Sonia Singh is a scientist who lives in Tasmania, Australia. Some months ago, when she lost her job and became a stay-at-home mom, she decided to fix second-hand dolls and maybe sell a few online. She picked up a dozen broken, discarded dolls, mostly Bratz dolls (similar to Barbie dolls but even more adult-like) from second-hand shops. She removed their make-up and glamorous outfits, restyled their hair, and put them into everyday clothes. Suddenly, the dolls looked like ordinary girls and not pop stars. She took pictures of them in her garden, doing things children do — swinging on tyres, climbing trees, running around — and put them up on Facebook. “I thought they would get a couple of hundred hits,” says her husband John. Instead, the pictures went viral. Within days, she had thousands of likes and when someone put it on Reddit, it just snowballed, with the dolls held up as examples of what toys ought to look like.
As Sonia candidly admits, her idea was not to make a statement (her husband says he is arguably more a feminist than she is) but to just recycle discarded dolls. But she instinctively made them more real and childlike, replaced high heels with keds and lipsticked pouts with toothy smiles, subconsciously rebelling against the hyper-sexualisation of young girls, their clothes and toys. The comments poured in, with mothers saying ‘these are the dolls we would like our children to play with’ and ‘oh how much happier the dolls look’.
Like Barbie, the Californian-made Bratz dolls have been criticised for the image of femininity they project to children. They have huge eyelashes, gaudy make-up, film star hair, and unreal lips. They wear high heels, fishnet stockings and corset gowns. The American Psychological Association lists them as products that contribute to today’s over-sexualised society. These toys can harm impressionable minds, making girls unthinkingly and uncritically see themselves and their bodies as sex objects.
Does any of this remind you of children’s dance shows on our own TV channels? Little boys and girls gyrate to provocative lyrics in terribly adult costumes — playing out miniature versions of grown-up seduction roles. It is a most disturbing sight and I cannot imagine how parents watch the shows without horror. We worry about paedophilia, and we simultaneously contribute to the premature sexualisation of our children by allowing them to participate in such shows and by buying these outrageous dolls.
Will Sonia’s work translate into Bratz or Mattel making more mindful toys? I don’t know. Meanwhile, click on YouTube to see Sonia at work and maybe you can revamp your child’s doll as well.
Vaishna is a Sr. Deputy Editor with The Hindu and can be contacted at vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in
