Barbie Is Officially Woke — And A YouTube Vlogger (HBO)

MARINA DEL REY, California — She’s got brown hair and brown eyes, and she’s dressed in a black Lycra suit. That’s right: It’s the famous Mattel doll Barbie, in the flesh. And she’s woke as hell. Her name is America Young, and for the past three years, she’s donned a motion-capture suit every month as part of Mattel’s effort to bring the 59-year-old icon into the digital age. On shoot days, Young is presented with a script that she quickly reviews and acts out in Barbie’s “bedroom,” an empty white room but for a few sets of stacked apple boxes that represent furniture. As Young performs, animators take notes as they work to turn the stick figure on their screens into the familiar blonde — supplemented with a human edge. Despite Barbie’s universal fame, kids weren’t playing with her like they used to, Mattel says — they want iPads, instead. So in 2015, Barbie got her own vlog. Today, she has nearly 5 million subscribers on YouTube, an audience that