One of the more difficult to parse changes in the past few years as it pertains to tracking shifts in the news has been trying to find the line in the sand between what actually constitutes “news” and what is, for lack of a better way to say it, everything else. Social media has complicated this enormously. For however much it has empowered the average person, this capability is still largely dependent on infrastructure. Even when plausibly unintentional, our continued gamification of reality has unintended effects, and it renders most of the heuristics we use for determining the veracity of information fairly insolvent. This coincides with a global propaganda war waged on several fronts, using SEO, LLMs, and paid ads as weapons against minority groups with no social or economic capital with which to push back.

Yet for transgender people, the consensus belief in our continual, uninterrupted existence is questioned constantly. When we share with the world who we are, the world decides if it is willing to accommodate the clear fact of existence, often independent of how such accommodation or lack thereof will affect us. Many of us have had someone tell us we are dead to them. Many of us have had to completely uproot our lives and come into fresh settings to start anew. We must constantly beg for the healthcare we need by offering substantial proof that its absence will kill us, and from people who deadpan tell us that they could wish for nothing else. Even in subtle, often benign ways such as by loved ones who hang pictures of us prior to transition in their homes.

Like most people, I have a complicated relationship with Barbie. I was in the single digits in the 80’s, and in high school in the 90’s. I remember the first studies which came out showing how profoundly the franchise had accelerated already impossible beauty standards, amplifying an already out-of-control epidemic of disordered eating and body image challenges. I remember when someone sat down and did the math, from which several eating disorder specialists postulated that based on the proportions of her untenably long legs, tiny waist and enormous bust, she would have spinal problems before she was middle-aged.