Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says that he’s calculated where life in plastic exists.
By now, most of us know that a trip to Barbie Land requires travel by car, boat, spaceship, snowmobile, bicycle, camper van and, naturally, neon rollerblades. Still, leave it to the internet’s top guy on the science of things to pinpoint the location inhabited by Barbie, Ken, Allan and... er, Midge.
In a post shared to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Tyson shared his hypothesis on the whereabouts of Barbie Land.
Tyson’s post featured a screen capture from the movie, directed by Greta Gerwig. In the image, Barbie (Margot Robbie) overlooks her pink plastic world, also known as Barbie Land.
Though the movie's production designer Sarah Greenwood told TODAY.com that Barbie’s home was built on the Warner Bros. Studios lot in London, Tyson’s theory places the “real” Barbie Land elsewhere.
“In @BarbieTheMovie , the Moon’s orientation places Barbie World between 20 & 40 deg North Latitude on Earth,” his tweet reads. “Palm trees further constrain latitude between 20 & 30 deg. The Sun & Moon rose & set over the ocean. If it’s in the US, Barbie World lands somewhere in the Florida Keys.”
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In the post’s comments section, users were quick to chime in with jokes and observations based on Tyson’s theory.
“I wouldn’t expect anything else for Barbie,” a user remarked.
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“Cosmic Sherlock,” another user commented.
Meanwhile, another user quipped, “Ken is Florida man.”
Gerwig previously told Architectural Digest that the set design for Barbie Land was inspired by Palm Springs, California.
Tyson’s observations about “Barbie” didn’t end with her location, however. In a separate tweet, Tyson shared a video of himself which included his thoughts about modern criticisms of Barbie.
“But what did Barbie not do?” he continued in the video. “You talked about socialization... other dolls were babies. So you’re a young girl, and you’re trained to care for a baby and feed it and isn’t that socialization? You’re gonna have to care for little children, and that’s gonna be your job. That’s your role in society. Barbie was not a homemaker... She might have had a baking dress, but most of them were not.
The scientist then explains that though Barbie had Ken, but he was “mostly irrelevant in her life.”
“Did she long to be married and settle down and have children? None of those outfits indicated this to me,” he explained. “I think of all these other ways one could have been socialized by a doll. And we’re not. It’s curious that it received as much resistance as it did.”
Tyson points out that there is a case to be made against Barbie in terms of how she defined body expectations for young girls before pointing to boy-geared toys like GI Joes, which could have potentially socialized the children who had such a toy to be interested in war and killing people they’ve never met before.
“I played with toy guns. For goodness sake. That’s how old I am,” he explained. “Where was the outrage at the time over that?”
On Aug. 4 Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager also expressed their own opinions in the defense of the criticisms the movie received after its release.
“You know what I love? That a doll that never said one word is teaching women to use their voices,” Jenna said at the time.
“If you’re bothered by the fact that women are empowered (by the movie), then probably, there’s a problem,” Hoda added.
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