What Was I Made For?

Or “How To Find Your Purpose”.

(via.)

Livia: Why does everything have to have a purpose? The world is a jungle. And if you want my advice, Anthony, don’t expect happiness. You won’t get it. People let you down. And I’m not naming any names, but in the end, you die in your own arms.
AJ: You mean alone?
Livia: It’s all a big nothing. What makes you think you’re so special? 

— The Sopranos, Season 2, Episode 7.

Being human can be uncomfortable and then you die. That’s what the old lady inventor, Ruth Handler, tells her creation (played by Margo Robbie) during Barbie’s (2023) emotional apex. If you really want to be a human, Handler says, I can’t in good conscience let you without full knowledge of what it entails. So we see Barbie’s vision: a Super 8-style montage of dappled sunlight, trees in the breeze, women jumping into bodies of water, girls learning to ride bikes, mothers mothering, fireworks filling the sky, women growing old; all of these impressions evoking love and loss and love and loss, mere droplets in time’s infinite flow. 

Accompanying this scene is the hit of the summer, Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, a soft, searching ballad that could—and did—draw genuine emotional range from an inanimate toy. It’s the simplicity of the question that cuts deep; it was there when you were a despairing teenager telling your parents, “I didn’t ask to be born!” which means “I resent having to take on the responsibility of being alive!” It’s there now you’re an adult, existing with layers of responsibility, spoken and unspoken, that clutter your mind and dull your desires, until you’re totally cool with existence but wouldn’t be able to say with more than 50 percent certainty why you, personally, are here. 

I keep thinking about that scene. It was a month ago that I watched it at the cinema now. “Why would you pick that, Barbie?” I keep thinking. You could’ve stayed in Barbie Land, with a duck-egg smooth brain, the edges to your problems shaved off, eternal inherent value that can’t be threatened, zero existentialism, and instead you chose pain and suffering and more pain. The film more generally is supposed to be about the loss of innocence, the inevitable move from girlhood to womanhood. All the confusion and sadness and presence of the void that comes with it. If you were a real woman, Barbie, you would want to be a doll. A real woman would want to be a doll.

 

Some women hate this attitude. They feel that women have been rejecting taking up the mantle of womanhood by calling themselves and others “girl” on- and offline. There is growing resentment around delving into girlhood as a topic and girl as an identity label (see: “girl trends” on TikTok); a belief that we’re fetishising that age. It seems obvious to me that girls are a growing category because many women under about 35 are in a suspended girlhood, subject to (as well as partially participating in, sure) the infantilising and deeply narcissistic circumstances typical to that stage. In modern life we aren’t currently given the tools or the rituals to mature: our jobs aren’t good or protected, we’re in a housing crisis which has grown women living in their bedrooms, unable to root down and stay somewhere; we have less time to cook and don’t have gardens like our mothers and grandmothers; we have unstable communities and religious institutions and women can rarely afford kids if they want them and even wanting them is contentious because if you know can’t afford them, you half-trick yourself into thinking you don’t want them because it’s not possible. Barbie being played by a 33-year-old made perfect sense: an adult woman playing by kids’ rules because it’s what’s available, plus make it fun and cute.

Despite this semi-autonomous move towards a collective pink lobotomy, there’s an almost paradoxical desire to know more. I’m fascinated by the fact that this song and the biggest film of the year (and what will probably be in the top five most popular films of the decade) centred around the idea of consciousness to one’s reason for being. “What Was I Made For” speaks to the pressing question of the culture—what is my purpose?

You see influencers talk about it, “fulfilled” people say they’re following it, self-help books and podcasts and videos and online courses about it. It’s framed as the answer to everything, the very essential call to answer in order to be content. Before we lived with our faces pressed-up against the self-optimisation of the online world, the consideration was more accurately: “there’s got to be more to life, right?” Then the self-help influencers got hold of that, mixed it with some Eastern philosophy and it became the more hyper-individualised, overwhelming “follow your purpose!” I don’t think it’s a worthless point of inquiry in so much as I know that in getting it wrong, I have co-attached my purpose to people, places and jobs so that when those things go away I have felt like my life-force has been cut off. That leads to being numb and exposed inside, much like Barbie sat at the bus stop wondering what the fuck that mad feeling is.

Like everyone else, I’ve given “my purpose” plenty of thought. For what it’s worth, I don’t think your purpose can be something that is too flattering to say; it can’t be accented to be self-aggrandising. I don’t even believe that your purpose is the thing that always makes you feel good. Having more than one purpose—and to remember that that is the case—is preferable, less neurotic. Your purpose might change many times—as much as daily—which makes finding your purpose a constant process not a destination, as its frequently framed.

The need to keep a roof over your head is what gets you up in the morning, your purpose doesn’t. Your purpose is a drive, yes, but thinking of it as a lens through which to see the world is just as important. I know that there’s nothing inherently selfish or privileged about wanting to find your purpose but beware of a purpose that doesn’t involve community or bettering others’ lives. 

But what I really think is that we should frequently and often forget all the above, forget to find a purpose. Our true purpose is almost definitely and solely to live out a human life with all its pain and suffering, along with brief moments of joy and connection. Life is a big everything. That’s why you, an adult girl, cried at that scene in the Barbie movie.