If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the flamingo-pink press, here’s today’s big news: Warner Bros.’s Barbie is now in theaters. The question of Barbie’s suitability for young girls is as much a fixture of the zeitgeist as Barbie herself. Barbie’s original inventors conceived of the doll as an aspirational figure; in Barbie, a little girl could envision her future self. The Barbie movie is another opportunity to recast the doll’s image. In the movie, a real-world teenager tells Barbie she’s the definition of “unrealistic physical ideals, sexualized capitalism and rampant consumerism.”Likewise, director Greta Gerwig has told Barbie-goers to expect her usual feminist flair from the movie, with a healthy dose of cheeriness and thoughtfulness.

Source: Forbes July 21, 2023 20:33 UTC