Weird Barbie and Venus Retrograde

This is pretty much the point at which I lost it in the Barbie movie.

The existential choice of all women in 2023 – comfy Birkenstocks of high fashion heels?

I was thinking last week about times pre-mirror. Imagine, the mirror hasn’t yet been invented. Not only do you not care what you look like, the idea of even knowing what you look like has never occurred to you! Perfection as a concept cannot be linked to looks, because no one knows what they actually look like.

Ursula Le Guin once said – The beauty ideal is always a youthful one. For older people, beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones. It has to do with who the person is, with what shines through those gnarly faces and bodies. How lovely would it be if even young people could relax into those more authentic standards of perfection.

Barbie is finding perfectionism a bit tricky to navigate, and like Pandora, her curiosity leads her on an adventure that changes Barbie Land forever. Of course, her guide is Weird Barbie – the doll who stepped out of the beauty paradigm because girls hacked off her hair, scribbled on her face, dressed her like a freak and made her do the splits.

Aspirational Sex Toy Anyone?

Venus goes retrograde this week. It seems the perfect time to launch the Barbie movie. Especially because we know from Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, that the doll was copied from a German sex toy doll. And we could all do to spend a moment contemplating that!

And Venus?

There are two feminine archetypes in our Human Design chart – the Moon and Venus. The Moon represents the triple goddess, her cycles of life, particularly the mother and child. Venus represents the love and beauty – the sexual aspects of the Goddess. There is no crone.

In our standard HD chart there is no way of entering into the darkness for transformation. For that we have to search elsewhere – the asteroid Hekate and Dark Moon Lilith, for example. Thank goodness we have the asteroids – our Feminine DNA.

As I was writing this I came across an article on AI girlfriends. If you ever watched the movie HER, you’ll have some sense of where this is leading. With Pluto heading into Aquarius (which rules technology and AI), there’s the tendency for fantasy to trump reality. But Venus has some ideas on that.

The girls who created Weird Barbie could see through the bullshit. This Venus retrograde is a kind of still point, a moment for everyone to stop and think about the stories we tell about women, and about what kinds of lives we lead. Weird Barbie was the one who knew how to do the de-programming!

Venus Retrograde

Venus transits bring restoration and recovery. We may find our way blocked so that we are forced to slow down and relax. This is not about vegging out. There’s some serious Venus-style work to be done here. It involves experimenting with what’s important to us. Do we keep trying to meet the stereotypical roles we’ve been given, or are we going to let Weird Barbie guide us out of there and into a new way of being.

The Venus retrograde takes place from 23 July to 1 September. In that time, Venus will move through 4 Human Design gates.

• Gate of The Abyss (29) – there’s no need to struggle, just take the next small step. The important thing is to keep your momentum, not allowing your life to be defined by people who don’t value your true potential. (23 July to 7 August)
• Gate of Youthful Folly (4) – make sure you look around and learn from each of your steps. Self-doubt is more likely to come from framing the situation through someone else’s eyes, and that viewpoint probably no longer works for you. (7 to 16 August)
• Gate of The Army (7) – there’s no point marching towards an outcome if it doesn’t line up with what you really want! This is preparing you to focus all your energies on heading in the direction of your dreams. (16 to 28 August)
• Gate of Retreat (33) – take some time out to relax and contemplate the big picture of your life. Venus is, after all, about love and beauty, so make sure you recognise when these turn up in your life. Just don’t let anyone else tell you what those things feel like to you. (28 August to 12 September).

Venus as Crone

It may seem strange to think of Venus as a crone, but she has always existed within the context of the triple goddess and trying to live in only two parts of that container doesn’t bode well for any of us.

We can’t be forever young and beautiful. There are sacrifices to be made (I refer you back to the stiletto heel v’s Birkenstock image). The word sacrifice means to make sacred. There are days when putting on high heels and a bit of lipstick is the best. But that’s just one part of you. If you don’t know the ways of the Crone aspect of the triple goddess, the dark and powerful ways of transformation, you can only follow the pathways others have laid out for you. Beauty comes on someone else’s terms. Beauty becomes a sacrifice, rather than something sacred.

All of us, no matter our age or gender, needs to have a connection with that powerful transformative Crone energy. It guides us through difficult times, and even just when we have decisions to make and aren’t sure what’s best for us (rather than what everyone else is telling us to do).

And not only that, but Aphrodite (the alter ego of Venus and Barbie) has a clear message that life should not be plastic, thin and devoid of pleasure. We are creatures of pleasure, designed to have our real human desires fulfilled.

Between now and the end of August, there is a lot of energy for withdrawing from aspects of your life that don’t feel beautiful on your terms. A lot of energy for noticing where you’ve been gaslighting yourself, because it feels like the truth would turn you into Weird Barbie. Time to experiment with new desires, more personal ways of creating and receiving beauty. Because, the thing is, that just puts you outside the bubble and into your own universe. Which is a beautiful thing!