Australian actor Margot Robbie doesn’t remember having a Barbie doll, as a young girl growing up in Australia. Her cousin had Barbies and perhaps they all joined Robbie in admiring a dandelion-decorated mudpie or two made for an afternoon tea in the Australian Gold Coast sandbox.

Updated July 10. 2023:

‘Barbie’: First Reactions From the Premiere Hollywood Reporter

In my case, making mudpies was the start of a long creative and entrepreneurial career. One cannot think of culinary delights without wondering if Martha Stewart ever made mudpies.

I speak of real mud mudpies, not a volume of Martha’s very best mud pie recipes or a Mississippi Mud Pie cake instead of a pie. The Queen of the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue has a history of giving women not one but several options for creating the very. best mud pie-inspired desserts.

Google tells me there is no Martha Stewart Barbie doll, but America’s kitchen queen created a Miniature Dollhouse Martha Stewart Barbie Cook Book back in the day. Betty Crocker may have beat out Martha with an entire series of Barbie’s mini cook books.

It would be one of the few times Martha lost a competition, because Barbies were always reaching for the high bar in life. Failure was not an option. If we think more deeply, a battle between Martha Stewart — and all she has achieved in life — vs Betty Crocker symbolizes the fight for feminism in America. Speaking personally it does symbolize an East Coast vs Middle America battle in gender relations.

Fast-foward to now, and Barbie’s scheduled touchdown in American movie theaters remains July 21, 2023.

The Summer issue of American Vogue weighs into the frenzy, putting Margot Robbie as Barbie on the cover. Robbie is lensed by Middle America to East Coast photographer, Caledonia, Michigan’s own Ethan James Green [IG].

Gabriella Karefa-Johnson styles the blonde goddess in pink Versace for the cover, Bottega Veneta, Carolina Herrera, Chanel Haute Couture, Christopher John Rogers, Maison Margiela, Marc Jacobs, Marni, Miu Miu, Proenza Schouler, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, Valentino Haute Couture and more.

Abby Aguirre gets real with Robbie in “Barbiemania! Margot Robbie Opens Up About the Movie Everyone’s Waiting For”.

When pitching her company LuckyChap, the production outfit she runs with her friend Josey McNamara and her husband, Tom Ackerley, to Mattel’s new CEO of Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, at the Polo Lounge in 2018, Robbie was clear about the road ahead.

“We of course would want to honor the 60-year legacy that this brand has,” Robbie says. “But we have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who aren’t fans of Barbie. And in fact, aren’t just indifferent to Barbie. They actively hate Barbie. And have a real issue with Barbie. We need to find a way to acknowledge that.”

The political landscape is a Barbie minefield in this moment, with Republican men and a few women wanting to hustle [or hurl] Barbie and feminism back to the pre Civil War days — so far back that we will forget that Martha Stewart ever existed and only speak Betty Crocker Mississippi Mud Pies Americans-only English.

Trump was president in 2018, but I seriously doubt either Mattel or Robbie imagined the intensity of the culture wars playing out in America.

Robbie Is Prone to Setting Kitchen Fires

After negotiating her butt off with Mattel and Warner Brothers, Robbie’s LuckyChap locked down complete creative freedom for director/screenwriter team Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach to write the screenplay.

Robbie and Ackerley read the Barbie script at the same time. A certain joke on page one sent their jaws to the floor. “We just looked at each other, pure panic on our faces,” Robbie recalls. “We were like, Holy fucking shit.” When Robbie finished reading: “I think the first thing I said to Tom was, This is so genius. It is such a shame that we’re never going to be able to make this movie.”

More facts about the structure of the film are revealed in the Vogue interview. I leave it to readers to decide if you want to know by reading the entire interview. It could be fun to just let the movie reveal itself — but the structure does look fascinating.

Update: New Trailer is Out

As for Barbie and Martha, Margot Robbie makes it very clear that she is prone to lighting the kitchen on fire.

She’s lit three Christmas hams on fire at this point. The last time was because the cooked ham wasn’t crispy enough. Ackerley has a lot of kitchen gadgets around, including a blowtorch. “So I was like, Great, I’ll blowtorch it,” Robbie says. “Somehow I even messed that up. The whole top of it fell off. The lighter fluid went on my hand. Everyone was screaming. Weirdly, I wasn’t injured at all. It lit on fire and then I went like that.” She brushes one hand with the other, miming how she put the fire out. “It was like a magic trick.”

Will Barbie Be Banned in Florida?

My thoughts are several. Will Republican, right-wing presidential candidate Ron DeSantis ban ‘Barbie’ in Florida movie theaters? Will Barbie be dragged into the culture wars in ways we never imagined?

Nebraska senator Josh Hawley has a new book out Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.

In a 2017 speech to the “American Renewal Project”, Nebraska Senator Josh Hawley dropped the gauntlet on the subject of individual liberty and human rights in America, referencing the writings of retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, and highlighted by the New York Times:

“At the heart of liberty,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
The fifth-century church fathers were right to condemn this terrifying variety of heresy, Mr. Hawley argued: “Replacing it and repairing the harm it has caused is one of the challenges of our day.”
“There is not one square inch of all creation over which Jesus Christ is not Lord.”

Barbie Lovers Must Unite

You may reside in the political camp that says we are all weak in the knees worrying about Hawley’s predictions for America. If so, consider the reality that it’s Sen. Josh Hawley’s lawyer wife Erin Morrow Hawley worked on the lawsuit that became the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision last month in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson which ending the constitutional right to an abortion.

Erin Hawley, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, is a lead attorney in the battle to end medical abortion.

In a March 2023 hearing in Amarillo, ADF attorney Erin Morrow Hawley argued that allowing abortion medication to remain on the market was an “affront to the states,” in that it denied states that had banned abortion the ability to “protect the health and welfare of women and children within their boundaries.”

The judge in Amarillo, Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk agreed with Hawley and went further by attacking the FDA approval of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that has been on the market for more than 20 years. Erin Morrow Hawley is also a lead lawyer to overturn and discredit the FDA approval of mifepristone. Judge Kacsmaryk is also a contributor to the Sen. Josh Hawley campaign.