The 96th annual Oscars in 2024 featured eight nominations for Barbie: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrera), Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Original Song (nominated twice for “I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?”). However, director Greta Gerwig was snubbed of Best Director, and Margot Robbie’s performance wasn’t given any attention. In a year when Barbie — a film about women finding their voice in a man’s world — dominated global culture, it was, fittingly and tragically, a man who walked away with the Academy’s loudest applause.
There’s no denying that Ryan Gosling was brilliant as Ken. He’s never worked in such an unserious role, and he found a way to bring Ken to life in the funniest, most charming way. But as Gosling took his bow after performing “I’m Just Ken” at the ceremony, millions of viewers were left asking the same question: where were Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig?
How did Margot Robbie, the woman who was Barbie, who poured her soul, her intellect, and her production power into playing the protagonist in one of the most culturally significant films in recent memory, not get nominated? And how did Greta Gerwig, the creative force who turned a toy into a mirror reflecting society’s contradictions, whose exclusion feels particularly painful because Barbie was her boldest, most ambitious work yet — a powerful example of balancing satire, sincerity, and emotion — not even make the Best Director list?
Barbie was about a woman realizing her worth in a world built for men, and then, when the time came for Hollywood to recognize that story, the men got the glory anyway. “It’s like the Academy watched Barbie and completely missed the point,” one viral post said. It’s hard to disagree.
Gerwig directed the highest-grossing film of the year — the first woman in history to lead a billion-dollar movie — and still found herself shut out from the limelight of recognition. Robbie, whose performance carried the emotional weight of an idea as big as womanhood itself, was sidelined too. Together, they built something bold, brilliant, and unapologetically feminine. Yet, in the end, the institution that claims to honor artistic excellence rewarded the man who played the sidekick. Robbie’s sidekick. Hollywood has long claimed it’s changing, that it’s learning to celebrate women not just on screen but behind the camera, too. Barbie should have been the ultimate proof of that progress. Instead, it became the ultimate reminder that the system still runs on the very power dynamics it pretends to critique. Maybe that’s what makes Barbie’s message timeless. Even when women tell their own stories, even when they succeed beyond anyone’s expectations, recognition is still something they have to fight for.
So yes, Ryan Gosling deserved his moment. But Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig deserved theirs too, not as a token of fairness, but as acknowledgment of truth. Because if Barbie taught us anything, it’s that women shouldn’t have to live in the shadows of the Kens of the world, not in Barbieland, not in Hollywood, and certainly not in everyday life across the globe.