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.
Printer-friendly version