Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig Were Not “Snubbed” for ​ Barbie ​! In Fact, They Were Nominated.

The Oscar nominations are out. Barbie scored eight. America Ferrera is up for Best Supporting Actress, Ryan Gosling for Best Supporting Actor, Greta Gerwig for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Margot Robbie for Best Picture for her work as a producer. Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” are both nominated for Best Original Song, and the film’s costume and production design are also up for awards.

This, apparently, is not enough for some people. Many people, in fact. Since the nominations came out, social-media platforms have been carpet-bombed by posts saying that Greta Gerwig should have been nominated for Best Director and that Robbie should be up for Best Actress, and claiming that their lack of nominations in these categories is an affront to feminism.

It got silly, and it got silly fast. Ryan Gosling issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” and that, just as there is “no Ken without Barbie,” there is “no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie.” One Los Angeles Times critic lamented that Robbie might have been nominated “if only Barbie had done a little time as a sex worker. Or barely survived becoming the next victim in a mass murder plot. Or stood accused of shoving Ken out of the Dream House’s top window,” as if Poor Things (the movie that features the aforementioned sex work) were a gritty, stone-faced drama, rather than a quirky comedy that’s no less pastel-colored and dance scene–filled than Barbie. Viral tweets were, for some reason, equating the disappointment of this news with the disappointment of Hillary Clinton not winning the presidential election. Even the official police account for the Australian state of Victoria announced that it was investigating after Margot was “Robbied.”

I have to say, even I am not so cynical that I could have predicted that these tweets would be taken seriously enough that Hillary Clinton herself would weigh in. Before that, I thought, People are being quite weird about this, aren’t they? After, I was convinced I was witnessing an episode of collective cultural psychosis. Hillary Clinton! Tweeted to say “Greta and Margot” were “more than Kenough” despite not getting Oscar nominations! With an agonizingly embarrassing hashtag of her own invention: #HillaryBarbie.

The discourse even broke out of the sorts of circles that usually post about Oscar nominations. Friends of mine who wouldn’t generally pay much attention to this stuff messaged group chats saying that Barbie had been snubbed, that women had been snubbed by extension. With all due respect to these friends (I love you and I’m sorry), what do people think Oscars are awarded for? Most Inspiring Message? Biggest Box-Office Smash? Film That I Have Seen?

But I am willing to meet the naysayers on their own terms. Let’s start with Gerwig herself. The direction of Barbie was good, I thought. It had a strong sense of its own visual style. It was well paced. It had a cohesive vision behind it. But whom should Gerwig have beaten out for her Best Director nomination? Beloved giant of cinema Martin Scorsese? Jonathan Glazer, whose film The Zone of Interest won the 2023 Grand Prix at Cannes? It’s not even that no women were nominated this year, something that would have been worth griping about given the academy’s long history of shutting women out of this category. Justine Triet is nominated for Anatomy of a Fall, the movie that beat Zone of Interest for the Palme d’Or. Gerwig has herself been nominated for Best Director before, for Lady Bird in 2018. And receiving the screenplay nomination and having her film up for Best Picture hardly qualifies her as being overlooked.

Now to Gosling, whom people think shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor if Robbie wasn’t nominated for her performance. Because of the way the Academy Awards operate, Robbie wasn’t even up against Gosling. They are of different genders. Ryan Gosling was not nominated for Best Actress. Five women were. Again: Whom should Robbie replace here? I imagine you have not seen all those performances. I haven’t. Most of the people protesting about Robbie getting snubbed also have not. And I can’t believe this needs saying, but here I go: It is not a nomination for the character of Ken over the character of Barbie. It is not a nomination for men being better than women. For the love of God. Gosling gave a scene-stealingly memorable performance in Barbie, and I think his nomination is justified. Not to mention that the lead categories are, per usual, much more competitive than the supporting ones. Robbie is nominated for a role that may even mean more to her, for producing the movie and willing it into existence. She has been producing since I, Tonya, and even produced previous Best Picture nominee Promising Young Woman.

Just because a film is primarily “about feminism,” as we seem to have decided is the party line about Barbie, even though it was—and I’m not going to bang on about this simply because it’s sophomoric and boring—a film financed and officially sanctioned by a toy manufacturer about its most profitable toy, that does not mean that the women involved in making it automatically deserve awards. I liked the film. It was fun; I loved the costumes and the sets and the music, and the story was wacky and I laughed some. But there is no need to go to bat for Barbie to win more Oscars than the large number it is already nominated for. It is not a feminist issue that two vastly successful and acclaimed women did not get nominated for some additional awards. And it’s certainly not worthy of the attention of a former U.S. secretary of state. Anyone who sees this as a repeat of the 2016 election should Pokémon Go and take a long, hard look at themselves.