Left: Items included in a promotional gift bag, Right: Barbie movie poster. Source: Antoinette Lattouf / Warner Bros. Pictures
Audience members at a recent Barbie movie screening in Sydney were handed gift bags containing cleaning cloths and a skin-whitening cream, prompting an apology from the Events Cinemas chain.
On Thursday, broadcaster and author Antoinette Lattouf said she attended an advance ‘Chicks at the Flicks’ screening of the new Barbie movie the night before, where she and other guests were given promotional freebies including Chux wipes and “whitening lotion” cosmetics.
“Who at Event Cinemas can I thank for the ‘chicks at the flicks’ gift bag that came with the $30 ticket?” Lattouf wrote on LinkedIn.
“I’m loving that it included cleaning wipes & skin whitening cream. Do I use the Chux to rub it into my skin or is that for when I’m scrubbing toilets?”
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Taking to TikTok, Lattouf said the items were particularly notable given the themes of the new Barbie movie, and longstanding feminist criticism of the toy line itself.
“This film is meant to be ’empowering’, and ‘Barbie can be anything’, but kind of, really, not, if it’s telling us to clean,” she said.
Lattouf, who is Australian-Lebanese, said her daughter raised concerns about the skin-whitening cream being handed to a racially diverse audience.
“My eight-year-old daughter who was with me, was like, ‘Mummy, that’s racist,'” Lattouf said.
@antoinette_lattouf Girl boss, who run the world etc etc … oh and stay in the kitchen. @Barbie Movie @Event Cinemas #barbie #barbiethemovie #girlboss #giftbag #barbiemania #whoruntheworld #skinwhitening #chux
Cinema chain “hasn’t read the room”
Speaking to SmartCompany, Lattouf said she was “already unsure” about attending the screening, given “Barbie’s pretty problematic legacy”.
“For so long it was hyper-sexualised with unrealistic beauty standards,” she said.
However, “my girls love their modern Barbies of all shapes, sizes, colours and abilities and the film trailer had clear satire and seemed willing to address what I call the ‘starving pink elephant in the room'”, she added.
Reviews of the film suggest it tangles with the Barbie brand’s complex history, and long-running critiques of the unrealistic body type presented by most Barbie dolls.
Lattouf said toymaker Mattel also deserves some credit, as new Barbie toy lines have “evolved and shifted as they realised their consumer expectations weren’t being met,” she said.
A litany of Australian brands has now entered branding partnerships with the film, capitalising on Barbie’s long-established brand name and its renewed relevancy for modern audiences.
However, Events Cinema “hasn’t read the room” given the contents of the gift bag, she claimed.
Event Cinemas parent company apologises for gift bag items
Some commenters responded to Lattouf by questioning if those inclusions were an attempt at satire by the cinema chain itself.
But in a statement provided to SmartCompany, Liberty Wilson, head of marketing and communications for Event Cinemas apologised for the inclusions.
“It is never our intent to offend any of our loyal movie-goers with the contents of the gift bag,” Wilson said.
“We apologise for any upset this might have caused and will use the feedback to improve in the future.”
The Chicks at the Flicks screenings are a “light hearted event aimed at bringing groups of girlfriends together for a fun night out,” the statement read, while noting the bags were arranged by a “third-party supplier”.
The Chux wipes and skin whitening cream were two of ten different consumer product samples included in the bags, she added.
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