Hari Nef is transgender and a Barbie, but she’s more than just “trans Barbie.”
Neff recently told Out,
It’s probably positive for Mattel to include me in this because we’re trying to show all different kinds of Barbies, but that’s not why I got the role. I got the role because I fit the role.
To be honest, I don’t look much different in the movie than the Barbies that I had when I was a kid.
The idea that I could just change and transform the Barbie and create somebody from my fingertips, the magic of that, and I think also maybe the privacy of it, and something about Barbie and technology was really interesting to me at that point.
I felt like through Barbie I could explore all kinds of people to be and things to do.”
Nef half-jokingly calls the movie “Greta Gerwig’s Drag Race” and Nef’s is a doctor who like all Barbies is in a perpetual state of stylized hyperfemininity. Neff thinks the film has a lot to offer trans people, especially those who
…get caught up in big dreams of what you’ll become.
[I]t’s inevitable that you’ll get struck down by external messages and obstacles of what you’ll never be and what you won’t be able to do.
As much as there’s a celebration of femininity and being a girl in this [movie], I think there’s also an encouragement of letting go of the checklist we ascribe to living and living your life and being in your body your way, on your own terms […]
The best that we can do as women, as trans women, is be there for each other and take ourselves at face value, without relying on the green light from someone or anyone else.”
Nef almost had to drop out of her Barbie part due to a scheduling conflict but her heartfelt letter to Gerwig and star Margot Robbie asking for a little schedule-fudging worked!
