Barbra Streisand, My Hero
Barbra Streisand is one of Hollywood’s brightest stars. After cutting her teeth on Broadway, she burst onto the silver screen with her Oscar-winning debut as Fanny Bryce in Funny Girl. From there, she starred in screwball comedies like What’s Up Doc?, melodramas like The Way We Were, and extravagant musicals like Yentl. With an EGOT under her sequinned belt, it’s impossible to deny Streisand’s talent. She’s also, as many will point out, completely outrageous.
Barbra Streisand Editorial
Barbra As Absurd Diva
Streisand has an elaborate, personalized “mall” in her home. She spent an absurd amount of money to clone her dog. She personally called Apple to get Siri to pronounce her name correctly.
In one of my favorite Barbra-isms, she refuses to be filmed from her right side—and such is her sway that talk shows regularly rejig their sets to accommodate her.
Despite being proudly Jewish, Streisand has released not one but two Christmas albums...one featuring a ludicrous, possibly drug-fueled rendition of “Jingle Bells.” She records ridiculous albums, calling one Wet for no discernible reason other than wanting to look attractively damp on the cover. On another, titled Songbird, Streisand shoehorns a picture of her and a beloved dog with a cheeky scribbled note. It reads “Sorry...Couldn’t find a bird!” I could go on, but the point’s been made: Barbra Streisand is undeniably silly. And yet, I love her.
Barbra As Underdog Heroine
The usual charge leveled against Barbra is that she’s a conceited diva. While that’s not wrong, it’s not the whole story either.
Streisand is a hard-working, wildly talented, plucky underdog heroine who dominated Hollywood with the odds stacked against her. She wasn’t born rich and as a struggling actress, she'd camp out on a cot while going to auditions.
Not content to overcome poverty, she also used her chutzpah to become a major star without getting a nose job—despite intense pressure to do so.
Streisand is stunning, but she’s never been a conventional beauty. She has a pronounced nose, imperfect teeth, and as a showbiz boss in Funny Girl puts it, “skinny legs.” A typical screen siren, she is not. And yet, by sheer force of will, Streisand forced Hollywood to expand its definition of beauty. By the time The Way We Were rolled around, she wasn’t just showing off her comedy chops: Streisand was a veritable romantic heroine to Robert Redford’s all-American boy.
Throughout her career, naysayers have critiqued Barbra’s fixation on her appearance, but there’s more than vanity at play here.
By insisting that she was just as attractive as actresses like Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton-John, Streisand advocated for a “distinctively Jewish” beauty, as one of her biographers said. In 1960s Hollywood, that was no easy task.
Barbra As Hollywood Agitator
But fixating only on Streisand’s looks would be a severe underestimation of her appeal. Streisand is also incredibly hardworking, talented, and outspoken.
From appearing on Richard Nixon’s personal enemies list in the 1970s to Twitter rants in the 2010s, Streisand has never been one to mince words.
But for me, a person whose sister turned away from directing because of the industry’s entrenched sexism, Streisand’s most powerfully righteous anger is her unceasing celebration of women artists. Decades before Hollywood stars started shading the establishment’s refusal to take female directors seriously, Streisand paved the way.
