BlogHer - dolls - Comments

Ethical Dolls

Another Gray Hair — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:18:15 -0500

I saw these dolls in Family Fun and was impressed with the concept. My daughter is a little young (2) for anything like this but I would certainly consider purchasing one if she were older.

I have no doubt that they will be called fascist or socialist by some pundit somewhere. It's inevitable. People don't take too kindly to flagrant social responsibility.

Julianne Hale
http://www.anothergrayhair.com

Thanks!

Maria Niles — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 01:53:03 -0500

Thank you Laurie and Claire. And thank you for yet another fantastic pop culture post Mme. SJ. And to answer your question, clearly in my case, an empowerment tool because mama raised me right. ;-)

Kleenex® Let It Out™ Blog
Beyond Help

Luxurious furry boa! Long, blonde hair to style lots of ways!

5resolutions — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 23:32:47 -0500

Maria, your comment cracked me up, as did this great post. I won my first Barbie at a birthday party raffle. Up until that point, my mother had forbidden Barbies (for reasons that seem noble now, but were completely lost on me then). Pink & Pretty Barbie was the grand prize! She was mine, fair and square. Mom was forced to throw in the towel.

So with all this talk about modern slutty dolls, I went to trusty internets to see how my beloved Barbie would compare. Old girl is not so classy. She's spent way too much time at the tanning salon and her 20 absolutely dreamy looks are all about the glitter and fur trim. That said, Mattel was thoughtful enough to include a "Doll Needs Support to Stand" warning/reality check on the box. After all, those hooker heels can be treacherous.

Check her out. She's stunning...
http://cgi.ebay.com/Stunning-1981-Pink-Pretty-Barbie-Doll-NRFB-No-3554_W...

I'm more than a little tempted to place a bid. Is that so wrong? It would be ironic. Or something.

Claire Mysko
5 Resolutions to Transform the Fashion and Beauty Industries

Maria, you are fabulous.

lauriewrites — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 22:51:49 -0500

...only partially because you tell the best stories. And they're true. : )

Laurie

Tattoos and Dashikis

Maria Niles — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:21:48 -0500

My mother would not buy dolls for me so of course I wanted one desperately. We went to a toy lending library as kids and got credits for returning things on time. I saved my credits to exchange for a giant blonde doll.

This was in the 60's and I promptly gave her tattoos of peace signs and black power fists. Then when my mother taught me to sew for my girl scout badge I dressed her in homemade dashikis.

Just one of the several charmingly strange tales of my childhood.

Kleenex® Let It Out™ Blog
Beyond Help

My mother was anti-Barbie

Tacomamama — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:23:36 -0500

But she never made a big deal out of it. I was allowed to get them as gifts, for example.

I remember owning 1 actual Barbie. I still vividly remember the taste of her foot. So chewy and satisfying, and it never seemed to come apart no matter how much I gnawed on it. (They just don't make things like they used to. Sigh.)

Anyway, I try not to make it a big thing with my girls. My youngest would play with every pretty princess thing imaginable if she could, but her big sister does an excellent job of scattering them all over the house in a state of random undress, so she doesn't often have the chance to get them all together for organized pretend play. I bought each girl a superhero barbie (Supergirl and Wonder Woman) a few Xmases ago, and other than that if they own anything like that it was given to them by someone else.

My take on it has always been that you give a thing more power when you turn it into the forbidden fruit. Suddenly it's not just a Barbie or a Bratz doll, it's a forbidden, unattainable symbol of beauty and glamor. None of them actually look like anything authentically human, anyway.

Dolly good times

Suzanne Reisman — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:51:56 -0500

I loved dolls when I was a naive girl who believed that I would follow my mom's exact footsteps in life: first I'd be a teacher, then a mom, then a part-time bank teller, and then a grossly underpaid cashier at the local drug store. Even after I realized what a bad plan that would be for me, I played with Barbies. My Barbies were always getting it on with Ken (sort of like on "The Bachelor" - there's one guy that nine women are fighting over) so I'm not sure how much worse Bratz dolls are except that they repulse me.

As usual, excellent post. You are sooooo heeeelarious, SJ. I'd definitely buy any future nieces and nephews an SJ doll if there was one.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

This is such a fraught

WhatLadder — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 17:07:51 -0500

This is such a fraught issue, and I totally duck it in my house because my kid likes to play with animals much more than dolls. She has a few Barbies that other people have given us, and they mostly just stay in their rubbermaid box, while the lego people and plamobil people who have very little in the way of differentiated body shapes get the most play.

I like the idea of the Sophia dolls, but their advertising copy is kind of a creepy mixture of the worst kind of pseudo-wiccan guff and hard sell - the message that you should pick a doll based on how you feel about it was kind of undermined by the cheery "Collect them all!" at the end of the article. Also, those drawings showed a disturbing amount of nipple; clearly there's a line between anatomically correct and woah, nellie.

I've said this before, but

kperfetto — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:33:24 -0500

I've said this before, but Bratz look like blow-up dolls. Am I the only one who sees this?

I played Barbies as a kid. I'm not ashamed of it; I don't try to hide it. I still managed to grow up with a healthy body image, I think. There were no PC dolls. We were pretty much limited to the blonde, Superstar Barbie. I do remember wishing there were more choices, of course -- and I used to color their hair dark and paint over the eyes with a black marker. I even drew braces and pimples on a few of them - and gave one unfortunate doll a breast reduction. (This worked best on the cheap, dime-store knock-offs whose plastic was a lot thinner.)

Available Light & Five Dollar Radio

Hmm. I was never that much

Mrs.Micah — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 13:05:41 -0500

Hmm. I was never that much into dolls myself, precisely because most weren't good for playing with. Barbie has a limited number of uses. Stuffed animals, on the other hand, were big in my house. And fortunately, I've never (yet) seen a skanky sheep.

I don't know what I'll do for my daughters if they turn out to be the doll types.

Edit: I'm actually quite fond of Fulla. She doesn't have as unrealistic a body as Barbie and she's brunette. I think one reason I didn't take to dolls was the scarcity of nice brunette ones with brown eyes when I was a kid.