Mattel scares little girls with Monster High Dolls
Move over Bratz dolls. Childhood sexualization has new spokesmodels.
Here, the Twin Cities’ Jenny Ginther and Krista Carpenter, co-leaders of the body image group at Water’s Edge Counseling, talk about the Mattel’s controversial Monster High Doll Clawdeen Wolf, which is being marketed to girls age 6 and up.
Amy Jussel covers it all in this post at Shaping Youth.
Thanks to Trevor for the tip.
March 17th, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I tried to ‘balance’ the contextual focus of her being a ‘werewolf’ (thus the hairy focus) but let’s be frank, Mattel is seeding insecurities for profit (again) and the anorexic thin horrific vamp/tramp mini/mean girl bit (did you read some of the comments on the YouTube characterization from tweens? ugh) makes it all the more disturbing that we continue to pump this mind pollution into the marketplace to begin with…
Like sewage that splatters on anyone in the blast zone, you don’t have to ‘buy it’ to be tainted by it. bleh. Thanks for linking to my “It’s a Monster Problem” post: http://www.shapingyouth.org/?p=14209 Just saw another one citing some positive ‘what would we prefer to see on toy shelves?’ worthy commentary about parenting girls: http://wp.me/pLzVT-ei
January 20th, 2012 at 12:28 am
How does this promote sexuality?
The fact the doll is based on a character that’s supposedly a teenager? Why is shaving bad? Someone at the character’s supposed age would have more body hair logically right? Plus it factors into the fact that the character who is a werewolf, like a dog shedding or something…When you look at it that way I’m sure you’ll find it much less “sexualized”. Besides, children who read the part about “having hair other places than her legs” won’t even jump to what I’m assuming these women did; especially if the children don’t have extra body hair yet, and haven’t been exposed to it.
Wanting to hide the image/idea of extra body hair from children promotes the thought to them that body hair is unsightly and disgusting, maybe leading to an early desire to shave–not things like this doll.
The fact is, people don’t buy dolls for their personalities–they buy what is more visually appealing to them. Although, I WOULD like to point out that the Monster High dolls are based off of characters that are now present in books, web-series episodes, and other places. So the Monster High characters technically do have personalities children can be, and are familiar with. Clawdeen wants to be an entrepreneur. I don’t see that as being a negative image to children. Of course, this is only my opinion.
Moreover, Barbies in recent years are not the same. They are still skinny. But their breasts are no longer unusually big in comparison to the dolls’ proportions. Barbie has also been in several different professions over the years.
I can’t really say the same for Bratz, though. I guess it’s all opinion based and parents have to make their own judgement calls.