No more Bratz

This is a rather old piece of information from my writers’ blox days, but I wanted to share nevertheless, because it gives me hope in a better, tart-free future.

The largest distributor of children’s books to Canadian schools has decided to yank all Bratz books from its roster after parents and psychologists complained that the controversial dolls promoted “precocious sexuality.”

This happened back in September, but at the time I couldn’t gather enough strength to write about it. I see it as an important issue, so I decided not to forget about this topic and now I am fulfilling my promise to myself.

For those lucky few of you who never heard the brand name, Bratz dolls are, according to the New Yorker, dolls being akin to “kept girls,” “pole dancers on their way to work at a gentlemen’s club,” and, most critically, wearing “the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos.”

This slutty little dollies debuted on the toy shop shelves in 2001, and sparked controversy almost immediately, as the American Psychological Association has expressed concern about the sexualization of the dolls’ clothing and its effect on children. As an everyday mother, I agree. Even if kids, because they are being kids, do not see these dolls as sexy, they are inspired to wear hooker shoes, ridiculously short skirts, tight tops and heavy make-up, unwittingly but very obviously dressing up like cheap little sluts. What’s next? Posing nude in magazines before their first period? Please, there are enough pedophiles out there, let us not create even more of them, okay? Next thing you know these dolls will strut in their underwear and put on wings.

Oh, bother...

Too bad, or rather, too sad, that not all parents think this through. Otherwise how can you explain that Bratz sell more dolls than Barbie? Okay, Barbie is pretty much the prototype for Stepford wives, but FFS, at least she has style! Correction: had. Had style. Past tense. Since 2002, when the My Scene branch was designed to rival Brats. Mattel decided to go cheap by pretending to be expensive, and made these sorry, slutty dolls, including the “Feelin’ Flirty”, “Shopping Spree”, “Dressed to Impress”, “Mall Maniacs”, “My Bling Bling”, “Juicy Bling Bikini” and the special edition of My Scene Goes Hollywood: the Lindsay Lohan dollie.

*sigh*

And to think that I was mad because Barbie seemed to tell me what you wanna do with your life is cleaning and cooking and getting a handsome husband to have kids with and I wasn’t acutally ready for her to put on her bling, fur collar and supermini to tell my daughter what you wanna do with your life is shop ’till you drop and show a lot of skin and be rich and famous very early even if it sends you to rehab before you come of age.