November 21, 2025
Thanks to Rachel D. Perez, a 2025 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
Barbie: The Movie sparked a wide range of conversations—from gender roles and identity to free will and power. But what struck me most wasn’t the obvious. It was the subtle, yet profound, commentary on the branding of liberation. That scene in the Mattel boardroom, where executives discuss how to “brand” freedom through Barbie—along with Gloria’s projections onto Barbie and Barbie’s own misconceptions of freedom—left me thinking about how we, as humans, seem to be caught in a cycle of aspiring, achieving, and eventually unraveling when it comes to movements for liberation.
In the film, we witness Gloria, the mother, grappling with her nostalgic attachment to Barbie. To her, Barbie once represented potential, aspiration, and possibility, symbols she mistook for freedom. Her daughter, Sasha, by contrast, rejects Barbie altogether, fully aware of the doll’s limiting and contradictory legacy. Then comes Barbie’s own moment of awakening: she realizes that although she was created to liberate, she ultimately became another kind of constraint. But the more powerful realization comes through Gloria. When she finally sees Barbie for what she truly is, she understands that the liberating power she had projected onto Barbie had lived within herself all along. In other words, she was always freer than Barbie could ever make her. Isn’t that why Barbie chose to become human in the end? Perhaps she, too, had been a victim of liberation-as-branding all along.
Freedom, Liberty, and the Question of Constraint
This led me to wonder: Is my generation experiencing something similar, particularly in the digital world? Are we projecting our hopes for empowerment and freedom onto trends, influencers, and content creators under the umbrella of self-empowerment? Just like Gloria in Barbie, we often watch content creators go viral on Instagram Live, only to later open up about the constraints and false sense of freedom they’ve experienced as influencers. Content creation has become not only a high-paying job or dream career for many, but also a symbol of liberation—yet one that follows the same cycle we saw in Barbie: aspiring, achieving, and eventually unraveling. To be clear, this piece is not a critique of influencers or a dismissal of any liberation movement. Instead, I want to explore how—even with the best intentions—we sometimes trap ourselves in branded performances of freedom that end up limiting our collective liberation. What does it mean when liberation itself becomes a product? And how can we tell the difference between performance and possibility?
To explore this, I want to define the distinction between freedom and liberation. Although these two words are often treated as synonyms, many philosophers and scholars have pointed out their differences. Mortimer Adler quotes Tolstoy, saying: “Freedom may be natural in the sense that free will is part of human nature; or in the sense that freedom is a birthright—an innate and inalienable right. It may be natural in the sense in which freedom in a state of nature is distinguished from political liberty, or liberty under civil law and government.” In this sense, we could argue that freedom is an inherent human trait—free will embedded within us—while liberty (or liberation) functions more as a societal condition, shaped by laws and rights.
However, the boundary between them isn’t clear. Certain laws and rights are intrinsically linked to the exercise of one’s free will. Take, for instance, the transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved people brought to the Americas still possessed free will, as all human beings do, yet societal constraints stripped them of liberty, meaning their rights. Some might argue that enslaved people did not have free will under oppression, but I disagree since that would dehumanize them. They did possess free will, but the absence of liberty prevented them from fully practicing it. Thus, the relationship between liberty and freedom becomes clear: liberty is the legitimized right, granted by a governing body, to practice one’s free will within society.
Content Creators and the Branding of Liberation
We’ve reached a cultural moment where traditional 9–5 jobs are often viewed with disdain, and many people turn to content creation as an ideal career path. With 57% of Gen Z aspiring to be content creators, it might seem like the dream. Yet success in this space is not only subjective; it’s shaped by algorithms, audiences, and capitalism’s relentless ability to rebrand and monetize liberation itself. Think about it: many creators find success in niches centered on resistance and empowerment—how to workout as a woman in a male-dominated fitness world, how to style Black natural hair, how to promote body positivity, and so on. These are powerful disruptions to dominant systems, but they also become commodities.
Here’s the question: does society push influencers into commodified spaces (through the demand for content and monetization systems like Instagram’s), or are influencers themselves complicit, using commodification as a tool for their own ends of seeking freedom? Perhaps this is a mutually reinforcing cycle, where cause and effect are inseparable. For the purpose of this piece, what matters is that this commodification reflects a static stage (content creator’s niche) in our collective search for liberation. Although this pursuit often begins with an authentic desire for freedom, it eventually transforms into something confined, a branded or marketable version of that freedom.
And then comes the unraveling. Influencers begin to open up. They talk about the pressure, the emotional toll, the anxiety over views and engagement. We see this mirrored in Barbie, when Barbie herself realizes her constraints as “Stereotypical Barbie.” Each other Barbie—President Barbie, Doctor Barbie, etc.—is also limited by her “brand” of liberation. Barbie recognizes how limited her freedom was, since “Stereotypical Barbie” could not step outside of her assigned identity. Sound familiar? Michael Monahan captures this tension well in Rituals of Liberation (2023): “Liberation is not a fixed state, but the opening of new possibilities for the exercise of freedom—undertaken through the freedom of others.” Influencers often express similar feelings of rejection, burnout, or confusion. Some accept brand deals that don’t align with their values; others refuse and lose visibility. They analyze their audience, perform for engagement, and curate their lives to stay relevant; becoming trapped in the very system they were trying to escape. This mirrors Barbie’s realization when she enters the real world expecting her existence to have fixed everything only to learn it hasn’t. Or when white feminism first encounters Black feminist thought and realizes how much deeper liberation must go.
Let me paint a scenario. You open Instagram. The algorithm knows your desires—your version of freedom. You scroll and see your favorite fitness influencer, Tim. You save his workout videos, believing a better body might make you freer. You scroll again and see your favorite singer—her voice gives you chills. Maybe that kind of expression equals freedom, too. Then you see a Black hair influencer showcasing creative, beautiful hairstyles. You think, “When I finally learn how to do my hair like that, maybe I’ll feel free.” At this point, you’re no longer seeing people—you’re seeing products. Tim’s body, Nathalyah’s voice, Kyng’s hair—all of it becomes aspirational. You want their freedom. But what happens when Tim decides to stop going to the gym as often because spending time with friends now feels more liberating? Two things might happen: (1) You stop following him because he no longer fits your idea of a “fitness influencer.” (2) Tim loses visibility and income for stepping outside his niche. This is the dichotomy many influencers experience: they begin as free agents sparking conversations on liberation, only to become commodified versions of themselves. What first felt like freedom now restrains them. Meanwhile, as you scroll, dreaming of achieving Tim’s physique, Nathalyah’s voice, and Kyng’s hair—you, the follower—are freer than they are. Why? Because you still have the possibility to be many things, while they are stuck in one branded version of themselves.
Simone de Beauvoir argued that genuine freedom only exists when it opens itself to an indefinite movement—a freedom exercised through the freedom of others; my desires and inclinations in society are shaped by what I see others aspiring toward. To be free, then, is also to exist among “others,” to see through their expressions what freedom could mean for oneself. Freedom, in this sense, is relational; it requires the “other.” It’s clear that our current state of seeking freedom is, in many ways, unhealthy. The goal has been misdefined, as though freedom were a product rather than a process. Freedom (and liberation) are not static states but evolving, living forces that connect deeply to human existence. Like breathing, freedom involves contradictions—inhale and exhale, expansion and release. We don’t “seek” breathing; we just breath; sometimes it feels off and you need to examine why to adjust it. Similarly, liberation reminds us to reengage with the flow of freedom when it becomes constrained.
Barbie’s creator wanted her daughter to dream more, to have more possibilities. So, she created a doll. But Barbie quickly became a restraint. That’s why new versions of Barbie had to be constantly created—to fix the contradictions of the last. I wonder if the same thing is happening to content creators. They enter a space to offer something freeing, say, plus-size fashion, and are soon confined by their own niche. Their identity becomes a static brand. And they unravel! Again, I’m not here to critique individuals or movements. I’m here to ask: What happens when liberation itself becomes a marketed product? Freedom, perhaps, is the continuous process of noticing where we are “stuck” and seeking more. And maybe the erratic nature of that process, the unraveling itself, is not failure, but the vital pulse of being free. The larger issue, then, is how the branding of liberation through content creators may serve as a legitimization of stasis; a performance of freedom that is not freedom at all. The digital age, I would argue, has introduced a deeply misleading sense of static freedom, one that feels alive but remains fundamentally unfree.
Photo credit: Shutterstock/ PeopleImages
