Dissecting Barbie
Ben Radford

Being a skeptical paranormal investigator is something of a mixed bag. The pay is just okay, there are no groupies to speak of, and we only get the last ten seconds of TV programs to refute the previous hours’ worth of dubious claims.

I’m best known for my investigations into mysteries such as lake monsters, ghosts, Bigfoot, psychics, and so on. Those are all well and good, but I realized long ago that critical thinking errors are rampant in other, more mundane, aspects of everyday life. It’s easy to criticize faulty information and logic in claims about a UFO, but what about gaps in logic and information regarding, say, weapons of mass destruction or social issues?

Partly to help fill that gap, I wrote Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us. (I am not gratuitously plugging my well-reviewed book Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us, I’m just letting you know that I tackle social and political issues, not paranormal ones, on page after page of insightful, golden prose.)

As a skeptic and as an independent thinker, my allegiance is to rationality, intellect, and what seems reasonable to me. Good ideas come from all over the spectrum, and because of this, I sometimes find that I’m skeptical of skeptics. I find that I sometimes agree with a general position while finding the logic and evidence supporting specific claims to be devastatingly inaccurate. It’s easy to ignore illogic and faulty thinking in arguments that supports your beliefs, while attacking the same errors in claims against your position. I follow the evidence and let the chips fall where they may.

Since I’m writing this for Skepchicks, I’ll focus on an example dealing with gender. I have supported many women-friendly organizations, and that’s why I was excited about Skepchicks, and eager to contribute.
First, a little background: In some ways I suppose I’m a feminist. I fully believe in equality for women; I love and respect women, and have made efforts to encourage girls to be interested in science. One of my favorite film characters was Contact’s Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster’s character); she’s strong, independent, sexy, an atheist, and almost always the smartest one in the room. (I, like many men, find brainy women very sexy, but that’s a topic for a future article.)

At times I find myself in the somewhat awkward position of criticizing feminists. The problem is the high bullshit quotient in much of the feminist literature. I’ve read many seminal books like Susan Faludi’s Backlash, Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth—and been appalled at the lack of critical thinking I saw in them. Unsupported statements, the use of anecdotes instead of science, logical fallacies, straw women arguments, you name it. And not just one or two, but pages of them! While I agreed with the general theses of the influential books, they were so rife with faulty arguments that I could not take them seriously, much less use them as reputable sources. (Christina Hoff Sommers’s book Who Stole Feminism? is a potent antidote to the silliness.)

This article is not about feminism but instead about skepticism regarding the perpetual feminist target Barbie. Barbie was one of the best-selling toys this past holiday season. Mattel’s world-famous fashion doll has become a cash cow, selling nearly $2 billion of merchandise each year. Barbie has also become part of many a girl’s childhood.

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