VivaSync

• Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Barbie," directed by Greta Gerwig.
• At the end of the movie, Barbie wears a yellow dress that stands in contrast to her typical style.
• This may be a nod to suffragettes, who adopted yellow as a symbolic color in the late 1800s.

In the hyper-feminine world of "Barbie," girls can do anything. Of course, in Barbie Land, they literally do every job, from president (Issa Rae) to lawyer (Sharon Rooney) to supreme court justice (Ana Cruz Kayne).

So it would make sense for the film to pay homage to the activists who fought for women's rights.

Stereotypical Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, is the rare woman in Barbie Land who doesn't have a career. But as conflict builds with the Kens, she does become instrumental in uniting the Barbies, rallying them behind a common cause.

Once the women have managed to reclaim control of Barbie Land, Stereotypical Barbie undergoes a noticeable style change. She reappears wearing a modest yellow dress that stands in contrast to her previous pink-heavy wardrobe.

Given Greta Gerwig's reputation for meticulous attention to detail, it feels highly likely that Barbie's yellow dress is symbolic in some way.

Plus, as costume designer Jacqueline Durran told British Vogue, "Barbie really is interlinked with fashion, because how you play with her is by dressing her. Clothes are her form of expression."

Durran also said that, according to Mattel, a yellow dress is "the most popular Barbie costume of the last five years," even though it's not an instantly recognizable look.

Thus, Stereotypical Barbie's yellow dress likely represents her transformation from an iconic doll into an everywoman.

She wears the dress when she admits that crying feels "amazing," and that she no longer feels like a Barbie. Then she decides to leave Barbie Land behind, in order to become a person with insecurities, flaws, hopes, and dreams. (In this key scene, Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?" is played over a montage of real women. In the song's music video, Eilish also wears a yellow dress.)

The color may also be a subtle nod to suffragettes, who fought for women's right to vote in the US.

Yellow became associated with the movement after suffragettes in Kansas adopted the state flower, a sunflower, as a symbol for the cause in 1867. According to the Smithsonian, "supporters were urged to 'show your colors' by wearing yellow ribbons, buttons, and sashes."

The National Woman's Party later adopted a flag with purple, white, and gold to symbolize loyalty, purity, and light, respectively. To this day, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance claims yellow as its symbolic color.

"The color yellow or gold (for many practical purposes, they are the same color) had long been used by American suffragists," says the IWSA, "and yellow and white came to be the colors that symbolized the international women's suffrage movement."

Watch: A YouTuber spends hours making high-fashion gowns for Barbies

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