August 19, 2023
I weep for our youth — confoundingly, the movie Barbie did well at the box office. Apparently, the little pink lady goes on a journey of self-discovery, a road trip to the real world. Since Barbie likes road trips, let’s help her exit an existential crisis. Let’s help her escape Barbie-Land toxicity by chaperoning her on a coast-to-coast trip that will enlighten her about the benefits of so-called toxic masculinity.
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There are many routes for this toxic lady to take, and they all represent astonishing achievements of men with a can-do spirit who surmounted forbidding challenges as they wrestled comfort from nature’s grip.
She is mostly going to take the iconic Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco, about 80% of which is part of the old route. The historic trans-continental highway predates Route 66 and runs approximately 3,142 miles From New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. It was overwhelmingly conceived, engineered, and built by industrious men. Women may have done some time-keeping paperwork as the men shed blood, toil, tears and sweat to forge this continent-taming artery.
Barbie passes Times Square and chooses the Lincoln Tunnel, critical to the free flow of goods and people. It hasn’t dawned on her, yet, but the tunnel she takes for granted was very dangerous to build; in fact, 15 men died constructing the first two tunnels, though Newsweek describes them as “workers.” Please! By that contorted lexicography, I suppose the Saturn V rocket that launched men toward the moon was “crewed.”
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After a slight detour, Barbie transits from New Jersey into Pennsylvania via the Ben Franklin Bridge, the engineers and architects of which were men. Tragically, 15 workers-cum-men died building the thing. However, she remains Pretty-in-Pink clueless.
In the movie, Barbie takes umbrage when someone pats her firmly. As she now enjoys the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside, passing through patriarchal Amish territory, she had better not overnight here. Her uppity-ness might displease a strict Amish elder. Thankfully for her, the Amish are on the fringe of civil society, created by more forgiving and chivalrous men.
Pretentious Barbie drives a Chevrolet Corvette, so she appreciates the Canton Classic Car Museum, just off the Lincoln Highway in Canton, Ohio. Those are some seriously machismo machines — imagined, engineered, and created by the tougher sex.
Pushing onward, if not upward, Barbie crosses the mighty Mississippi on Mark Morris Memorial Bridge, which replaced the iconic Lyons-Fulton Bridge. The ironwork for the original started in March 1891, employing 50 workers-cum-men manipulating around 1,200,000 pounds of iron. Not toxicity, but a lot of testosterone-fueled energy and strength was exerted to cast, shape, deploy, and weld that much iron.
On to Nebraska — as quickly as she can pass through what she considers to be dreary Iowa — Barbie drives under the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, which memorializes the adventurers who helped to build America. The 300-foot span above interstate 80 wasn’t built by those with a Lazy Girl Job, work-from-home ethic. Nope. It required testosterone-induced manpower.
Not at home in the hinterlands, Barbie is now speeding through Telephone Canyon in Wyoming. Here’s another consideration the pampered pink lady should entertain: it took industrious men, not “Lazy Boy” job-seekers, to run that telephone line that facilitated development between Cheyenne and Laramie.
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Onward she goes, but is her quest for enlightenment futile? Prissy-in-Pink Barb is uncomfortable in much of wholesome Middle America, but perhaps more so in devout Mormon country, so we’ll speed toward Nevada.
She’s taking the Northern Route through Reno to Verdi on to the California state line. That entails passing over the Truckee River on the historic Virginia Street Bridge. From this bridge, legend has it, newly divorced women would chuck their wedding rings into the river. Unless it’s to a completely emasculated wussy, I doubt Barbie will revisit for that purpose — no one with a pair would dare take in that pink bundle of toxicity.
Too bad her self-discovery is proving elusive, because Barbie is now approaching the Lincoln Highway Terminus in Lincoln Park, San Francisco. The park overlooks the iconic, International Orange–adorned Golden Gate Bridge. San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water, so this bridge is critical in connecting to Marin County in the north.
The awe-inspiring suspension bridge spans turbulent waters. Its towers rise an impressive 746 feet into the gusty, fog-laden troposphere — over twice the height of the Statue of Liberty, and higher than the Washington Monument. Though a net was erected to catch men of the “Halfway-to-Hell Club,” eleven workers-cum-men died during construction.
Their sacrifices are unbeknownst to self-absorbed Barbie. Hardly in the “pink of condition” after traversing the great heartland of America, which she haughtily disregards, it turns out her journey of enlightenment was futile.
Reflecting in Lincoln Park, she remains imprisoned in her toxic-feminist existential crisis. She is simply incapable of appreciating steadfast masculinity and good ol’ fashioned American grit. That’s the pure, bloody-minded determination to conquer the odds, to subdue a harsh continent with all manner of edifices and amenities that enable misguided Miss Barbie and feminist friends to enjoy comfort and Lazy Girl Jobs.
Unable to comport herself with nature’s nurturing wishes, Barbara Millicent Roberts seems destined to spiral toward depressive, feminist-induced neuroticism. I don’t think a trip back along Route 66, with all the monuments and landmarks, will help her realize that brave and bold masculinity wrings benefits, and that toxic femininity, by contrast, is simply problematic.
If she opts for planes and trains over automobiles, the essential story will be the same: rails laid by toiling men; airports, runways, and terminals constructed by men, all using technologies painstakingly invented. And a spoiled little Lazy Girl dressed in pink. Actually, dressed with unhealthy male envy.
Image via Pickpik.
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