Plastic is so 1980

It's been way too long since I last posted.  Projects have been crazy and jobs have been too. 

I guess I'm writing this post,
A) because it's 3:30 am and I can't sleep, and
B) I just saw this commercial and I really needed to get my thoughts out on... virtual paper. 

So I'm watching Tanked on Animal Planet, cause lets face it there's nothing else on at 3am.  Then this commercial for a new line of Barbie dolls comes on.  Now normally I just ignore it cause why would I be interested in dolls?  Dolls, frankly creep me out.  What was interesting, was that this is a line of Barbies from all around the world.  Well, that's partially true.  All the dolls looked like various shades of Caucasian at first glance.  So I decided to check out their website cause I figured "That can't be right.  I must be tired and not seeing things right." Well, so far the Barbie website lists 8 dolls: Argentina, Chile, China, Holland, Ireland, India, Australia and Mexico.  All of them look like Caucasian girls.  There's very little difference in skin tone or facial structure.  The darkest skin tone looks like a bad Jersey Shore tan. 

Now the bone I really have to pick with Mattel, is the Australia doll. 

And she gives tours of all the
great Australian nail salons!

This was a great opportunity to teach young girls about indigenous cultures, and Mattel decided to go with what I guess is more marketable: a white outback girl with a koala.  This would have been the great opportunity to have an Aborigine Barbie.  A black Barbie, allowing girls to have a much more diverse world to look at instead of the mildly different skin tones of Mexico and India (as portrayed by Mattel).  I feel like there's a gap in this Mattel world view.  And that gap is called Africa.  I can understand not having an Eskimo or Lithuanian Barbie, they're kind of not so well known cultures (and I'm pretty sure there's an Eskimo Barbie already out there), but to be completely missing the quintessential black girl character from a "multicultural" Barbie line?  Are you kidding me?  This is how we hobble young girls.  This isn't teaching them what true multiculturalism is and it's not a very wonderful role model for young girls of African or Aborigine descent.  This is teaching, "Yeah it's great to be from different places in the world!  But only if you look like a white girl or have an exceptionally light toned skin."  Maybe I'm looking too hard at this or I'm just looking for trouble, but at the same time that's how the commercial reads to me. 
I can't begin to describe how much it bothers me to see some of these kids toys that are... gentrifying the world.  It's like other cultures loose their identity because a company needs to make them more "accessible" to an American market.  These are supposed to be the kind of toys that are like the gateway drug into cultural tolerance.  (There's so much intolerance in the States it still amazes me.  I've been called a Cracker a few times in Baltimore, and I had to wonder if those kids even knew the meaning behind the term.)  We need to return to what the basic function of a toy is.  It's not something to give your child when you want them to shut up: they're learning tools.  Toys are to teach us many things that we need later in life.  They teach social skills like cultural tolerance or are practice for human interaction.  Toys also made us use our imagination, they are inanimate objects that depend on the child to come to life.  This stimulates the brain and makes us think or use, what my mother calls, a "struggle muscle" (the part of the brain that develops the problem solving skills).  Many of my toys were meant to challenge and exercise the brain and to be honest, I benefited from it later in life.  Something as simple as a bucket of Legos was enough to keep me occupied for hours on end just building different structures (the favorite was the upside down pyramid). 
My sister and I recently discussed this.  She went into a local Toys R Us to find a basic bucket of Legos.  Her problem was that this particular Toys R Us didn't carry a set of Legos that was not a pre-made kit.  You could get the Star Wars kit, the Fairy Castle kit or any other pre-organized kit, but getting a basic bucket of Legos without a set of instructions was impossible.  Now don't get me wrong, making models is fun, but the idea behind a bucket of Legos is to let the kid build what they wanted to build without having to use a set of instructions, a free-will sculpture if you will. 

I guess I really wanted to rant about the subject of toys since it was already on my mind.  Sometimes I just want to express an opinion so bad, that I end up with a bad case of Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome.  I just wish these companies would remember that there's more at stake here than just "the bottom line".  There are important skill sets that children need to learn in order to function later on in society, and toys are the tools for that.  This happens to be my belief based on my experiences.  I'm not a child psychologist, but this is my set of ideas just based on what I remember toys being when I was a kid and how different they are today. 

So I guess thanks for tolerating my Foot-In-Mouth Syndrome. 

See Ya'll Later!