What’s Real Life: Jumping on the Barbie Bandwagon or Pulling the Honey Wagon?

Barbie is made of plastic, nothing but a lifeless toy that is trying to duplicate reality: All image, no substance. Like Doll, like Movie.

Plastic, plastic, plastic. 

And I think that it is why it is such a hit making millions of dollars. Because where there is plastic, there is no real humanity, only the nostalgia of a little girl lost in a make-believe world. Playing pretend is easy, shallow, and a fun way to escape…but it is not real life.

And while the world was obsessing over the significance of this contrived narrative about Barbie — arguing over plastic, feminist ideals, and why men are toxic — I was far away from the constant noise of social media because I was camping with my family. And let me tell you, camping is not a plastic, make-believe, endeavor. It is as earthy and substantive as you can get. Case in point: the Honey Wagon.

For those who are novice campground campers, the Honey Wagon is that funny little contraption people use to empty their sewage water from the RV trailer when you don’t have a full hookup. I was forced to learn about the Honey Wagon seven years ago and since that time I have become a sewage expert. The camper we were using started overflowing when the water in the bathtub started rising up instead of draining down. I was panicking because it was rising fast and it was almost at the point where the whole camper was going to be flooded with stinky water. As a camping novice, I didn’t realize that every time my wife washed the dishes the water was raising the level in the camper’s already overflowing holding tanks.

In my panic, I asked a friendly-looking, white-haired, long-bearded grandpa camper next to our lot to check out our water problem and see if he knew how to fix it. That is when he introduced me to the Honey Wagon. He said, “I’ll help you out, Sonny.” So he put on some thick plastic work gloves, pulled up a little tank with wheels, and attached it to the back end of the camper where the black and gray water pipe was located. (Black water contains toilet waste, and Gray water has sink and shower water; both stink and carry killer bacteria — the stuff of a classic camping nightmare.) He then proceeded to show me how to drain the camper, and then pull the Honey Wagon to the campground’s sewage dump station. He was a kind old fella, but for some reason when he was showing me how to empty the tank everyone around my campsite decided to leave and take a walk. It was probably that smell of death that wafted up from the sewage tube.

I asked my wife and daughters if they wanted to learn about the Honey Tank, and they kindly said, “No thanks!” No thanks? They left me and the old man to do it alone. It was at that exact moment I made a startling realization as I was pulling the Honey Tank over to the sewage dump, I never once saw a woman wanting to get involved. And when I arrived at the sewage dump, I also noticed that every time an RV pulled up to empty the sewage, a dad, grandpa, oldest son, or kind-faced man always seemed to be the ones who were given the task of doing the emptying. I wonder, where were all the Barbies, and why couldn’t I find at least one pink-dressed, high-heeled shoe wearing beauty pulling a Honey Tank?

This year, I camped next to my brother-in-law who was not yet introduced to the Honey Wagon. After the third day of camping, I saw that same look of death panic on his face when he said, “I don’t understand it, but it seems like all my drains are clogged because the sink and bathtub are filling with water!!!” Being the sewage pro that I now am, I said, “My dear man, I can help you! But I first need to teach you the ways of the Honey Wagon. As the old proverb goes, ’Catch a fish for a man, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.’ Empty the sewage for a day, you go poop-free for a week. Teach a man the Honey Wagon ways, you camp without stink for a lifetime!” So I pulled the Honey Wagon over, and showed him, his son, and his son-in-law all the tricks of the sewage brigade trade. As we were pulling the Honey Wagon to the dump station, another rather shy man said, “Hey, I have always wanted to know how to do that. What do you call that cart you are pulling?” And my brother-in-law in smiling pride said, “That sir, is called a Honey Wagon.”

When we returned back to the campsite with a clean and empty trailer, you should have seen the faces of all the women. His wife was smiling and proud of her man, his daughters were smiling and proud of their dad, and his son-in-law thumped his chest and said to his wife, “Now we can get our own RV because I know how to use the Honey Wagon!” Ah, the real-life lessons learned from the Honey Wagon. 

  1. I learned that there are natural tasks that women will gladly let men do. And when they do it, they smile. 
  2. You can’t play pretend when poop is rising in your camper.
  3. There is no such thing as competition when it comes to who wants to pull the Honey Wagon.

Yesterday, I was watching Greta Gerwig talk to the ladies on the View discussing the Barbie movie. She is the writer and director of the film, and because of its success, she is now the Hollywood golden girl. All the ladies were both praising her and then moaning and groaning about how all the toxic conservative men hate her movie because they don’t want women to have “agency.” And now they celebrated that finally, through the example of Barbie, women of this world can finally claim all the agency they have been denied for thousands of years!

Agency?

What does that even mean? In a plastic world, agency means “I can finally be the star of the story. I will get the recognition I have been denied all my life. I can finally, have my cake and eat it too.” But if I was on the View, I would like to ask Greta one simple question, “Have you ever used a Honey Wagon, or did your dad and brothers have to deal with it?” Because pulling the Honey Wagon would give her true agency. I will bet she has never been camping, because in her elite, make-believe world of Hollywood, you don’t lower yourself to live in real life where poop, pain, and paying bills are everyday problems for you.

Using Barbie, a make-believe plastic doll, to determine reality is playing pretend. You can make up whatever you want when you get to write the script for the movie using pretty people to play silly parts. But when you try to live in reality, you will quickly realize that both men and women must work together to clean up the poop. For all the women out there that hate men, ask yourself this, “When is the last time you emptied the Honey Wagon?”