Introducing the Australian Girl Doll. Yes, rather like the American Girls Dolls, but more importantly, sooo much not a Bratz doll.
(Thanks Hoyden About Town ).
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Twitter: move along, nothing to see here
- Never mind th 3 hours of sleep a night claim, I still cant get over th "never raising voice at one's children". Bow humbly. 1 hour ago
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oh my!
The American Girl dolls do look like girls, although not quite like the Australian Girls, which appear in the picture to have more baby-doll proportions. But there’s nothing inappropriately sexualized about either version. I wish, wish, wish the American Girl stuff weren’t so damn expensive and so consumerist and so focused on doing the doll’s hair, because the books aren’t bad and the stories are about real stuff. So far we have invested in a fair number of the books but only one doll. We are being lobbied for a second doll, though.
It’s been a long time since I wanted a toy!
I did like Barbies as a child and also the Cabbage Patch Dolls. But mostly I just played with stuffed animals. I do think when you get dolls with hair, it starts to become more about beauty and stuff like that.
I think with the Barbies though that we had elaborate storylines. I think sometimes we cut their hair off, but I don’t remember paying much attention to their clothes or hair.
I want to say that Barbie didn’t have an effect on my body image. But I did later have an eating disorder so who knows….
we were given a doll from Oxfam that the girls both love:
http://www.oxfamshop.org.au/pages/91297
it amazes me how much they like her. While I often find some of the steiner stuff charmingly loopy, they really seem to be onto something as far as dolls go.
I think these Australian girls are kind of on the right track, but it bothers me still that they are so WASPy and samey, with their long hair and western features.
And how Bindi is blondie?
When my niece asked me for a Bratz doll, I really felt sad. Her mother is just as anti-Bratz doll as I am, so the little sneak was making the rounds to all relatives – looking for someone who didn’t know the ‘no Bratz’ rule. I’m glad there are some good alternatives out there. Now if I can only make them cool…
They’re nice, and the idea is good.
But… are all Australian girls really that white? Maybe I live in some weird on-shore island but in my street there’s the muslims-from-india next door, the bananas across the road, the semites-from-russia on the other side… oh, and the 18 year old white “girl” down a couple of houses.
Those are actually pretty disappointing. Looking at the promo material on the site I kept seeing cartoons of a black girl and an asian girl, and wondering where the dolls for them were.
Then I realised that the two slightly-less-white dolls on the left of the group photo were them. (Maybe they’re really, really badly lit and photoshopped and are more realistically pigmented in actuality.)
To top it off, the racist stereotyping is sad: the “asian” girl plays violin; the “black” girl is rough and physical; the two white girls are assigned the “I like animals!” and “I like the beach!” girly stereotypes, aligning feminine norms with whiteness.
American Girl is just as bad for stereotypes. Their skin tones are at least unabashed, though non-white American Girl dolls are a tiny fraction of the line.
habladora – I agree, these dolls are so sincere I wince. I want them to work so much, but it’s a tough road for a sincere doll when she’s battling the Bratz.
moz & Sax – I, too found them a bit anglophied but two women commenting on the original Hoyden About Town post disagreed and one was Indigenous and the other one had an Indigenous child, so.. while these dolls aren’t perfect, they’re getting some things very right.
I really like your blog, I only just found it today. I hate those bratz dolls, but ym children don’t play with plastic toys anyway,so we won’t even have the discussion about why they are not allowed these dolls. ( I actually doubt that my daughter would want them, anyway! They are so ugly & ridiculous!)
Thanks Miri – look forward to exploring your blog too.
I wonder if they still make Ginny dolls. Those were my favorite–and a favorite of my mother, whose fierce hatred of Barbie dolls seemed like just a funny quirk of hers then. (Sorry, Mom–I swear, I so get it now.)
I like those Australian girl dolls. My daughter has a few American Girl dolls and she loves them. Bratz dolls are the worst by the way. I was really hoping Mattel would do away with them when they won the lawsuit.