I have just been playing with the creepiest website aimed at young girls. I've got to have a rant about it.
Yesterday's New York Times (June 6, 2007) ran a story about interactive websites aimed at girls, including a number of sites that allow users to dress dolls. What a great idea, eh? Something that is designed to engage girls in using technology. My daughter is a real doll lover, so I thought I'd take a look - maybe she could use one of them.
Yikes. Feminism fails again, it seems. Society has obviously learned nothing.
Take a look at www.cartoondollemporium.com and try making a few of the dolls. Just about every "doll" I looked at was:
- skinny
- slender-waisted in a Barbie-esque way
- strongly featuring breasts, even on the ones with no hips which are obviously meant to be young girls
- wide-eyed or pouting
- posed in a vulnerable or "come hither" stance
- and I could go on!
I had two favorites. The first was "Belle of the Ball". This snake-hipped young chick comes dressed in underwear (nudity is, at least, not an option) and you add all kinds of clothes to her. By the time I had added a see-through skirt, laced-up corset, long black gloves, fishnet stockings, sparkling hair ornament, big earrings and high heeled shoes I had created - a hooker. No other way to describe it. Then I spotted the "Prom Date" option. Hmm. Yes, you can add a protective male to "escort" this girl to her big night. Should I choose the Michael Jackson lookalike? How about the foolish creature in a silver suit who is giving her demeaning bunny ears behind her back? No, I decided on the dapper guy with his arm slung protectively around her shoulders. (It made me think of the early humans exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, which assumes - without any evidence - that two sets of tracks must have been created by a big male protecting a smaller female.)
My second favorite was "Greek" (by "Deborah") who is listed under the "Seasonal" category. This is the Christmas Hooker. You have to see it to believe it: the Santa girl in stockings.
There was only one contributing artist whose "dolls" were even slightly acceptable: "Sandra", recently arrived in the USA from Sweden, who was displaying more feminist (and maybe European?) sensibilities. Her women have breasts, not balloons. Some of her dolls are doing stuff: she has a female knight, and a female viking, for example. She has real characters, like Oprah and Hillary Clinton: and they are presented in regular kinds of women shapes. Applause to you, Sandra.
Haven't we learned anything? As a mother, I can see that my daughter would love to play with a website like this. It is a really fun idea to have all these options, bright colors, fashion ideas and so on. But does it have to be a meat market of virtual flesh? Do we have to offer the kids such a demeaning set of choices?
Go take a look at that report on the sexualization of girls by the American Psychological Association that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. This stuff really harms our girls.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Creepy indeed! I completely love your post, Michelle - and your blog!!! Thought you'd be interested in this:
http://feministing.com/archives/007141.html
Dear blog writer. I am the creator of the doll you so graciously labled as hooker. I created belle of the ball and reading your opinion about her entirely rips my heart from my chest. This doll wasnt only my imagenation. It was the hard work and design help of a little girl (9 years old) called Grace, who wanted nothing more in the world then become a fashion designer. I spent days with her sketching her ideas and asking her what she wanted on "her" special doll that we were creating together. Alot of the ideas and the basic design of that doll was hers. Yes she has alot of lace and transparent skirts, thats why she also has a tons of undergarments. Also I would like to say that you come out very harshly twards a site and people you barely know. We do have plus size dolls. Alot of our characters are big eyed it's because of what the girls want, they have a forum where they post their wishes of what they would love to have in a doll. What we basically do is try to make dreams come true for children. We are very protective of their youth and innocense and yes, some dolls might be questionable but that is a very small percentige! I do appologize if our dolls offended you to this extend, it was never our intent. Also we do have non skinny dolls. We are trying to have a variety of everything. I feel that you are a woman that strongly believe in female rights and make sure children (girls) are taught with good values about life, thmeselves and other people. I have a similar fight myself when it comes to females in gaming. Where I am trying to make sure females dont objectify themselves within the gaming industry and just be themselves instead of being labled as females, to call thmeselves equall. I will take your critisism to heart and at the same sence I hope my words somehow made sence to you. I am myself not a petite female and I proudly showed that as I drew a doll of myself. I hope if you have any suggestions or questions that you email me at annacde@gmail.com . best wishes, Anna
Hi Anna, Thanks for your comment. You sound like a thoughtful person, and I can see that you have battles to fight in the gaming world - there's plenty of good work to be done there! The fact that the Belle doll, that can be dressed so effectively as a hooker, was able to be created with the help of a 9 year old girl, plugging into her imagination, actually supports the argument that girls are being exposed to inappropriate sexualizing influences. How about adding some dolls where the women/girls are playing soccer, wearing rock-climbing kit, or other empowering active stuff?
Dear Michelle. We are not that old of a site, we are trying to cover alot of branches, size, color etc. We are very involved in trying to be the salution rather then the problem. It's not that her sight on the world is twisted, it is just how the doll is dressed up and the fashion this day so I have to disagree with you on that one. Belle is fully coverable and many of our users that are registered on the forum have used all 3 layers of dress, undershirts and everything to create their gowns. Hence , fully covered. We have a very powerfull female forum with a whole bunch of little young ladies, and we keep telling them to believe in themselves and that they have the power to do anything they want as long as they are good people. Alot of the girls love cde because we keep such a protective community. After reading your acticle I have asked a few of them if they feel that your acticle might have a point. all that happened is that they got terrible sad that you seemed to get the wrong idea of the site. Fashing changes, sure I do agree with you that some dolls are "lightly dressed" That is why me and my co worker do out very best to find artists that have the same view points as we do.
Besides, what is so terribly bad about a little girl wanting to design promdresses? I think it is a very special time in a girls life. It is nothing degrading, nor is it insulting twards our gender.
Mutual respect is what I want in our future, that men dont get discriminated doing"female" tasks or females being descriminated doing" male" tasks. We do have boys that rarely sign up for our forums, but when they do, our little ladies tend to become terrible people twards that guy, judging him etc. As if it never occured to them that guys play with dolls, these desrcimination sadly enought goes both ways. We do tell them not to judge.
I hope that somehow you understand where I coming from, and that my intentions are not to expose young girls to sexist things. Things do not become sexual till you make them sexual. children (our members) dont thing of things like that, their reasoning is " well if she looks abrely dressed, put cloths on the doll" "if the shirt is to short, put pants underneith" they are so very creative and I am very greatful twards this site, it gave a blase for alot of your girls to get to know eachother have fun and just being children.
Happy fourth of july
Hi Anna
I like your point about the girls pre-judging what the boys can do. I remember buying a baby doll for a friend's little boy when he was expecting the arrival of a little sibling, and how horrified his (generally liberal) dad was! I think that if your website just had some more balancing material, it could be great. I showed your website to a bunch of moms I know (with girls in the age range up to 12), and none of them thought they would want their girls to use it. One of them even used the word "pornography" to describe it. (I certainly wouldn't go that far!) Anyway, good luck with your work - there aren't enough women working in any field in high tech. The mere fact you are there makes you a potentially powerful role model for girls.
Dear Michelle, thank you for those warming words, I will keep making the site better and covering as much as i humanely can. I've never created anything for popularity, mostly after childrens request. Either way, here is a recent doll I figure you might wish to see. http://www.cartoondollemporium.com/cyndi_lifetimewinnerdoll.html
This lady is a professional clown and she is beautiful in my eyes, cause like me, her work brings much joy to children.
Again Michelle, I thank you for your kind words, correspondence with you have been interesting and enlightening. I will work twards to one day be able to make it an acceptable site for everyone and hopefully one day, your friend un labels us as phornography.
Take care
Anna
I don't know a lot of creepy women websites...I don't think that they are interesting...
Post a Comment