People started looking at Barbie as a bad thing.

Like, how dare this Barbie wear makeup?

How dare she be fashionable?

This is, you know, perpetuating the patriarchy.

And it's like, Barbie's doing this for her.

She's not doing this for anybody else.

B.J. Colangelo is a writer and editor at Slash Film, where she's recently written a piece

called the Only Guide to Barbie War you will ever need.

An extremely comprehensive look at the cultural icon, the cultural movement that is Barbie.

She also hosts the podcast This Ends at Prom with her wife Harmony that analyzes movies

made for teenage girls.

On this episode, B.J. will go through the moral panics, conspiracy theories, and misunderstandings

that follow this incredibly controversial toy, starting way back in the 1960s and continuing

into this very day, instigated by conservatives and feminists alike.

B.J.'s passion for understanding the impact of this patron saint of girlhood, both the

positive and the negative, caused me to rethink everything I thought I knew.

After making this episode and seeing the movie this weekend, which I absolutely loved,

and despite my genderqueer fear of America's pinkest lady, I can now say officially that

I'm a Barbie boy.

I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American hysteria.

Hello B.J.

Thank you so much for coming on here.

...