Barbie may be turning 50 today, but the doll it was modeled on, its doppelganger, is actually a bit older than that: she’s almost 54. And everybody has forgotten her birthday. Poor Lilli!
Ruth Handler saw a Bild Lilli doll while vacationing in Switzerland with her kids, snatched up three of them, and brought them back to California, determined to copy the doll and sell it on the American market. Little did she know that Bild Lilli was actually a gag gift, a novelty item, sold in bars and tobacco shops and meant for an adult public. It was the sort of present men would give each other with a wink – a toy meant to titillate. Men would place Bild Lilli dolls in their cars – on their dashboard or hang them from their rearview mirrors, on a little swing.
Lilli’s history goes back a bit further. Before being manufactured as a gag gift, she had been a character in a comic strip created by Reinhard Beuthien for the German tabloid Bild-Zeitung. All her stories revolved around fashion & appearance, staying out late, and sleeping with old, rich men. In short, Lilli was an unabashedly sexual, proud gold-digger.
Barbie kept the looks – down to a tee – but instead of flaunting her sexuality, she focused on looks and shopping – something far more “innocuous” for parents.
Now, watch these two videos:
Talking Barbie – 1968 (already discussed on this blog)
Another recent achievement by Barbie – which was not discussed by Mattel? This year, she won a prestigious TOADY award! Barbie Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader won the Worst Toy of the Year Award – handed to her by the CCFC, the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood. Read more about it here.
I have recently received the following message from the CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood) newsletter:
For many of us, Scholastic’s book clubs played an important role in our childhood by providing the opportunity to purchase low-cost, high-quality literature in schools. We remember the excitement of thumbing through the monthly flyers to make our selections and the thrill when our orders arrived.
But something has changed. Scholastic’s book clubs have become a Trojan horse for marketing toys, trinkets, and electronic media-many of which promote popular brands. A review by CCFC of Scholastic’s elementary and middle school book clubs found that one-third of the items for sale are either not books or are books packaged with other items such as jewelry and toys.
CCFC reviewed every item in Scholastic’s 2008 monthly Lucky (for grades 2-3) and Arrow (grades 4-6) book club flyers. Of the items advertised, 14% were not books, including the M&M’s Kart Racing Wii videogame; a remote control car; the American Idol event planner; (“Track this season of American Idol“); the Princess Room Alarm (“A princess needs her privacy!”); a wireless controller for the PS2 gaming system; a make-your-own flip flops kit (“hang out at the pool in style”); and the Monopoly® SpongeBob SquarePants™ Edition computer game. An additional 19% of the items were books that were marketed with additional toys, gadgets, or jewelry. For example, the book Get Rich Quick is sold with a dollar-shaped money clip (“to hold all your new cash!”); the Friends 4 Ever Style Pack consists of a book and two lip gloss rings; and Hannah Montana: Seeing Green comes with a guitar pick bracelet.
The opportunity to sell directly to children in schools is not a right. It’s a privilege – and an extremely profitable one at that. Last year, Scholastic’s book clubs generated $336.7 million in revenue.
It’s bad enough that so many of the books sold by Scholastic are de-facto promotions for media properties like High School Musical and SpongeBob. But there’s no justification for marketing an M&M videogame or lip gloss in elementary schools. Teachers should not be enlisted as sales agents for products that have little or no educational value and compete with books for children’s attention and families’ limited resources. If Scholastic wants to maintain their unique commercial access to young students, they need to do better.
We know that Scholastic listens to your concerns. When 5,000 of you wrote them to demand that they stop promoting the highly sexualized Bratz brand in schools, they discontinued their Bratz line. So please visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/621/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26599 to let Scholastic know it’s time to return to selling books – and only books – through their in-school book clubs.
The Learning Channel (TLC), owned by Discovery Commmunications, has a new reality TV series called “Toddlers & Tiaras” about little girls and boys competing in beauty pageants.
The show’s description, from its official site:
On any given weekend, on stages across the country, little girls and boys parade around wearing makeup, false eyelashes, spray tans and fake hair to be judged on their beauty, personality and costumes. Toddlers and Tiaras follows families on their quest for sparkly crowns, big titles, and lots of cash.
The preparation is intense as it gets down to the final week before the pageant. From hair and nail appointments, to finishing touches on gowns and suits, to numerous coaching sessions or rehearsals, each child preps for their performance. But once at the pageant, it’s all up to the judges and drama ensues when every parent wants to prove that their child is beautiful.
(Emphasis mine)
WTF????!!!????
For more jaw-dropping, check out the photo gallery with the before-and-after photos of the children (needless to say, they looked so much better BEFORE):
Madison Avenue is scrambling to adjust to a new era, when the most admired people in America are a black family. To reflect this reality, talent scouts are on the hunt for models who look like the Obama children, Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10.
[...]
Marlene Wallach, president of Wilhelmina Kids & Teens, says the First Daughters are tough subjects to match. “It’s a very specific age and a very specific ethnicity, so there aren’t that many girls that would necessarily fit the bill.”
On the one hand I’m deliriously happy to see that thanks to Barack Obama’s election racial minorities may get more visibility in the media – it’s about time!!! During my research for the docu “The Illusionists” I was positively surprised to see, in women’s magazines from the 1970s and the early 1980s (Vogue, Cosmo, Mademoiselle), lots and lots of black models in fashion/beauty photo shoots, advertisements, and on magazine covers. Why had they disapperared all of a sudden? The fashion industry had seemingly turned racist in the last 15-20 years. So: visibility of racial and ethnic minorities: awesomely positive.
On the other hand, though, I’m saddened that such a moving, historic milestone (the first ever black family in the White House) may get immediately mixed up with the usual base commercial interests – Sasha and Malia dolls with already developed breasts, photo shoots with Sasha and Malia lookalikes – to sell products. On top of that, the article above highlights a desire to see more Obama girls lookalikes – not more black children in fashion / advertising / mass media.
Toy company Mattel is revamping the online presence for its popular brands — including the iconic Barbie and, for boys, Hot Wheels — with expanded playable, customization and networking features on the new Mattel Digital Network.
[...]
And the upgrade will help Mattel keep pace with its competition online. Other brands such as Disney, LEGO and Hasbro have added features that aim to keep children connected with their sites — and products.
“There is a battle is for kids’ eyes on the computer,” says Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review (childrenssoftware.com). These days, companies need “a smart strategy behind their toys that does things like keep track of a child’s age and recommend or suggest (products), whether obviously or subliminally.”
Parents should know that such sites merge content and advertising, Buckleitner says. “I don’t think these things are necessarily bad, and a lot of learning can go on. But we have to be smart so we can tell the difference between manipulation and play.”
There’s an eager, youthful clientele on the Web. Three-fourths of children 2 to 14 use a computer, according to The NPD Group’s report Kids & Digital Content III, which found that computers are the most widely used consumer electronic device among children. Cellphones, MP3 players and game systems are next.
A couple of years ago Peggy Orenstein wrote an article for the New York Times magazine entitled “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” about the rise of the Disney Princess line of toys. It left an indelible impression on my mind, long before I started to work on this film. A must read for mothers, grandmothers, and anyone who is going to raise a girl.
An excerpt:
There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be “perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be “kind and caring,” “please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.
