From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kietrow-F. This is The Daily.

This weekend, with Hollywood and turmoil over declining ticket sales and a massive labor strike,

all eyes are turning to Barbie, a new film that is trying to pull off a seemingly impossible task.

That task is to take a doll best known for reinforcing conventional stereotypes of women and somehow rebrand it as a symbol of feminism,

all without coming off as a shameless ad for the doll's maker, Mattel.

Today, journalist Willa Pascon on her conversation with the film's director, Greta Gerwig,

about how she approached that challenge and why America remains so endlessly fascinated by Barbie.

It's Friday, July 21st.

Willa, you wrote about Barbie and the making of Barbie the film for The New York Times Magazine,

which is what we're here to talk about.

But just to start, talk to me about your relationship to Barbie.

I wish that I could say that I had a really intimate relationship with Barbie or a profound one, but I don't really.

I played with Barbies when I was a kid, but I can't say that they were particularly memorable. They were just one of many dolls.

I probably have thought about them more as a parent than I ever did as a child.

Why more is a mother? I'm not yet a mom, but I'm going to be soon, and so this could be useful for me.

Yeah, I have felt that when it comes to Barbies resistance is sort of futile. I did not buy any Barbies,

and that was sort of intentional, and yet there are, I think, over a dozen Barbies in our house,

and how other people have purchased them, and they've wandered into the house.

I think the statistic is something like 90% of three to 10-year-old girls own a Barbie,

and in America, three to six-year-old girls, on average, they have 12 each. That's insane.

Yeah, I think this is like the thing about Barbie is like...

You cannot escape Barbie, and there's an element of that that was true even before the movie.

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