Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Bethenny Frankel calls for reality show strikes, Mandy Moore hits the picket line, and Fortune reporter Jane Thier probes whether Barbie moves the cultural icon beyond her past tropes. Have a restful weekend!
- Come on, Barbie. 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. Tens of thousands of fans already have tickets. At least some movie-goers—The Broadsheet included—will be watching to see if the film can make the much-maligned cultural icon-turned-Big Screen star palatable to her detractors.
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.
