Top 10 Gayest Barbie Movies
As promised, the Top 10 of Barbie movies, ranked by gayness. Granted, I need to preface this with the fact that the majority of Barbie movies can be read quite gay because they are about very affectionate female friendships, or bitter rivalries turned into very affectionate friendships, and most of the movies don’t even have a canon straight romance, which only adds to it.
10. The Three Musketeers
It’s not the gayest, but I have yet to meet an adaptation of the Musketeers story that wasn’t heavily gay and suggestive toward an OT4, so it had to make this list. Also, while not overly gay in the dynamics between female characters - there are four badass women sword-fighting and kicking ass and Barbie’s outfit from the opening sequence alone is incredibly gay. So this movie, while not necessarily romantically gay, definitely tailored to please the gays.
9. A Christmas Carol
Let me just say, I did not like this movie, but it was still rather gay, considering that Eden Starling (Barbie)’s main motivation and anchor toward the good is her friend Catherine. Their dynamic was, to me, the only saving grace this movie had.
8. Rock ‘n Royals
This was incredibly cute in its dynamics. Not only did Courtney (Barbie) have her own rival-dynamic at the rock camp while Erika had her own rival-dynamic at princess camp (and rival dynamics changing to friendship over the course of the movie is one of the Big Gay moves these movies make), when Erika and Courtney met and found someone to open up to and to confide in, it was very heartfelt and warm.
7. Fairytopia: Mermaidia
As mentioned at the top of this post, many Barbie movies are about rivalries-turned-friendship and you could probably do a Top 10 list of those alone, but only one of those made this list for me - the first one to do this, really, and also the best one.
We have Barbie as Elina, a fairy born without wings who spent her entire first movie fighting to get her wings, and in this movie willingly gives up her wings to trait them for a tail when Nori is in danger.
Nori and Elina start out as “rivals” in a “love triangle”, or so one thinks, while in the end it turns out that Elina was never romantically interested in the abducted prince the two set out to free - she just wanted to go and free her friend. Over the course of the journey, Nori and Elina become friends and save each other’s lives.
6. Mariposa and the Fairy Princess
Honestly, the entire point of this story was Mariposa (Barbie) and Princess Catania’s relationship. This is a little bit like Romeo and Juliet but with fairies and without death, because they’re from two warring fairy races and Mariposa is sent as an ambassador to try and rekindle things for their people.
Princess Catania is immediately kind toward Mariposa and interested in her. The two share their love for books and history, they exchange expensive and valuable gifts after a date day out in the city.
And then there is the grand gala, where Catania, due to being too afraid to fly, can’t dance in the air like the other fairies, so Mariposa goes to the ground and asks Catania for a dance. The two become the center of attention of the ball and everyone joins them on the dancefloor in what has been a romantic scene in basically every straight movie featuring a ball ever.
Also, at the finale of the movie, Barbie traits her dark-pink wings in for lesbian-flag colored wings, which do go so well with the purple of Catania. There’s a theme in these Barbie movies, where Barbie is always pink and very often pink-orange in the lesbian-flag colors, while her best friend slash rival slash female love interest is either blue, or purple, or flat-out in the bisexual flag colors.
What I’m saying is Barbie is a lesbian icon and she has a thing for gorgeous bisexuals. And no, you can not change my mind.
5. Dolphin Magic
Another movie about Barbie and her mermaid girlfriend! Isla is a mermaid spending the first half of the movie pretend to be human as she is on a mission to free a captive dolphin. It is incredibly charming to watch Barbie show Isla human things (up above her showing Isla human food).
And honestly, there is no heterosexual explanation for that scene above, because you can climb onto a stone casually as friends, or you can slowly crawl back while your girlfriend crawles toward you in a very very gay way.
Every interaction between them is very… close and downright intimate, not to mention how they look at each other - and then there is the fact that Ken is in this movie, but explicitely introduced as a friend with zero heterosexual romantic subplot in the entire movie.
4. Star Light Adventure
This one, just like Dolphin Magic, were hard for me to put this far down at the list because out of all Barbie movies Isla/Barbie and Sal-Lee/Barbie may just be my personal OTPs. But since I’m going by gayness level overall and not personal favorite ship, there are certain movies that have to be higher ranked than them.
Still, the dynamic between Sal-Lee and Barbie is absolutely amazing, right from that first meeting where Barbie fangirls and is all up in Sal-Lee’s face. The premise is that Sal-Lee and Barbie are part of a five person team sent out to save the galaxy, while Sal-Lee and Barbie are set up with the potential of being rivals since they are hired for the same skill, but while there is some healthy competitiveness they hit it off pretty much from the get-go and Sal-Lee shows quite the protectiveness over Barbie, standing up for her.
3. The Pink Shoes
And we’ve officially entered the Top 3. This one has the added bonus of being… double gay, I suppose? For the first time, there’s actually the potential for a male gay romance in this movie too, with the above shown Hilarion/Albrecht.
We have Barbie as Kristin, a ballerina who goes onto a magical adventure with her best friend Hayley. There are a total of four (4) potential male love interests for Barbie in this movie and… yet there is no actual romance. We start the journey with the two girls meeting the two guys above and my brain immediately went “oh yay. Heteronormativity of Two Girls meeting Two Guys and ending up in Two Couples”. But that was not the case, instead the two guys who started out as rivals spend the movie bonding with each other and becoming friends.
All the while, Hayley gets abducted by the evil Snow Queen - which is the part that goes to the love interest in the actual Snow Queen so there is that - and Kristen is absolutely distraught and goes on the journey to save her. The classic “save the damsel in distress” quest that’s usually reserved for lovers.
2. The Princess and the Pauper
An absolute Barbie classic - and well-deserving of that second place. I thought I was going to end up making too many GIFs about this one, because it’s so gay but then there is actually a montage in the movie with literally their gayest moments - the awestruck first meeting, dancing in the square together and then getting ready for their wedding (clearly, to each other). Really, this one GIF sums it up perfectly.
1. The Diamond Castle
I don’t think anyone who watched Barbie movies is surprised by this being number one. It is and always will remain the gayest Barbie movie in existence, until they actually do release one with a canon gay romance in it.
It’s the movie about Barbie as Liana living in a cozy, little cottage with her “best friend” Alexa, sharing a room, making music together, gardening together, finding heart-shaped stones that they turn into engagement necklaces for each other and then going on a journey to free a muse. Really, it’s very gay.
It’s hard to find a gayer metaphor than a rainbow literally dragging the two girls away from their forced heterosexual partners - and yes, the straight is very forced in this movie, they didn’t even care enough to give the guys individual character design or, you know, a personality.
And then there is that scene where they get pretty princess dresses in the colors of the lesbian flag and the bisexual flag. I may joke a lot about gay subtext, but you could genuinely not convince me that there wasn’t a gay woman involved in the making of this movie who went as hard on the subtext as she could without anyone calling her out on it. They literally ride off into the sunset together at the end, even leaving their supposed love interests behind.
And that’s our list. The ten gayest Barbie movies. The color-scheme thing really still baffles me, to be honest. I mean - there’s so many different colors, and yes of course is Barbie pink that one is obvious, but the fact that the girl who is best suited to be her love-interest is always either blue or purple or just both is very peculiar and I like it.
