Barbie, if you haven't got the hint already, it's high time you retired. Not only are your dimensions impossible, you only wear one (white) face. It's high time that little girls played with dolls that actually represent them.
That's what Queen Cee Robinson is setting out to do. When she searched toy sections for black dolls, she came up short. Not only did Mattel's So In Style dolls have straight hair, they weren't sold in Canada and had discontinued.
“It’s always been a focus as a young black girl growing up,” she said. “You want to see something that looks like you and that’s very rare and scarce to find in media and promotions and toys.”
According to an article in the CBC, the Hamilton mom set out to change the status quo, for her six-year-old daughter's sake. Using a Monster High doll as the model, Robinson stripped and reworked the figure, even weaving the hair by hand, until she had a realistic likeness.
“If children only have an image of what the dominant culture looks like, that’s problematic,” said McMaster University professor of cultural studies, Susan Fast.
Robinson, who hopes to eventually sell her own line of dolls, has had a great response to her work on social media.
The UK's youngest parents—a 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy—made headlines the world over today as they welcomed a baby girl.
According to an article in Metro, the new mom (who cannot be named for legal reasons) was apparently only 11 and attending elementary school when she fell pregnant. The maternal grandmother is only also among Britain's youngest, at age 27.
The couple, with the "lowest combined age of any British parents in history," had been dating for a year prior to the pregnancy. They are said to be very much "in love" and plan to raise the baby together.
"Before people judge they should find out what’s happened," said the girl's father, Greg. "It is heartbreaking, of course it is. For any man to find out their daughter has become pregnant. It is but you can’t turn back time, you can only go forwards."
Both sets of grandparents are supportive. And the young mother is planning to return to school in the fall.
The girl's father defended his daughter, claiming though he could not supervise her 24/7, he did not feel ashamed of her actions.
"She’s brought something beautiful into the world and we’re going to stand by her."
I wasn't even a mom by 27, let alone a grandmother—yet this scenario isn't altogether uncommon. Our biology prepares us for having babies while we are still babies ourselves.
Not all parents are so supportive; this is one lucky girl.
Was this school within its rights to provide girls with contraceptives?
A Dutch teen's warped idea of a joke has resulted in her arrest. According to an article in the NY Daily, the 14-year-old girl who went by the name "Sarah" tweeted the following terrorist threat to American Airlines:
"hello my name's Ibrahim and I'm from Afghanistan. I'm part of Al Qaida [sic] and on June 1st I'm gonna do something really big bye"
Though the tweet was quite obviously a hoax, the airline responded by saying they take such threats seriously, and that the teen's "IP address and details will be forwarded to security and the FBI."
Of course Sarah wasn't so brave after the digital equivalent of a crank call landed her in hot water. She tried to explain that “I’m just a fangirl pls I don’t have evil thoughts and plus I’m a white girl."
This airline 'accidentally' tweeted out a pornographic picture to a disgruntled customer.
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