For Melissa Wardy (and others who take the time to call out childhood sexualization and sexual objectification): Here’s a fun game to play while reading your many comments and emails.

Larger PDF version, too.

I’m visualizing a series of Bingo boards by blog topic: Junk food marketing, in-school advertising, gendered toys, etc. Interested, Mattel?

Inspired by Lauredhel’s Anti-Feminist Bingo.

Nothing chaps my hide as much as the Dove campaign for real beauty/girls’ self-esteem/what/ever.

I know this doesn’t make me popular among the #dovedifference crowd. Or with the many brand ambassadors on Dove’s payroll.

But I can’t help it.

It’s kind of like the Mattel-Monster High/Kind Campaign debacle: Competing interests represented by two entities working together.

See, Unilever makes Dove products.  And Unilever makes Axe products.

(And don’t forget the skin-whitening cremes marketed in Asia. And the diet aids — because you’re too fat — that don’t work.)

I think I’ve said pretty much all I can on the topic (see the first blog post I ever wrote and Dove’s successful marketing cycle, guaranteed: Advertise products, repair damage to girls’ self-esteem. Repeat and Girls, pay no attention to the naked supermodel sitting next to you, or, Dove’s at it again).

But now, they’ve created a Facebook app for Tunisian men:

And they’ve got a new #dovedifference campaign.

Imagine a world where every girl grows up with the self-esteem she needs to reach her full potential, and where every woman enjoys feeling confident in her own beauty. Imagine the world of possibilities we can open up by helping to build self-esteem in the people we love most.

I’m trying, Dove, I’m trying. But your boss is making it hard.

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.

Three questions:

Does the Star Tribune really have to reprint the news release write an article every time a new American Girl Doll is shipped from China to the MOA?

Do I need to point out the ridiculousness of claiming that purchasing a $100 doll will help “reverse the consequences of too much time spent indoors . . . ?”

And who would send their daughter portaging in the Boundary Waters looking like this?

There are so many ways to criticize the American Girl doll complex. If you still need convincing, Dr. Michael Rich from the Center on Media and Child Health offers this simple fact:

In short, the less that a doll, or any toy, does on its own—the fewer pre-written stories they come with, and the fewer bells and whistles that determine how a child plays with it—the better the toy is for challenging, stretching, and energizing the growing brain. . . . I encourage you to find [a doll] that isn’t branded at all. Its lack of branding and back story will allow her imagination to go wherever it takes her.*

Think before buying: Who benefits from this purchase? Is it really the child? Is it me (because *I* think it’s cute)? Or is it the multi-million dollar corporation behind it?

More about Dr. Rich, Ask the Mediatrician, and the Center on Media and Child Health.

*Susan Linn has this topic covered in The Case for Make-Believe (now available in paperback).

I was struck by President Bush’s kind words to the Obama family in his farewell address:

And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls. 

It was the “beautiful girls” that threw me. Unfortunately, I can’t make a direct comparison to the most popular descriptions of young sons who have moved into the White House — there haven’t been any in recent history — but I’m going to venture to guess that they wouldn’t have been described as handsome. Or cute. Or with any termingology that described their physical appearance.

So this is where we are. On Tuesday we’ll be witnessing an historic inauguration and on Wednesday, it will be back to business as usual for American girls: Corporate-created media images and messages telling them that their value lies only in how they look and what they buy.

No example is more appropriate than this dissection* of the premiere lifestyle brand, American Girl:

Some might argue that American Girl is not as bad as other materials on the market, or as offensive as Barbie or Bratz dolls. This argument misses the key features of what makes this phenomenon so insidious: how corporations play on the feminist and /or educative aspirations of parents, teachers, girls, and young women and turn these toward consumption. American Girl is less about strong girls, diversity or history than about marketing girlhood, about hooking girls, their parents and grandparents into buying the American Girl products and experience.

Meant to be lessons in history featuring girls, their books fail, too:

. . . any potential “girl-power” lessons are short-circuited in these books through the use of historical fiction to deliver traditional lessons about what girls can and should do. While the stories take place in key historical moments, such as the Civil War, and World War II, the girls rarely participate in historical events in any substantial way. Meet Molly is set in WWII and her father, a doctor, serves in the U.S. military. Molly’s concerns center on what to be for Halloween and how to deal with a bothersome brother. The historical fictions encourage a limited independence and emphasize conventional “good girl” behaviors. Girls might go on an adventure or two, but these are usually within the bounds of family relationships (e.g., playing tricks on brothers) rather than as social actors in a larger world.

As for those “good girl” behaviors, we look to Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who said, “well-behaved women seldom make history.” 

My hope is that we take the inspiration of electing our first black President and continue the momentum until we elect our first woman president. And until half our senators and representatives are women. And until women receive equal pay for equal work.

And it all begins with girls. Smart girls. Strong girls. Capable girls. Energetic girls. Creative girls. Hopeful girls.

More on hope:

New Moon Girls: Advertising-free social networking site for girls 8 to 12, plus the classic magazine. This week they are welcoming Sasha and Malia Obama to the White House and calling on girls to report on inaugural activities. Citizen journalism!

TVbyGirls: In the Twin Cities, TVbyGirls teaches the skills needed for girls to learn how to create their own media to expand expanding “the vitality of images about girls and women.” Watch their videos and if you’re local, get a girl you know involved.

The Girl Revolution: For grown-ups who love girls, “The Girl Revolution’s only aim is to heal the soul of the world by raising powerful girls. . . . We’re going to protect them from media consumption and dissolve every single barrier that exists between girls and gender and economic equality.”

*H/T to our friends at the Institute for Humane Education.

Patrick Byers recently asked if Club Libby Lu was responsible marketing or not, but it seems it doesn’t matter anymore as the retail stores will be closing.

Boo. Hoo.

From Nancy Gruver at Girl Media Maven:

. . . Club Libby Lu shopping and makeovers are not about imagination, self-expression or individuality. They are about conforming to someone else’s idea of who you should be and how you should look. What Club Libby Lu really does is indoctrinate little girls into a culture of comparing themselves to others and striving to change themselves into someone else. Yuck.

Meanwhile, the new American Girl Store in our own Mall of America is hiring Doll Hair Salon Sylists. 

Dream Job-Get paid to play at American Girl

. . . At the store, girls can shop for their favorite American Girl dolls, books, and accessories; get a new ‘do for their dolls in our signature Doll Hair Salon. . . . If you’re an experienced retail and/or hospitality professional, the job of your dreams is waiting at American Girl.

We’re currently seeking:

Sales Associates
Doll Hair Salon Stylists
Stockers
Visual Merchandisers
Event Associates

See, you take your $100 doll into the store and get its hair styled.

One of the newest “historical character” dolls from Mattel’s American Girl line is this one from way back in 1974. [Ahem.] The doll comes with this $18 old-fashioned accessory — a popular toy back then — a Barbie head with hair you could style. Yourself.

How quaint!

Drop everything and go immediately to join CCFC’s letter-writing campaign to tell toy makers to stop targeting kids this holiday season. I know the economy has already caused riffs in our home about what we can afford — and my kids rarely see televison commercials.

. . . Even though experts predict parents will spend less on toys and gifts this year, marketers are still planning their usual holiday ad blitz to kids.

It’s never fair for corporations to bypass parents and market directly to children.  But with parents everywhere worried about making ends meet, it’s especially cruel to bombard children with ads for expensive toys and electronics.

Your letter will go to: Mattel, V-Tech, Leap Frog, Hasbro, Spin Master, Jakks Pacific, Techno-Source, MEGA Brands, MGA Entertainment, LEGO, Activision Blizzard, Thinkway Toys, ThinkFun, Electronic Arts, Ganz, Oregon Scientific, Disney, Playmates Holdings LTD, Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive, Microsoft, KMart, Walmart, Target, and Toys R’ Us.