To preempt the obvious questions out of the gate: no, I haven’t seen Barbie yet. Yes, I’m planning to at some point.
Now on to the important stuff. The Barbie content industry is out in full force, which is the sort of thing people in my line of work tend to do around a big pop culture moment—because lovely readers like you tend to eat all of it up.
It goes without saying, however, that not all of this content is created equally. Even if we had the time, none of us need to consume every Barbie story, review, listicle, and thinkpiece floating on the internet. But you do need to check out this one, by ESPN’s David Fleming. Apparently the holy grail of Barbies is Dallas Mavericks-themed, and Fleming found a mother and daughter who have been searching for it since 1999.
So begins a journey that takes us from Alabama to California to Germany to Arlington. It’s an eye-opening, heartwarming read, and not only because we get a Hot Rod Williams reference. Because, as Marilyn Harvey, the mother in this story, says of her quest, “This is about finishing what you start and believing in what you’re doing, and if it’s meaningful to you, that’s all that really matters.”
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