I'm saving my cheers for new, "authentic" black Barbie

written by Anti-Racist Parent editor Tami Winfrey-Harris; originally published on What Tami Said

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – (Business Wire) Mattel® announced today the launch of So In Style™, a new line of black dolls by Barbie® featuring more authentic-looking facial features such as fuller lips, a wider nose, more distinctive cheek bones and curlier hair. So In Style™ (S.I.S.™) was developed and inspired by Barbie® designer of 12 years, Stacey McBride-Irby, an African-American mother of two who wanted to create a line of dolls more reflective of her daughter and community.

The So In Style™ line features Grace™, Kara™ and Trichelle™ dolls, three best friends who are all about fashion, fun and friendship. Each of the dolls features its own unique personality and style and reflects one of three varying skin tones. The S.I.S.™ line also introduces a mentoring theme; each doll is accompanied by a smaller doll or “little sister” and has different interests – from music and math to science and drill team. The big and little sister dolls are meant to introduce and inspire girls with mentoring themes.

“I believe that a happy inspired childhood creates happy, inspired, powerful women,” said McBride-Irby. “I want my new So In Style dolls to not only be an authentic representation of my community and culture, but to also encourage girls to be inspired and dream big.” Read more…

Big sigh…

Okay, before I put on my womanist, anti-racist parent hat and get all humorless, let’s talk about what is good about yesterday’s announcement.

Lots of little girls use fashion dolls for creative play. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. It is troubling, of course, that toys, such as Barbie dolls, can reinforce narrow standards of beauty and damage self-esteem. I wish that young girls did not learn to judge their own beauty by consumerist standards, but too often they do. In that light, it is good to see more variety in the kinds of dolls available. It is good that a young, black girl can play with a doll with features a smidge closer to hers (as much as Barbie looks like any real person).

It is also good to see a black woman playing a role in designing a product for an internationally-known mega-company and being given the latitude to inject bits of her culture and community into her work. Surely that says something positive about the opportunities for women and specifically women of color. In fact, I’d rather the little girls in my life play with a Stacy McBride-Irby doll than Grace, Kara or Trichelle. Where can I get a doll like that?

Frankly, though, I am ambivalent about these things. I mean, we are still talking about Barbie, here…BARBIE. As I said in a post about the black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha introducing a custom Barbie doll to celebrate it’s centennial:

…Barbie–whose teen version once gleefully spouted insipidness like “Math class is tough!” and “I love shopping!” while AKA was setting up schools for South African girls. Barbie–of the 36″ 18″ 33″ dimensions and permanent tip-toe. Barbie–the symbol of Eurocentric beauty standards that are a tyranny to women of color. Barbie–with her club makeup, stripper fabulous gear and ever more sexualized image. Barbie. Barbie. BARBIE? Really?

Yeah, I know Barbie allegedly has a pilot’s license and at some point, between tooling around in her purple Corvette and riding the elevator in her Dream House, she earned a medical degree, too. But that’s not what Barbie is really about, is it? Those things were just bones thrown to mouthy feminists. Barbie seems like such a symbol of retro womanhood–the look painted and pretty and maybe you’ll find a (hopefully anatomically correct) Ken to get you nice things kind of womanhood. Read more…

Like a lot of women, I am uncomfortable with Barbie and her role in the development of young girls. It’s not all Barbie’s fault. It is the space she occupies in the universe of things that influence how girls grow up to be women: what goals they ultimately have, how they see themselves, how they judge their self worth and how they define womanhood.

I also have a beef with the word “authentic” to describe the three acceptably “blackified” dolls. Let’s face it, these dolls don’t represent any sort of break-through in representation of black faces. The skin tones and facial features fall within a narrow range that is acceptable within Eurocentric beauty standards. And to say that their hair is “curly” like that of most black women (as McBride-Irby does in this video on the consumer page for the new dolls) is being a wee bit disingenuous. Most black women have hair that is more kinky than curly in its natural state. (These dolls ain’t no nappy heads.) Of course, most black women chemically straighten or weave up, which makes the dolls an accurate representation. Fine, but don’t try to market them as some representation of “authentic” black physicality.

I also note, in the linked Mattel page above, the use of vaguely “urban” music, a gold, blingy necklace and a backstory that involves Barbie’s friend Grace moving from California to Chicago, where she hooks up with Kara and Trishelle. The story and associated imagery is relatable for many black girls, but not all. What about the many, little black girls who live in the burbs? Of course, these dolls can’t be everything to every child. But again, the use of “authentic” is a marketing fail. The urban experience is no more “authentic” to black folks than the rural experience.

And these Barbies are no more authentically black than standard Barbie is a representation of authentic white women.

Do black children even want dolls that look like them? That is really the rub. You can give a girl Barbie’s best, urban, black friend, Grace, but even little black girls will recognize that Grace isn’t the star of this show. The coveted one, the truly beautiful one, the worthy one is blonde, blue-eyed, narrow-featured, skinny Barbie. If the black version of Barbie was so damned great, then the little white girls on the commercial would be playing with her, too.

Those of us who are familiar with the heart-breaking “doll test” know that even when given a doll that obstensibly looks more like them, black children are inclined to want and favor the white doll. Black children who are still young enough to play with dolls have already absorbed the larger society’s notions about what is good and what is beautiful–and they know people (and dolls) who look like them are not part of those notions. Mattel’s new Barbie’s won’t fix this problem–the real problem–I think.

Look, I’m not hating on these dolls or their creator. My nieces love Barbies and I will probably get these for them. And it will be nice to choose a fashion doll that, at least loosely, looks like them. But I recognize that this new Mattel line will not come close to helping them solve the challenges they will face to their self esteem, identity and eventual womanhood.

Is this an advance for black women and girls? I’m not so sure.

Top image courtesy of Hip Hop Wired.

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Comments

curlykidz wrote:

Not one of these dolls doesn’t look like her head hasn’t seen a relaxer or hot comb… not even the toddler/preschool age Kelly dolls. The “aqua curl” technology so their hair can go from curly to straight just like that? Great… like I don’t have a hard enough time trying to explain to my girls how much it would damage their hair to straighten it. I’ll just stop at my local beauty supply shop and pick up a hot comb on my way home from the toy store. And Trichelle? Seriously? Did anybody at Mattel google that before they submitted the marketing proposal?

Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 5:30 pm ¶
Angelique wrote:

I think it’s weird that Barbie’s making a big deal about this when this isn’t the first time they’ve made dark-skinned Barbie’s or even ones with more African features…? Could this be to ride the coattails of the soon-to-be-released Disney Frog Princess movie?
Maybe, but I still see some positives about it.
Take this however you will….years ago, I searched high and low to find dolls that look like my daughter, especially her very dark skin and found one — Nichelle, Model of the Moment. She is DARK with thick natural hair, just like my gorgeous daughter. I bought it on eBay years ago and saved it for when she was old enough. I recently gave it to her. She squealed, “She’s BEAUTIFUL! And her skin looks just like mine!” and she started dancing around the room with her, etc. Now how her doll may be perceived by a group of girls and their dolls is a whole ‘nother issue, but I know that was a positive moment for my child and may be one of those meaningful moments she may reflect upon her whole life.

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 7:43 am ¶
JBH wrote:

It IS a dilemma! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I want to be happy that there are at least OPTIONS to buy dolls that a similar to diversity we see (noticing this also in the American Girl catalogs). But it falls so short at the same time. I mean, what about dolls that look like me – a mixed Asian? And, it’s true, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed dolls set the standard first…all others make their appearance in subsequent “lines” of the same product.

*sigh*

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 10:12 am ¶
Andrea wrote:

I imagine they’re designed and marketed based on what they think they can sell. I’ve seen marketing studies that indicate preschool age girls are really into hair play — brushing, combing, doing hair styles, playing with curlers — which is why this type of hair is usually on dolls. I’d be curious to see if they tried a version of a doll with more typical black hair and it didn’t get favorable reviews in the market studies. The dolls with more natural hair would probably sell to a niche market, but I don’t know how well they’d do in the wider market. That’s really unfortunate for what it says about our society’s beauty standards, but then again Barbie dolls in general are pretty stereotypical and unrepresentative of how a normal woman looks.

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 12:43 pm ¶
Heather wrote:

Wow, I am guessing no one googled Trichelle. I hope they can change the name before a bunch of little girls gets traumatized by trying to find a doll and seeing the first google results that just popped up.

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 12:51 pm ¶
jen* wrote:

So I’m not the only one who associates the name Trichelle with the girl from the Real World Las Vegas. Cuz that’s immediately what I thought of, and I was like….ewwwwwwwww.

I don’t want to call names, or sling mud, but…she really doesn’t seem to be a positive role model for any child. curly’s right, they shoulda googled her.

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 1:25 pm ¶
agibean wrote:

I don’t know if they still make her, but there IS a “Black” Barbie with tightly curled hair-I know, because my daughter has one. I found it at Toys R Us 5 years ago when she wanted a “doll cake” (you know, the doll stands in the middle of the cake, which is the doll’s “skirt”).

My daughter is biracial, and as a baby gravitated towards black dolls of any kind. But she also wanted white ones, like her white sister had. As she got older, she looked for dolls that looked biracial-those remain her favorites. She has one with light brown skin almost her exact shade, which she still sleeps with, at almost 10 years old.

As for Barbies, I have no idea how many we have, thanks to her older cousins and sister handing some down, getting others for birthday gifts, and some she’s bought with her own money. They are black, white, biracial looking, Asian, and even a mermaid or two. She’s never once sighed about looking like any of them. To her, they are TOYS. It’s her baby dolls she really identifies with.

The other day she reminded me that “Barbie could not be real. If she was she would tip over from her big breasts.” Yet knowing this, she still loves to dress and undress them and set them up in all kinds of scenarios. If she asks, I’ll get these new ones. Because, you know, they’re not REAL.

I’ve always thought that the “doll experiment” isn’t about dolls. It’s about the greater societal “white is better” that kids pick up-from the front-page photo of the ballet school with not one non-blond girl, to the TV ads for anti-drug awareness with the lost black kid, to the girls in the toy ads being almost entirely white, to the lack of decent kids’ books featuring mixed families or minority familes, for that matter.

At least, that’s how we see it in our home.

Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 1:49 pm ¶
Holly wrote:

First of all, Barbie in and of itself is a poor image for girls to aspire to. I am a blond haired blue eyed woman and I will never look like the “traditional” Barbie. Her figure is disproportionate to her body and she has long, silky hair that doesn’t tangle and is full of body. It’s unrealistic to what most WHITE women look like.
Now, we add some ethnicity into it and we have the same issue. The dolls they gave as examples may have darker skin, but they still have unrealistic figures, hair that is not natural, and faces that don’t give a realistic picture of the array of beauty amongst black women.

Posted 02 Oct 2009 at 11:43 am ¶
L Takayesu wrote:

Our children have Asian heritage. They both prefer black Barbies to white ones. The other darker skin tones also are preferred. (I’m not sure what racial heritages they are supposed to reflect?)

In fact, my daughter’s request for this Christmas is for a black Ken.

What I found really annoying is that the Barbies with the super-amazing sequin- covered, glittery, fluorescent hoopskirt styles of dresses are always white. (at least around here) I guess sidekicks aren’t supposed to have good clothes. One year I finally bought the white super-dress one, also bought a darker skinned doll, and carefully switched who was in which dress before re-wrapping. Finally she got the doll she wanted in the dress she wanted right when she opened the wrapping paper.

So some kids do prefer the darker dolls, even when given a large variety to choose from. (Maybe it helps that they’ve never watched commercial TV?)

And yes, I’d say that since Disney will be rolling out it’s movie-related black princess doll soon, Mattel is probably motivated by market share interests more than anything else. But to be fair, I don’t know any big corp’s that can afford to ignore the competition. Mattel (at least here) has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for years.

Posted 02 Oct 2009 at 12:35 pm ¶
Katarin wrote:

I’ll never forget the day I told my father I didn’t want to play with my Barbie because she didn’t look like me, that she had light skin and blond hair and blue eyes like my older sister (who had a different father than me). I told him I didn’t want a Barbie that looked like my older sister, I wanted one who looked like me. I couldn’t have been more than 5 at the time.

He had to drive pretty far to find one, because we lived in a tiny cow-town at the time but he came home with the Teresa doll (who was Latina, like me) and even if she didn’t have features exactly like mine, the simple fact that she had brown skin and brown hair and brown eyes meant everything to me. That I could play with a doll that mirrored back something even remotely close to what I saw in the mirror every day was huge and I’ll never forget that my father did it for me. He told me at the time that he understood, that his GI Joe didn’t look like him either and he wanted me to have that. It seems to me that this is what’s motivating McBride-Irby.

It’s still problematic and I understand that Barbie is sort of a terrible role model for young girls but my older sister, with her white skin and blond hair and blue eyes could play with a Barbie and pretend like it was her. She could go into any store, even the general store in our tiny town and pick up an 11″ doll that reminded her of herself. She got to play with one and I wanted to too. Children play with these dolls and having dolls that are the same race as the girls who play with them can’t actually hurt.

Posted 02 Oct 2009 at 2:11 pm ¶
Amanda Casabianca wrote:

NO! NO! Mattell already got it right with Nigerian Barbie, Kenyan Barbie, Jamaican, Ghanaian, Brazilian and Moroccan Barbies:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZrC30H6oCPs/SXRF1GsvshI/AAAAAAAABRE/jYOMgoFJubI/s400/1990Nigerian-Barbi_1240303i.jpg

http://62.15.226.148/tc/2008/11/16/10738507.jpg

But let’s be honest, how many people are going to in turn, complain that the above dolls I just mentioned look TOO ethnic (in translation “too authentically black” for many who buy into media stereotypes to be comfortable with?)??

Quite a few I’m sure.

You can easily take an Italian Barbie, Chilean, Puerto Rican or other and have her be a Biracial doll. The Barbie Dolls of the world cover all bases , cultures and colors though I am waiting for Sicilian Princess and Cypriot barbie.

Trying to stop Barbie is like trying redirect the flow of lava!

Posted 02 Oct 2009 at 9:30 pm ¶
Ruth wrote:

I’m a white woman living in South Africa – we are not South African.

My daughter turns 2 tomorrow. I wanted a black doll for her. Four stores later I ended up at the local Toys R Us. I had to ask if they had black dolls and the assistant had to get a ladder to get the two dolls in the store down for me.

It seems that the preference for white dolls is unfortunately every where.

Posted 03 Oct 2009 at 9:39 am ¶
Montclair Mommy wrote:

@Katarin, I can relate. My sister and I wanted brown haired Barbies with “tans” (how we described ourselves as children). My mom eventually found a Skipper with brown hair and green eyes and I thought “close enough”! We also got “Miko” who was….Hawai’ian? Polynesian? Not entirely sure what she was but she was tan with brown eyes and long brown hair. One of my favorite Barbies ever. I can remember asking for a Black Barbie doll as a child (probably because my best friend that I really looked up to was Black) and my mom told me “You don’t really want a Black doll! Those are for Black girls!” Hmmm. Not exactly an A+ response, mom. (For the record, she has made significant strides since then…)

@ L Takayesu: you are my hero. I LOVE the idea of taking the white Barbie out of the nice dress and putting the doll of the child’s choice in that dress and packaging. I do remember that Barbie always got pink and purple outfits and her sidekicks ended up with the crappy colors (orange, green). I can’t wait to do just that! My son right now really loves all dolls, honestly. And stuffed animals. He just likes to hug and kiss and feed “babies”. But I hope that in the future he will see babies that look like him and see them as the “nice baby” and the “good baby” and the “pretty baby” because that video just killed me. Does anyone think that it would help to avoid television and only watch pre-recorded shows or DVDs (and limit that as well)?

Posted 04 Oct 2009 at 3:00 pm ¶
Scott O wrote:

“My nieces love Barbies and I will probably get these for them.”

My boys like toy guns, but I’m NOT getting them any. Children like lots of things that aren’t good for them. That’s one of the reasons they need parents to take care of them.

Posted 05 Oct 2009 at 3:22 pm ¶
UUJessica wrote:

My mother refused to buy into the ‘Barbie’ scam–I had the wholesome-hippy ‘Sunshine Family’ dolls instead and always enjoyed them–my kids still play with them when they visit the grandparents!

Several years ago when my daughter was young I bought several of the ‘Get Real Girl’ dolls, and they are fantastic. They all have sports tops on under their (athletic) clothes, normally shaped bodies, several of them are multiracial, and they are all just lovely.

There were plans to make ‘Get Real’ Guy sibling dolls, but unfortunately they stopped making the dolls entirely before they got to that stage.
You can still find them on ebay–how I wish they had made it in the marketplace.

So. . . what does that tell us about what consumers want and buy? and what does that tell us about our culture and society?

Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 5:17 pm ¶
Kristen wrote:

“Does anyone think that it would help to avoid television and only watch pre-recorded shows or DVDs (and limit that as well)?”

Yes – actually, I do think that helps. I’m not gonna say it solves the problem by any means – but I do feel like I can control the level of diversity my kids see by controlling the media in our home. Honestly, most of the shows on Noggin are pretty good in terms of having POC as main characters, but it’s the commercials that bug me – always the white girls playing with white dolls in the commericals. Obviously at some point they will figure out how to operate the remotes, but while they are little, I’m editing what they see!

For a Barbie alternative, I like the Only Hearts Club dolls. They are a similar size but not as sexualized and very diverse.

Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 11:48 pm ¶
Nell wrote:

Can I just say that while I echo many of the negative sentiments as a woman and a mother regarding our children and body image (ie Barbie) there was one statement that while it probably holds true for many didn’t resonate with me as much as the other statements. Someone mentioned that if the Black dolls were so great why weren’t white kids playing with them. I’m 39 years old and when I was a kid I chose several Black barbies as dolls I wanted as much as the white dolls. I admit their faces were the same as the white dolls and the hair was a brown with copper color in it. My daughter who is biracial too asks for dolls that are more like her, as often as she asks for dolls that are not. She tends to try and match dolls to the color of skin/hair her friends have if she buys them for gifts as well.

But I’ve noticed since I moved to Charleston West Virginia a phenomenon of a lot of Black dolls being available in the stores here, which I’m not used to from Chicago where I had to drive to certain neighborhoods to find dolls or items for black skin tones, skin or hair products etc. Also, I see white kids, babies, toddlers, preschoolers and up carrying around darker skinned dolls and they are rarely on sale like they would be up in Shaumburg or other suburbs in DuPage County Illinois.

I do not yet know exactly what this means, because racism is an issue here just like everywhere else, but living in Appalachia is different than the midwest and my experiences have shaped me to view racism, sexism and “the way things are” to a certain mold. I’m having to re-evaluate that in a slightly different cultural atmosphere.

It is at the very least thought provoking. It makes me want to question things even more deeply than I have.

I welcome any thoughts on the subject.

Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 8:36 am ¶
Anna wrote:

The problem is not with the dolls anymore. There are plenty of options that girls have with other companies that produce dolls. The problem is The Television, Music Videos, and What is Taught In The HOME! I am biracial and I did not even know I had a color until it was taught to me by society and then I ask my mother in tears what color am I. Racism is learned and taught and unless we change what we allow are children to be in contact with on a daily basis, girls will always pick the white dolls, and it has nothing to do with Barbie. As long as we accept the black stereo type through media, music, and our behavior our children do not have a chance to really believe the verse black is beautiful.

Posted 14 Nov 2009 at 9:42 am ¶