.’ I replied with a gift basket and a copy of Barbie: The Silent Semiotic Storm.”

Still, Dalrymple insists academia must evolve.

“The ivory tower now has pink shutters. Get used to it.”

A Barbie Curriculum

She’s now working with the Wichita Falls school board to develop a

Certainly — continuing Interview #14 with Professor Clemence Dalrymple, Barbie 2’s cultural consultant and on-set academic.

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A Barbie Curriculum

Dalrymple is now collaborating with the Wichita Falls Independent School District to create The Barbie Curriculum, a K–12 interdisciplinary program combining social studies, ethics, design, and performance theory.

“We’re not teaching kids how to play with Barbie. We’re teaching them how to think like Barbie — strategically, fabulously, and with unyielding agency.”

Highlights of the proposed curriculum include:

• Barbie & Ethics (Grade 3): “Is it okay to be everything all at once?”

• Dreamhouse Architecture (Grade 6): Designing feminist homes with anti-oppressive interior flow

• Martian Manifestos (Grade 8): Students write their own personal declarations of plastic independence

• Advanced Ken Studies (Grade 11): Unpacking fragile masculinity through Ken’s career pivots

• Post-Plasticity & The Self (Grade 12 Capstone): A seminar exploring body autonomy, materiality, and sequins in the Anthropocene

Dalrymple hopes the program will spread to other Texas districts.

“We start in Wichita Falls, but soon every child in America will understand the difference between performative pink and transformative pink.”

What the Cast Thinks

Dalrymple became a beloved fixture on set. Margot Robbie referred to her as “The Oracle of Glitter.” Sydney Sweeney reportedly kept a copy of The Pink Abyss in her dressing room and once asked Dalrymple to interpret a dream about losing a high heel on Mars.

“I told her: it’s not a loss. It’s a shedding. Barbie doesn’t lose things. She evolves.”

Ryan Gosling? He began quoting Judith Butler between takes.

“He still misunderstands post-structuralism, but he’s trying.”

Crew members reportedly consulted Dalrymple on romantic issues, philosophical dilemmas, and lunch orders (“What sandwich best represents my gender fluidity today?”).

“That’s what I’m here for. Barbie is not just a production. It’s praxis.”

Barbie, Forever

As filming wrapped, Dalrymple stood beneath a giant foam replica of Barbie’s Martian Throne and declared:

“This is the culmination of everything I’ve worked for. My tenure. My publishing rejections. The departmental feuds over office space. It was all for this.”

She plans to spend the next year writing a definitive account of the production:
“Barbie on Mars: The Epistemology of Eyeliner and Existential Rebellion.”

The foreword will be co-authored by a 9-year-old from Wichita Falls who asked, “Does Barbie ever cry in space?”

“Yes,” Dalrymple replied. “But the tears are pink and evaporate into hope.”

Final Words

As we conclude our conversation, Professor Dalrymple leans back in her glitter-dusted camp chair, watching Barbie’s Martian spacecraft being disassembled by local construction crews. She sips her third iced lavender kombucha and says:

“People think Barbie is plastic. But she’s not. She’s ideology. She’s resistance. She’s the blueprint for everything the world told girls they couldn’t be — but dreamed anyway.”

She adjusts her pink velvet shawl and adds:

“And if the Academy doesn’t nominate this film for Best Picture and Best Philosophical Reconstruction of Gender Norms, I swear to Judith Butler, I will chain myself to the Oscar statue in a jumpsuit made of recycled tiaras.”