It's A Barbie World

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It's International Women's Day, and here's how the world's top feminist organization is celebrating.

Pttel is also celebrating International Women's Day with seven new role models. The new Barbie lineup was inspired by the likeness of female leaders in STEM fields from around the world. The company hopes the role models, including former YouTube CEO Susan Wojiski and UK space scientist doctor Maggie addm and Pocock, will inspire the next generation of girls to pursue their passions despite women being underrepresented in stemfields.

This is so important. Kids learn so much from that toys they play with. You want them to have scientists dolls and ceo dolls that can sissor each other. From all this story, we turned a DESI Lightecki.

How's your International Woman's Day going?

Well?

Thank you for asking. It started out so great this morning. The random guy who usually yells nice ass instead yelled I respect your nice ass and this is why we march. So yeah, I was feeling pretty good. I mean, at least until I saw this Barbie story.

Wait, you don't like these brand new Barbies, but they're so accomplished. They got scientists, and they got a YouTube ceo.

Oh yeah, equally great role models. You could be a scientist who helps humanity, or you could design a YouTube algorithm that says, hey kids, if you like Pepa Pig, you'll love QAnon.

Okay, that's fair.

But some of them adoptors and engineers, and one of them is a professor.

Yeah, I know, they're all so successful, those barbies.

All.

Yeah, it's bad enough. Barbie was always hotter. Now she's smarter than me too. I want a doll that makes me feel bad about my body, not my mind.

So you're saying we should get rid of these Barbies.

Well, no, I'm not necessarily, but why can't we also have some mediocre Barbies who don't make us feel pressured?

Right, not.

Mediocrity. Not every Barbie has to be a girl boss. Let's have a Barbie who's a paralegal at a mid sized law firm, or one who works the lunch shift at a just salad. There is nothing wrong with barbiees who are just trying to make it through the day.

But Barbie's supposed.

To be aspirational.

No, no, marlin, they're not give me a barbie who's okay with letting five thousand emails pile up in her inbox. Okay, the barbie who spilled coffee on her shirt, but no, she can still get another day out of it if she puts a blazer on top. The barbie who spends her Friday nights in bed binge watching Vander Pump Rules Duncan carrot sticks into a jar of peanut butter, and letting her kids drive themselves to taekwondo. For the love of God, stop judging me, Marlon, I wasn't.

But those do feel very specific.

You're specific. My point is they don't all have to be rock stars. You think every ken is a Nobel Prize winning aeronautical engineer. No, he's just a man with a car and a pubic mound, and we all accept him. That's what I want. The dream of every woman to be as successful as an average white man.

Doesn't. So like women achieve in their dreams.

I'm sorry, are you man explaining my dreams to me on International Women's Day? I wouldn't kind of feel I feel like you want.

I swear I was not.

I think desil please.

My guest tonight makes her directorial debut with the critically acclaimed movie, which she also wrote, Cold Lady Bird. Please Welcome, Gotta goigg Hi, Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan that clip.

I think everyone is a big fan of yours, and if they aren't, they really should, because that clip is just a tiny piece of the amazingness that is this film. If you were to distill it into one thing, because I feel like it's every story, you would you say the main story in Ladybird is well.

The main story is a kind of a love story between Ladybird and her mother, and it's a conflict ridden relationship because she's seventeen and her mom is like, oh my god, I might done raising you yet they do. I'm going to send you out into the world. But there's like a lot of love there, and I find mother daughter relationships to be really rich. It's exciting, and I wanted to make a whole movie about it.

It was an interesting story in that it was told from a completely different perspective. You know, so many times it feels like stories are told from the outside where people I think, this is how a mother and daughter would fight. But I know all the women I spoke to who watched the movie went like, that was me, that was my mom, we thought, but we loved but it was complex as opposed to being a caricature. Is that something you strove for when you wrote that? Is that why you wrote it yourself?

Yeah? Well, I mean I've always loved like a great mother daughter's story, like you know, Terms of Men is one of my favorite movies, but I feel like there aren't enough of them, and I felt like when I had so when I had the script, I brought it around to different producers, most of whom are our men who have money to make movies. And if they had if I'm just saying just stroke and if they had daughters or if they'd been raised with sisters, they were like,

It's also interesting to watch a movie where women are on screen for the entire movie and it's not about men.

No. I mean yeah, I mean there are other men in the movie, wonderful men, male actors. I mean, I just have to say I have a brilliant cast and Timothy Shalomey who's also called me by your name, isn't it? Lucas Hedges and Tracy Letts and Stephen McKinley Henderson and it's a great cast of men, but there are stories or secondary and it was actually amazing because most of the time women have to be the secondary supporting characters

Idea that they're like, no, no, no, please carry a carry on.

No. Yes, you're like, please, you do all the acting, We'll just be here. No, they're they're wonderful in the movie.

When you're when you're directing your first film, it must come with all the pressure in the world. It must come with all the fear in the world. And you've gone from what I assume is is maybe a nervousness to now having your film be the most highly rated film ever on Rotten Tomatoes, right, I think, beating the previous record, which was set by Toy Story two.

Yes, Toy Story Too. But my brother thinks that Toy Story Too is like pretty perfect. And he texted me and He was like, I don't know, he's.

Going to drop your tomatoes by one.

Yeah, yeah, No, I mean it's it's it's amazing, it's I mean, my one of my favorite things about filmmaking is what a collaborative art it is, because it's you know, you have your entire cast, which they're they're so amazing, and they bring themselves to it, and then you have your crew and your your design team making it with you. So even though it was a huge leap for me, it was not like I was doing it alone. I was doing it with all these people who gave so

You you also have a lot of people who see you as you know, an indie voice, an indie star. They go like you you you are, you are the star of that world. Do you think you'd ever have aspirations to go into a mainstream film? Would you ever want to direct like a blockbuster movie? Or you against that?

No?

I would love to. I would love to have this right Oh yeah, yeah yeah, but.

You would be into that.

You have to send it to my agents? Oh wow, wow, I'm getting you guys. I accept unsolicited material. No, no, I'm I would love to. I mean, one of the big inspirations for me this year was watching you know, Patty Jenkins directing Wonderful and it was so amazing, and I just like, for me, you know, she made Monster, which is an incredible Mama and Andy, and then she made this sleep And I'm interested in all different sized canvases.

I will tell you this, after watching the film, I will not be shocked when I hear your name nominated for an Oscar. Thank you so much for being here. The Lady Birds in theaters now credit going everybody. My guest tonight is an actor, a writer, and a producer of all your favorite Things Ray. She's here to chat about her amazing career thus far and an exciting new partnership that she's kicking off.

Ray.

Welcome to the daily social Distancing Show.

Heank char DOA thank you for having me distance.

Yes, having you very distanced, although I feel like you have been somebody who I feel like you're always in my life, you know, like there are some people who make the kinds of shows that make you feel like you know them as a person, Like I would probably be one of your creepy fans who comes up to you in the streets and thinks I know you more

What a high compliment? Yes, people do.

I take it as the compliment until they start like insulting me and my character.

My literal character. But you know, I don't have to be honest, and you me, I welcome it.

What do you What do you think that is? I've always wondered how you do that, because, like, everyone can make a show, but when Ray makes her shows, there's a connectivity to it that that connects me. Even if you give like a speech at an award show, there's there's a there's a familiarity that you have that connects people to you. Have you ever wondered what that is.

I haven't.

I don't try to look at a gift towards in the mouth I and it's not something that I realized until people may bring in it.

But I think for me, it just comes down to relatability.

I do strive to like just find the commonality there and create the only one that goes through things.

I think what makes Insecure such a fantastic show and and hopefully a show that will change shows forever, is you created a show in which black women specifically can occupy all spaces and places within society. You know, there's no there's no archetype of what the black woman is supposed to be. Can be the lawyer, you can be the brocast friend, you can be the person who's focused,

It is definitely the ladder.

It was that, and I think that's what was the frustration about not seeing that on television for so long, because I was surrounded by these women who occupied so many different spaces, and I seeing that reflecting on television and it was just like, but.

This is my life, this is their life, this is my mom's friends life. So what is the problem. Where is the disconnect now?

And of course we had that during the earlier decades, but there was you know, that dearth in the early two thousand, right from two thousands, and it was just.

Like where are we and where are these women that I know so well?

And so I wanted to intentionally reflect that world just because it was missing.

The show has been extremely successful, and then you drop the bomb show on us and you tell us that Insecure is now coming to an end. The question is why, because it's.

A story and good stories end, And you know, even in pitching it that first season, I knew that I wanted to end it the f and Prentcess and I've talked about.

That and he was just like, yeah, I have that feels right.

Right, And so we've been putting towards this journey to finish telling the story. I love watching television that kind of has a that takes me a story, like there's nothing like meandering story. And so for me, I hope that people leave feeling satisfied, like, oh, I'm glad I watched that.

I'm glad I watched that story.

He told I think everyone's going to have that feeling. And what's cool is if you're an Esray fan. I mean from what I read in the magazines, there's not going to be a shortage of Eso Ray in the world. Like you are. You are doing mogul things is what the Internet calls it. You know when Twitter goes like, oh, making money moves, then you know like things are happening. Yeah, you're getting the bag, You're making the money moves. Uh, congratulations.

I mean, I'm thank you.

I am I have the time because I work with incredible people and so, like you know, there's different our company and people are.

You have incredible taste and work very hard.

And then for me next, I just want to I want to go behind the scenes, Like I love exploring the business parts of the industry.

I love producing, uh, the work of people that I'm a fan of and.

I have not made a film yet that is my personal next go. And yeah, there's just so much, so many things that I want to do, and I don't want to just do anything to do it.

I want to do things well.

To me, talk me through your your partnership with Life Water. This is this is really interesting. I saw I saw money, I saw opportunity, and I show Easter Ray and I was like, all right, I want to know what this is all about. What's happening.

So I've always in the spirit of collaboration, we wanted to find other people to work with. And you know this this industry right now talk so much about diversity

I wonder if part of the reason you did this is because in many ways, your career was also started by the people. I mean, you know, your original show was this awkward Black Girl, and you had people on a kickstart of saying, oh, we're gonna make this thing happen. Without that, you might not be here today, or maybe the journey would have taken much longer.

Without a doubt.

I know what it's like to be in those early stages and be like, I just if.

Someone just sees my work, if just that one.

Person believe me you have a platform, then that could change the game for me, or it could not. But I just need to either see this and be like this is great, or see this and be like this sucks.

Don't ever try again.

And so we are hopefully providing this platform for these artists and looking out.

For them in a way that the industry isn't necessarily doing.

Specifically by having like water commission to study to see like where there's a lack of representation in these areas. It's visual art, fashion, music, and filmmaking.

Oh okay, story, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you.

Thank you, sirv.

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