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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.