Barbie

aha

women allowed to express some emotions in some ways /time & place; man can express anger, often via violence

strict fr righteous anger retribution for bad weak immoral out of control behavior disobedience

How Barbie sped up the collapse of Trump’s macho-based hate movement

Thom Hartmann

August 28, 2023

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers.

Have you noticed Americans are beginning to reject hate?

Trump’s popularity — even among Republicans — is dropping like a stone, and parents are beginning to show up in large numbers at school board meetings to talk back to bigots and haters.

MSNBC and CNN are filled with Republicans who have rejected Trump and hate. Increasingly, pastors are speaking out against Trump and hate.

Trump called for huge protests at his arraignments, but only a handful of people showed up, and the Wall Street Journal is calling for Republican presidential candidates to organize themselves in a way that will prevent Trump from becoming the GOP’s nominee again.

As investigative reporter Jordan Green notes over at Raw Story:

“On Telegram accounts linked to the Proud Boys, posts about the Maui wildfires — typically suggesting sinister causes or accusing the Biden administration of neglect — appear to outnumber references to the Trump indictment roughly four to one.”

The New York Times reports that even in the weeks before Fani Willis’ Fulton County indictment:

“A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted.”

And democracy expert David Pepper points out on his excellent Substack blog Pepperspectives:

“Recent polls on Trump are brutal, with more than 60% saying they won’t vote for him in a general election.

“Recent elections in Ohio and Wisconsin confirm that the far right’s toxic brew of extremist policies and attacks on democracy are also deeply unpopular. Absolute losers at the polls.”

Political candidates who base their campaigns on hate are failing, and ordinary cordial discourse among Americans with different political views is beginning to return.

The media has noticed the trend, but they think it’s caused entirely by Trump’s legal troubles. While that’s no doubt a very large factor, I believe there’s also another force at work here: the movie Barbie.

Seriously.

Last week Louise got together with some “girlfriends” — including a few Trump supporters — for a Barbie Party. A group of boomer women all hanging out wearing pink and talking smack about “the patriarchy.”

Before you scoff, consider this:

— The reason “shock therapy” (electro-convulsive therapy or ECT) fell out of favor in America wasn’t just because of the development of anti-depressive medications during that era: it was also because of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

— Deer hunting collapsed as a sport in large part because of the Disney movie Bambi, and sociologists credit the film and it’s “Bambi Effect” with a rise in vegetarianism among boomers who were children when it came out (I sure still remember it, and my parents took me to see it during the film’s revival 66 years ago!).

— Teaching evolution and contrasting it with creationism in American classrooms became acceptable as the result of the movie Inherit The Wind about the Scopes Monkey Trial.

— The nationwide revival of the then-moribund Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s (leading to the Klan taking full political control of the State of Oregon that decade) was entirely attributable to D.W. Griffith’s movieBirth of a Nation.

— The movie Jaws caused a drop (that lasted for years) in people willing to swim in the ocean, as well as an increase in shark hunting that has caused some species to become endangered.

— The film Gone With The Wind, whitewashing the crimes of the Confederacy and the brutality of slavery, led to a revival in “Confederate Culture” that echoes across the South to this day.

Given this history, and the brilliant screenplay, acting, and production values of the movie Barbie, it would be naïve not to think it’s had an impact on American consciousness. The question is, how big is that impact?

A recent survey reported by The Hill found that fully 85 percent of conservatives who’d seen the movie Barbie said it increased their “awareness of the patriarchy at work.”

Fifty-seven percent of all viewers surveyed said the movie “improved their opinion of women in leadership.” The percentage of people surveyed who said that women were more effective leaders than men went from 19 percent before seeing the film to 29 percent after.

A movie ostensibly about a Mattel doll, it opens with a Barbie character proclaiming:

“In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!”

From there the plot becomes even more progressive. Ken goes from the matriarchal Barbieland to the “real world” and brings back the idea of patriarchy, a cultural contagion that destroys Barbieland nearly as completely as Trump tried to destroy democracy in America. (I promise not to give away any more of the movie.)

The analogies between the transformations of Barbieland and the collapse of Trump’s macho-based movement are startling; it’s hard to imagine the screenwriters weren’t either influenced directly by it or at least by the same social forces that brought it about.

And it’s hard to overestimate how widespread the impact of the movie has been. It’s grossed over a billion dollars, and fully 22 percent of people who saw it hadn’t been to a movie in years.

Hopefully, this is the start of a trend like the one we saw during the latter Obama years.

Between 2013 and 2014, hate in America experienced a significant decline: in an “Intelligence Report” released in March, 2015, the Southern Poverty Law Center said, as CNN reported, “the number of hate groups operating in the U.S. declined 17% between 2013 and 2014.” They were, SPLC reported, at their lowest levels since 2005.

But then Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Towerand, like Satan opening his mouth and unleashing the hounds of hell, poured out a plume of hatred, bigotry, and a call for violence that has saturated our nation for nearly eight long years.

There was an immediate jump in hate crimes, a trend that continued and increased steadily right up until this year. The Washington Post summarized the phenomenon succinctly in a 2019 headline:

“Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes”

It’s premature to proclaim the era of Trump-fueled racism and hate over, but the sense I’m getting from doing a national radio and TV call-in talk show for the past 20 years is that America has begun its much-needed healing.

Perhaps most surprising, people who had previously called in to promote Trump and “conservative values” are increasingly telling me and my listeners that they’ve seen the light and want to work together to make America a better place for all.

Beth Felker Jones writes for Christianity Today that she’s seeing it in her family and her church community, as the twin sensations of Barbie and Taylor Swift’s tour (and Swift’s open disavowal of hate) sweep the nation:

“Movie theaters are full of families and groups of friends, dressed in pink and laughing together; the country’s biggest stadiums are packed out with a tiny slice of those who would have come to see Swift perform, had more tickets been available.”

She notes how the pandemic and America’s political differences pulled us apart for years; now, she writes, things are changing for her kids and others:

“Now they’re hungry for togetherness. They’re hungry for large-scale shared cultural events and wearing dress-up clothes in public.”

Whether it’s Barbie or the Trump prosecutions that have brought about what feels like the early stages of a sea-change in the American zeitgeist — or the perfect storm of the combination of the two around the same time — I’ll take it.

America is better for both!

https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-2662301818/

barbie ccp prop

veteran Washington Post columnist and Never Trump conservative George Will has described Republicans of the past as "bookish," and he means it in a favorable way. Will, a scathing critic of the MAGA movement and its buffoonish tendencies, clearly longs for the days of William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman and a more intellectual brand of conservatism.

But in 2023, the "bookish" conservatives that Will fondly remembers are outnumbered by far-right culture warriors who use pop-culture references to agitate their base. The highly performative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a long history of doing that, and his latest target is the new "Barbie" movie directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie.

During an interview with the Daily Signal, Cruz claimed that "Barbie" incorporates "Chinese communist propaganda" in an effort to brainwash "young girls." Cruz tried to paint himself as a concerned parent, noting, "I'm the dad of two young daughters."

Vanity Fair's Katie Rich, in an article published on July 19, slams Cruz's anti-"Barbie" crusade as yet another pop-culture misfire that is making him look ridiculous.

Rich observes, "Cruz has been fixated on Barbie for a while now — though he must be used to picking fights with pop culture icons that are inevitably going to remain way more popular than he is…. Back in 2021, the senator accused Big Bird of promoting government propaganda, and earlier this year, he launched an investigation into Bud Light. He tried to claim that Disney was on its way to showing 'Mickey and Pluto going at it' — he really did! — and got so fixated on some anti-racist children's books that he wound up driving up their sales."

The Vanity Fair journalist continues, "That could very well be what winds up happening with 'Barbie,' which is currently projected to make as much as $100 million domestically in its opening weekend. For anyone who was on the fence about seeing 'Barbie' but enjoys sticking it to Ted Cruz, your decision has just been made."

Rich notes that Cruz "is siding with the Vietnamese government, which has banned the release of 'Barbie.'"

Story by Thom Hartmann

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/you-know-america-is-in-crisis-when-barbie-has-more-integrity-than-6-supreme-court-justices/ar-AA1eCHTf

“In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!”

You know America is in crisis when Barbie has more integrity than 6 Supreme Court justices

...sam Alito wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that:

“No provision in the Constitution gives them [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

He’s deeply, profoundly, and constitutionally wrong: in fact, the Constitution requires Congress to regulate the Supreme Court. I’ll get to that in a second, but first the important stuff: Barbie!

...Louise and I went to see the new Barbie movie Friday afternoon. Sitting in the theater, we both nearly choked on our popcorn when, in the first few minutes of the movie, one of the Barbies said:

“In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!”

Wow!

I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Barbie has more common sense than Sam Alito, but there it is.

Alito, of course, provided a tie-breaking vote on Citizens United in 2010, the bizarre Supreme Court decision that fully legalized political bribery, handing the American political system to the billionaires who helped pack him and other rightwing justices onto the Court in the first place.

In the Citizens United decision, the five Republicans then on the Court doubled-down on earlier pronouncements that laid its foundation. In 1976, in Buckley v Valeo, the Court — for the first time in the history of America or any other developed nation — ruled that it would no longer be considered bribery when a morbidly rich person poured so much cash over a politician that s/he entirely parrots their lines and votes their interests.

Their rationale was that the First Amendment protects free speech and, because your “free speech” can’t be heard without a lot of money to buy advertising time on TV, etc., cash can now be considered the same thing as speech.

In his dissent, Justice Byron White cut right to the chase about the Court’s bizarre legalization of political bribery and its potential consequences:

“The act of giving money to political candidates, however, may have illegal or other undesirable consequences: it may be used to secure the express or tacit understanding that the giver will enjoy political favor if the candidate is elected.”

Justice Marshall similarly dissented, writing:

“[T]he perception that personal wealth wins elections may … undermine public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.”

While I’ve never heard the money I carry in my pocket talk to me, that was the decision of the Court and it stands to this day: money is now “free speech.” This explains why every elected Republican who depends on the Koch network and other fossil fuel billionaires for campaign cash still denies our climate emergency even exists and refuses to do anything about it.

Two years later, in a decision (First National Bank v Bellotti) written by the infamous rightwing hack and tobacco shillLewis Powell himself, the Court ruled that corporations, too, were entitled to legally bribe politicians because corporations are “persons” and thus protected by the human rights protections of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment right of free speech (now apparently known as “free money for politicians”).

That was too much even for Republican William Rehnquist, who wrote the dissent, saying:

“A State grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as an economic entity. It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere. Furthermore, it might be argued that liberties of political expression are not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist.”

Rehnquist added in footnote 6 to his dissent:

“[T]he interest of Massachusetts and the many other States which have restricted corporate political activity is not one of equalizing the resources of opposing candidates or opposing positions, but rather of preventing institutions which have been permitted to amass wealth as a result of special advantages extended by the State for certain economic purposes from using that wealth to acquire an unfair advantage in the political process.”

Nonetheless, the Court’s majority opinion stood and just two years later Ronald Reagan floated into the White House on a river of oil money, leading him to reverse Jimmy Carter’s policies to make America energy independent, end Carter’s Solar Bank that would have had 20 percent of America’s electricity coming from solar power by the year 2000, and remove Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the White House.

When the Court tripled down on these two freakish distortions of American bribery law in its 2010 Citizens United decision, Justice John Paul Stevens called them out:

“The Court’s blinkered and aphoristic approach to the First Amendment will undoubtedly cripple the ability of ordinary citizens, Congress, and the States to adopt even limited measures to protect against corporate domination of the electoral process.”

He added, pointing out that the case was essentially manufactured and should never have even been taken up by the Court:

“The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.”

And, indeed, it has. As former President Jimmy Carter told me seven years ago on my radio/TV program:

“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president.… So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

Now comes Sam Alito, without whose vote Citizens United wouldn’t have turned our elections over to America’s rightwing billionaires, saying that if he and Thomas want to take travel and gifts from billionaires with business before the Court; if Chief Justice Roberts’ wife wants to take more than $10 million from law firms that will appear before the Court; if billionaires with interests before the court want to help Neal Gorsuch sell his property in a sweetheart deal; then that’s just fine.

As noted, Alito came right out and used the word “regulate” to describe what he believes Congress cannot do to the Court.

Apparently, he never read the Constitution that he pretends to interpret and enforce. For there it is, for all to see, right smack dab in the middle of Article III, the part of the Constitution that creates the Supreme Court:

“[T]he supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under suchRegulations as the Congress shall make.”

One of those regulations, in fact, was Congress creating an eighth seat on the Court — which Alito currently occupies — with the Judiciary Act of 1837 that also created the eighth and ninth Circuit Courts. (Today there are 13 Circuit Courts, strongly arguing for 13 justices on the Supreme Court, as historically each justice had oversight over one of the Circuit Courts and now most are doubled-up.)

Congress has already regulated the Supreme Court numerous times, including imposing a code of ethics on them that they are simply choosing to ignore.

In 1940, Congress passed ethics rules for district courts, but in 1974 they were updated to include all federal justices and judges, which includes the Supreme Court. The law [28 U.S. Code § 455 – Disqualification of justice, judge, or magistrate judge] now reads (with my annotations in [brackets]):

“(a) Any [“Any” means “any,” including SCOTUS justices] justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

“(b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

“(1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party [like the billionaires supporting Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, although none have so far recused themselves in these cases], or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;

“(2) Where in private practice he served as lawyer in the matter in controversy, or a lawyer with whom he previously practiced law served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter, or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness concerning it [because of this law, until she joined the Supreme Court Amy Coney Barrett routinely recused herself from cases involving fossil fuels because her father spent most of his career as one of Shell Oil’s top attorneys, but now she refuses to recuse herself];

“(3) Where he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy when Roberts was employed by Reagan in the DOJ, he wrote extensively about how to overturn Roe v Wade, as I detail in [The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, and Amy Coney Barrett was a party to lobbying and PR efforts by anti-abortion groups];

“(4) He knows that he, individually or as a fiduciary, or his spouse or minor child residing in his household, has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding [consider John Roberts’ wife taking over $10 million for placing attorneys with law firms who have business before the Court]…”

Because the Court has assiduously ignored 28 U.S. Code § 455, Congress is working on a new bill to explicitly regulate the justices’ behavior; it passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week over the objection of every single Republican senator. It will die in the House, but it’s a good exercise for a law that should be among the first rolled out if in 2025 in Democrats can reclaim the House (and hold the Senate and White House).

Republican Senators, of course, don’t want the legalized bribery gravy train to ever stop, and if billionaire-bought-off conflicted justices can’t rule because these sorts of issues force the recusal of Thomas, Alito, and Roberts (at least), then Citizens United itself might be reversed. Not to mention their gutting of the EPA’s ability to regulate fossil fuels. Or the federal government’s ability to regulate American wetlands. Etc.

When Barbie has more integrity than six Republican members of the US Supreme Court, you know American democracy is in a crisis.

It’s time for Congress and the Department of Justice to do their jobs and force the “corrupt six” Supreme Court justices to follow the law.

https://newrepublic.com/post/174110/republicans-say-barbie-movie-communist

“Is Barbie Communist?” How One Scene Dragged the Barbie Movie Into Controversy

She’s a Communist. He’s just Ken.

JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Is Barbie a Communist? According to Republicans, the answer seems to be, “Most likely.”

A growing number of voices on the right are accusing the upcoming Barbie movie of pushing Chinese propaganda. The film, which comes out July 21, stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, who leave Barbie Land to explore the real world. In one scene before they leave, a rough, hand-drawn map of the world can be seen in the background. The map includes the so-called nine-dash line, a much-disputed division of territory in the South China Sea.

“I guess Barbie is made in China …” Ted Cruz tweeted Monday.

The next day, a spokesperson for the Texas senator told the Daily Mail, “China wants to control what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think, and they leverage their massive film markets to coerce American companies into pushing [Chinese Communist Party] propaganda—just like the way the Barbie film seems to have done with the map.”

Fox News anchor Rachel Campos-Duffy, while covering Cruz’s reaction, mused on air, “Is Barbie Communist?”

“Maybe!” her colleague replied.

China has used the nine-dash line to mark its controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea. Over the years, Beijing has tried to claim sovereignty over 90 percent of the region. Even though The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal basis for its claims, the country has pressed on, building military installations on otherwise uninhabited islands in the sea.

Vietnam has already banned the Barbie movie for its inclusion of the nine-dash line. Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all say the marker violates their sovereignty.

The Philippines is also considering banning the film. “If the invalidated nine-dash line was indeed depicted in the movie Barbie, then it is incumbent upon the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board of the Philippines to ban the same as it denigrates Philippine sovereignty,” Filipino Senator Francis Tolentino told CNN Philippines on Tuesday.

For those wondering, this is the shot in question of the nine-dash line:

https://www.mediamatters.org/ben-shapiro/hes-just-ben-shapiros-impotent-rage-barbie-2023-and-hell-he-has-built-himself

for months, personalities at The Daily Wire have maintained that collaborating with atransgenderperson would spell doom for any corporate campaign, and have driven boycotts against multiple companies that did so. Given this recent history, a close observer of the Daily Wire might expect the right-wing media company to make a similar attempt around the cultural juggernaut that is Barbie (2023), which features both a surprisingly trans plot and a trans actress in a major role.

Instead, editor Ben Shapiro went to see the film on opening weekend and then posted a video in which he melts down about it for three-quarters of an hour.

[twt]

This article contains spoilers about the Barbie movie)

It’s immediately clear from his review that Shapiro does not understand the intended audience of the movie he has in a rant nearly half as long as the movie’s runtime. He says two minutes into his review that the movie is aimed at mothers and their “8-year-old” daughters, something that he repeats again 10 minutes in, 32 minutes in, 36 minutes in, and 39 minutes in. But the Barbie movie is rated PG-13 “for suggestive references and brief language.” It’s intended neither for kids without parental guidance nor, perhaps, for podcasters who over-identify with the protagonist’s foil. (Hilariously, Ben complains in his review that many men “are husbands and fathers, many of us have daughters,” unintentionally echoing a joke from the movie where the CEO of Mattel refers to himself as “the son of a mother and the nephew of a female aunt.”)

Shapiro also misses the plot of the movie that he claims to have taken pages of notes on, saying that “the point of the film is that the matriarchy is amazing” and that “all the Kens are gay” even though “Earring Magic Ken,” popularly considered a gay incarnation of the character, is reduced to a brief cameo, and the portrayal of a fantasy matriarchy where men are seen as peripheral at best is a clear critique of patriarchy shown by narrative inversion. He even claims, incorrectly, that Ken is portrayed in the film as a lifeguard, when Ryan Gosling’s character makes clear that his job is actually “beach."

[pix pink shirt]

as a one-time aspiring screenwriter, Shapiro might have taken note of such basic details as Ken’s job, why the character Allan exists, and that people have in fact come and gone from Barbieland before, but he appears to have fixated instead on his own jealousy, which is transparent throughout his takedown. Shapiro complains that he doesn’t know why Mattel would turn over their IP to filmmakers who hate them, and then calls those filmmakers “idiots who think they’re smart” because of their “dumb references,” “morons,” shitty writers, and even transphobic.

“If you're on the left,” Shapiro — who is currently making an anti-trans basketball “comedy” — whines, “You can make one of the world’s most boring, crappy comedies. You can waste an extraordinary amount of money and talent. You can waste some of the great IP ever created. But as long as you slather it in a bunch of warmed-over Gloria Steinem nonsense, the critics will just salivate over you."

It’s also possible that Shapiro missed such key plot points as Ken’s job because they were delivered when trans actress Hari Nef was on screen. At no point in the movie is Nef’s character “Doctor Barbie” said to be transgender — it’s unclear what such a designation would mean given that the Barbies canonically have no genitals— but Shapiro cannot stop thinking about it. He complains in his review that she has a deeper voice than he does and, later, that Gosling’s character is “victimized” by the experience of briefly flirting with Nef. (Earlier in his review, Shapiro forgets to misgender Nef and complains that the entire cast except Gosling is women.) Confusingly, Ben sums up the point of the movie as defining women by their vaginas, a point that is both bafflingly wrong and also something that he himself has done many times.

[twit

shapiro’s attendance at the movie represents a kind of tactical retreat for the Daily Wire, whose personalities previously attempted to motivate audiences to boycott first Bud Light, then Target, and then over a dozen other brands (including Fox News) for their alleged support of trans people and the LGBTQ community more broadly. Shapiro’s colleague Candace Owens pre-empted Pride Month by memorably telling her audience, “Do not shop at Target or else you're gay and you're a pervert.”

But as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join them, and so while Shapiro complained multiple times about the casting and marketing of the film, when it came time for the premiere, the curmudgeonly podcaster dressed up like his favorite Ken and joined the line.

There is, of course, a more cynical interpretation of all of this. YouTube does not merely reward the creators of content that people enjoy. It also pays for hate clicks. As of this writing, Shapiro’s video review, which featured periodic cuts to advertisements run by YouTube as well as an in-video endorsement of ExpressVPN, had attracted, and the podcaster seemed downright gleeful with the amount of attention it has received. The analytics website SocialBlade estimates that Shapiro’s YouTube channel nets as much as $7.6 million a year.

But there is more to life than money and plastic perfection. Like picturing Ken without Barbie, it is difficult to Ben Shapir the dolls. And he does not appear to enjoy where his fame has led him. He admits five minutes into his review that the movie made him viscerally angry and that watching it amounted to “two hours I will never get back,” then repeating later that “this film took years off my life.”

Near the end of his rant, Shapiro complains that Ken is encouraged to find ways to define himself without Barbie. It is advice that Ben Shapiro himself should consider. Barbie has been a smash hit financially, boosting Mattel and landing Nef a cover shoot — a rare achievement for a trans person — in TIME magazine. Hari is everything. He’s just Ben.

Welcome back to HEATED—Emily here. Ever since I started this newsletter back in 2019, nearly half of our subscribers have come from Twitter. But today, thanks to Elon Musk, Twitter no longer exists. It’s now a weird and increasingly confusing site called “X” that primarily serves to bolster right-wing misinformation, including climate denial, which has surged on the platform.

I’ve been working hard to adapt HEATED to this new reality, bolstering our presence on other social media sites and doing more in-person events. But it’s tough out there, and I could really use a hand.

If just a few more people upgrade to paid, HEATED can invest in alternative growth strategies to keep providing climate accountability news and perspective you can’t get anywhere else. And we can keep being 100 percent independent, beholden to no advertisers, foundations, or corporations. Just readers.

Either way, I hope you enjoy this interview Arielle did with the original “Climate Barbie.” It only exists because of readers like you!

The original “Climate Barbie”

These days, it’s good to be Barbie. But that wasn’t always the case.

ARIELLE SAMUELSON AND EMILY ATKIN

AUG 4

Catherine McKenna, former Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, is shown speaking at an event in 2017. McKenna left politics in 2021, after years of being called “Climate Barbie” by her political opponents. Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concord.

Long before the Barbie movie took the world by storm, Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, had a meeting with an executive at Mattel.

Her political enemies had been calling her “Climate Barbie,” a name clearly meant as a sexist insult.

But, McKenna thought, maybe it didn’t have to be.

Maybe “Climate Barbie” could be a good thing, despite all the bad that had come with it. Maybe the doll could “be on a bicycle, [have] her reusable water bottle and metal straw,” McKenna told the CBC in 2019.

At some point, McKenna told HEATED, she actually brought the idea to Mattel. She proposed a “Climate Action Barbie” made entirely without plastic and “completely recyclable.” She proposed that sales could raise money for the United Nations climate talks, “because they have a gender action plan and women are disproportionately impacted by climate change.”

But the meeting didn’t go anywhere, McKenna recalled. “I don’t think they were ready for that,” she said. (Mattel did not respond to HEATED’s request for comment).

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And so the name “Climate Barbie” remained where it started, known primarily as a sexist slur used to belittle and demean Canada’s top climate official, who during her six-year tenure helped implement Canada’s first climate plan, including its national price on pollution; launched the UN initiative Women Leading on Climate; and made historic investments in public transit and green infrastructure.

But now, with the recent rebranding of Barbie as a feminist icon, McKenna hopes perhaps the name can be reclaimed—if not by Mattel (which has many climate problems of its own), then by people devoted to fighting sexism in climate politics. Because the consequences of misogyny are not just social and economic: they’re planetary.

A July 28 tweet from Catherine McKenna reads: “If it takes a Barbie movie to say what needs to be said about the impossible expectations for women, then count me in.” Source: Twitter.

In a wide-ranging interview, we asked McKenna about her experience with the “Climate Barbie” moniker; her recent work on chairing the UN committee overseeing greenwashing and net-zero commitments; and the effectiveness of the carbon pricing scheme she helped implement in Canada, among other things.

Stop relying on tech bro billionaire’s algorithms to get your climate news. Support the dedicated journalists who create it, and sign up to get it directly.

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This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Arielle Samuelson: You famously left politics in 2021, saying you wanted to do more to fight the climate crisis. But you also received a lot of sexist pushback while in office. What was that like, and how did sexism factor into your decision to leave?

Catherine McKenna: In my case, it is bonkers. I had to put a price on pollution across the country—that was part of my mandate from the prime minister. And you can see, the day that carbon pricing was announced, the massive spike in personal attacks on me online. They had pictures of Barbie beaten with a sledgehammer.

But then they went offline. I ended up having to have 24-hour police. I had “cunt” written on my campaign office. The police said this was the first time they were looking at this as a hate crime against women. They never found a perpetrator.

But I had a lot of different incidents, including when I was going to the theater with my kids and someone stopped and started screaming “Climate Barbie.”

This is a tactic, I believe, from folks who don't like strong women, and don't want to see climate action. So they denigrate them as “Climate Barbie.” But it also leads to, “We can go deface their office, we can go scream at them.” This is just another barrier to people reasonably wanting to do something. It's emotionally hard. It's physically hard. I'm not going to downplay the fact that it's a problem.

But I did not leave politics because of the hate. I left politics because I really felt that globally, we needed to have very strong voices. And I felt like I had done everything I could in Canada.

AS: How do you feel about the resurgence of Barbie as a feminist icon? Are you reclaiming the “Climate Barbie” name proudly, or would you like to leave that in the past?

CM: That's a complicated question. Growing up, I didn't play with Barbies. Barbie for me and my friends was someone that had nice hair, who worried about her appearance, had to be super skinny, and was wearing high heels.

But then I was named the first Minister of the Environment and Climate Change in Justin Trudeau's cabinet. And I started to notice people calling me “Climate Barbie, the haters and climate deniers. I was like, why are they calling me Climate Barbie? And then I remembered, of course: because I've got blond hair, and they want to discredit me.

A 2017 tweet from Catherine McKenna shows a picture of a Barbie, and reads, “Someone mailed this to my office. How hilarious.I’m going to assume you meant to send this to a Christmas toy drive. Happy to do that on your behalf!” Source: Twitter.

Recently, I went to the Barbie movie with my three kids and I found myself bawling when America Ferrera makes her speech. I realized Barbie is full of contradictions.

I don't want to get too deep on this: It's just a doll that I didn't play with, that old white dudes used to attack me. But if there's something that comes out of a Barbie movie, where it feels empowering for women, or we're able to call out the complete contradiction in trying to be a strong woman but also being everything else that people want us to be, great.

AS: When you decided to leave politics in 2021, you said you thought you could have more of an impact outside of politics. Looking back on that decision, do you still agree with that statement? Have you been able to be more effective outside of politics?

CM: It depends. When I was in government as the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and then as Minister of Infrastructure, I actually had money to put towards massive public transit projects, green infrastructure, electric buses. It had a huge impact. So I don't want to downplay the impact of politics.

[Editor’s Note: McKenna’s record as Canada’s climate minister has been criticized. Via Vox’s 2021 profile of McKenna: “Since signing the Paris Agreement, Canada’s emissions have grown — the only G7 nations to do so. McKenna has also faced tough questions about Canada’s expansion of carbon-intensive tar sands oil projects.”]

But I just felt it was diminishing returns in Canada. And I feel like I can do more, hopefully, doing my part globally. I was asked by the Secretary-General of the U.N. to be the chair of his expert group on net-zero commitments, which was really on greenwashing. Suddenly I was in the weeds on every single climate problem, like carbon credits, phasing out of fossil fuels, lobbying, transition plans, the need to regulate. This is something that I was able to do because I was outside of government.

AS: Right, and last year, your committee at the U.N. took a hard look at business and industry’s net-zero commitments. The committee’s report said “the planet cannot afford delays, excuses, or more greenwashing.” But oil drilling projects are still being approved in the U.S., in the U.K., and all around the world, amidst record heat waves. What should leaders be doing?

CM: Just be real. This is the thing about net zero: everyone’s net zero now. Even fossil fuel companies. For example: In Canada, there's recurring advertising complaints against the Pathways Alliance of Oil Sands companies. They literally do ads everywhere. You go on a plane, you go on a train, you open your newspaper, you turn on the TV, and there's ads where they're like, “We're net zero.” But their emissions are going up. They're the largest percentage of emissions in Canada.

In our report, we’re very clear. Money needs to stop going into dirty fossil fuels. The IEA has been very clear about no new fossil fuel infrastructure. And we need to scale money to clean [energy] now. If you are not doing those things, while also considering a just transition, then you’re not net zero.

Leaders, I honestly think, are so captured by fossil fuel interests. There's a law in Canada that shows how much lobbying goes on. What you don't get to say is, “I care about climate, I'm a climate leader, I’m going to have a big summit, and I'm net zero by 2050.” No. The only thing that matters is what you are doing now.

AS: You implemented the very first national carbon price in Canada in 2018, making it one of the first G7 nations to have one. How is it playing out? And given that Canada’s emissions are still rising from the oil and gas sector, what more needs to be done?

CM: In terms of the oil and gas sector, the price is not significant enough right now to have an impact. Because they're making absolutely obscene profits, and they're not investing them in clean energy.

Obviously, the price is not having the impact one would want. And the oil and gas industry is the largest source of emissions in Canada. So to meet our 2030 target, we need a cap on emissions. Not a cap on production—a cap on emissions. They said they want to be net zero. Great, reduce your emissions and put your money towards clean energy.

AS: Is there anything that you’re working on that you are really excited about?

CM: One of the things that I've always been passionate about since I was a minister was large-scale conservation with Indigenous peoples. I just think if we’re going to meet the targets that we set of protecting 30 percent of nature by 2030, it’s only possible because so much of the land is Indigenous land. There’s really great conservation organizations, including Enduring Earth, that bring together the large conservation organizations globally to do this.

I also really believe in supporting women who are working on climate, whether it's girls, Indigenous women, grassroots women, or women leaders globally. But I also just think it’s really fun, because most of the women I meet just get shit done.

duck shapiro

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Jul 23, 2023Polarizing conservative commentator Ben Shapiro hated "Barbie," so much so that he aired his complaints in a 43-minute video review — which included an edit of himself setting fire to Barbie dolls...

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Ben Shapiro Destroys Dolls While Having A Total Meltdown Over 'Barbie' Movie

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