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The \u201cepic trifecta<\/a>\u201d of Greta Gerwig\u2019s Barbie<\/em>, Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Renaissance Tour, and Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras Tour (all raking in millions of dollars) are taking over social media\u2014having grown adult women reliving their youth in a \u201cTween Girl Summer<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But the enthusiasm and participation are no less among actual young people.<\/p>\n Both my 18-year-old son and my 16-year-old daughter\u2014despite never having played with Barbies as children and being on the younger end of the age spectrum for Taylor Swift fans\u2014are all in.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a cultural conversation here about the \u201cspending power of women<\/a>\u201d and the \u201cfemale dollar<\/a>,\u201d and there\u2019s plenty to be said for this: Barbie, Swift, and Beyonc\u00e9 are enormous capital successes.<\/p>\n Barbie<\/em> and Swift\u2019s Eras Tour in particular open up dialogue about what Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times <\/em>calls<\/a> \u201centertainment that channels female angst,\u201d awakening a \u201cseismic shift for women<\/a>\u201d in \u201chelping women reclaim girlhood without rescinding power<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n These cultural artifacts draw on the ambiguities of the female experience, celebrating the feminine while honestly addressing the difficulties of being a woman in a male-oriented world. And certainly, these events are occasions for women to enjoy this together.<\/p>\n For me, though, it\u2019s the \u201ctogether\u201d more than the dollars, and the hope more than the \u201cangst,\u201d that I notice when I try to see this summer through my children\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n The pandemic interrupted my kids\u2019 lives at a crucial developmental point. For them, there\u2019s almost no \u201cbefore\u201d the pandemic in their teen years\u2014there\u2019s only the newly opening of the after. And in that wake, what if what my kids want is communal meaning\u2014the kind that is supposed to mark our local churches?<\/p>\n As Justine McDaniel pointed out<\/a>, the \u201cBarbie-Taylor-Beyonc\u00e9 summer offers a release of pandemic emotions\u201d\u2014exposing a hunger, Goldberg said, that is \u201ca palpable longing for both communal delight and catharsis.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, there\u2019s church versions of the kind of transportive singing experience shared by those who attend concerts like Swift\u2019s\u2014where everyone is on their feet, some with hands in the air, some with tears on their cheeks. Many Christians are cynical<\/a> about this, but Swift concertgoers and Barbie<\/em> moviegoers are not.<\/p>\n Powerful communal experience can be manipulated, but it doesn\u2019t have to be manipulation. When a song or movie tells the truth, it can be joyful and even transformative.<\/p>\n As Russell Moore recently wrote in response<\/a> to the skepticism around emotional worship experiences, \u201ctransformative change happens at a much deeper level than intellect or willpower.\u201d<\/p>\n And in a world that has known few mass cultural events since COVID-19, my kids are in on shared Barbie viewings and Swiftie togetherness. They\u2019re in on gathering for these events, and they\u2019re in on these female-identified celebrations of what it means to be human together.<\/p>\n Movie theaters are full of families and groups of friends, dressed in pink and laughing together; the country\u2019s biggest stadiums are packed out with a tiny slice of those who would have come to see Swift perform, had more tickets been available.<\/p>\n For both my son and daughter, Taylor Swift is at the top of their playlists. When this summer\u2019s tour was announced, our family spent several angsty days in online lotteries trying to score the chance to purchase tickets for the Eras Tour. We failed, but then a kind friend landed two tickets and took my daughter with her to the concert.<\/p>\n The COVID era loomed large in my kids\u2019 adolescence\u2014they exchanged in-person school for hours-long Zoom meetings, hanging out with friends for lonely texting, and church for a streaming service viewed on the sofa. All these changes still feel immediate.<\/p>\n Now they\u2019re hungry for togetherness. They\u2019re hungry for large-scale shared cultural events and wearing dress-up clothes in public.<\/p>\n Many in their generation are cynical, broken by the pandemic and cultural polarization, and so maybe my view of their enjoyment of Barbie and Swift is too much optimism. You\u2019ll forgive me, perhaps, for being tempted to hope that what they\u2019re charmed by is precisely the shared group experience of hope.<\/p>\n The kids are hungry, but they\u2019re not in when the church fails to tell the truth. Like Barbie and Swift, they\u2019re sharp-eyed and good at spotting a false god.<\/p>\n Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) is their generational representative in Barbie<\/em>. On meeting Barbie (Margot Robbie), Sasha unleashes a teenage diatribe, calling Barbie a \u201cfascist\u201d and accusing her for being responsible for almost everything wrong with the world, particularly all that\u2019s wrong for women.<\/p>\n But my kids seem to be more in alignment with Sasha\u2019s conversion than her denunciation\u2014with her reconciliation with her mother as well as to a Barbie-versioned celebration of the female.<\/p>\n \u201cI liked how the Kens were metaphors for women in the real world,\u201d said my son.<\/p>\n From my daughter: \u201cYou don\u2019t expect a Barbie movie to be about deep existential meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n My son doesn\u2019t seem put off by the feminine in these events. He\u2019s not losing sleep over the purported feminization of the culture or the accusation that Barbie<\/em> is demeaning of men. He\u2019s never even heard of the supposed feminization of the church<\/a>, nor do I think he\u2019s ever considered the idea that such a thing might be a threat to him.<\/p>\n What he wants is to be with his people, seeing a good movie, listening to good music\u2014aware of what\u2019s wrong with this world but, maybe, hoping for something better.<\/p>\n Barbie<\/em> is full of theological themes<\/a>, and, while I wouldn\u2019t presume to know her faith, Swift has expressed public frustration with ways American Christianity has been attached to partisan politics.<\/p>\n And that \u201cexistential meaning\u201d my daughter noted in Barbie<\/em> is about what it means to be human, what it means to live the good life together. The same goes for many of Swift\u2019s smartest lyrics and the very human feelings that come with singing them out loud.<\/p>\n My daughter, who is sometimes more reserved, was on her feet, singing all-out, for the whole three hours that Swift was on stage. She picked out her outfit months in advance\u2014an homage to Swift, a way to place her body within the event. She took photos, which she says she\u2019s \u201cnever letting go.\u201d<\/p>\n She has gone from a school COVID-19 era of eating her lunch at a solitary table to raising her voice at Soldier Field in Chicago, united with 55,000 other people who know every word to every song.<\/p>\n Of course, she wants this full-bodied, communal, ecstatic experience.<\/p>\n Barbie and Swift are about the lived experience of embodied life together. Barbie (spoiler for the movie) leaves her plastic world behind and, in the words of Amy Peeler writing at the Holy Post<\/em><\/a>, \u201ctakes on a real body, including sexual organs, experiences the devolution of the body, and becomes a mortal woman. She does this to experience the deeper beauty of imperfection.\u201d<\/p>\n Katelyn Beaty<\/a> writes about the film as an affirmation of female embodiment: \u201cit\u2019s through our bodies\u201d that we \u201cexperience both common and supernatural grace.\u201d<\/p>\n Swift, too, invites her fans into her own embodied life as she sings unabashedly of emotion and relationship and loss. We humans are embodied creatures, and we need life in the body together.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s what church is. It\u2019s life in the body together, the people gathered around the one who is the truth, who gives life meaning, who knows our embodied longings because he took on flesh for our sake.<\/p>\n The kids want communal meaning. So I\u2019m going to keep hoping\u2014hoping that, maybe, what they want is the body of Christ.<\/p>\n Beth Felker Jones is professor of theology at Northern Seminary. She is the author of many books and writes regularly at Church Blogmatics<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n