interesting

[flea]

Casper got her first Barbie yesterday (choosing that over Hannah Montana jibbetz for her knock-off crocs), courtesy of Grandma. She chose a black Barbie. Now, the Barbie is Halle Berry black, not Alek Wek black - I can't tell if she's got the same face mold as white Barbie (not having any other Barbie to compare) but her features are pretty caucasoid, her skin is coppery, and she has waist-length straight hair. (Also, she's got ACTUAL FEET, and much less boobage than I remember on the Barbies of my childhood, which I gather are brand-wide changes.)

Casper also got to choose her own doll in January or so, when mr. flea accidentally broke one of her little dolls, and she picked a new Polly Pocket. Interestingly, she also chose the black Polly Pocket.

I bought myself a black Sasha doll when I was 11 or 12, but I think I was already enough aware of race at that time to be all White Liberal Girl about buying myself a black doll. Casper's too young for that, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I'm fascinated that twice in a row now she's chosen the black doll.

What about you? Multi-ethnic doll collection?

Comments

[jesseh.livejournal.com]

I wasn't big on dolls, so the only one I remember having was white with brown hair (IIRC), named Chocolate Milk. Who knows why, since everything else was (e.g.) a lamb named Lambie.

[fatoudust.livejournal.com]

I did have multi-ethnic dolls, although I remember I would sometimes play with the white dolls by preference. They were prettier. My japanese doll had straight coarse hair that got really tangly and difficult to work with. Which, okay, yay for racial accuracy, but nsm for me being able to play with the doll. Plus my hair was fine, so it didn't register with me as a positive.

However, it was an important doll for me, and was always my favorite. And it is the only doll that I still have today from that era.

What definitely was a positive was that doll's wardrobe. While it came with a cute little dress, it was the beneficiary of my grandmother's superb needlework skills and boasted several outfits including a completely gorgeous kimono, which is what she wears now.

[larisa57.livejournal.com]

When I was about three or four, I told my mother that I wanted a black Cabbage Patch Kid. She said OK and took me to the store to pick one out. When we got up to pay for it, the cashier looked at me, looked at the doll, and asked, "But don't you want a pretty doll?" (I don't actually remember any of this, but my mother's told me this story. That doll wasn't ever my favorite -- I already had a favorite doll, and no doll could be better than her -- but I did play with her a lot.)

One thing that always annoyed me about white dolls was that they just about always had light hair, light eyes, and very pale skin. Even as a little kid, I was acutely aware that my skin was darker than most other white peoples', and I didn't like that all the dolls were also much lighter than me. I think I had a few dolls with brown eyes, and maybe one with light brown hair, but it wasn't until I got the American Girl Samantha doll that I had one with dark eyes AND dark hair. And dark curly hair, even!

(I have no idea why I was so aware of skin shade that young, but I definitely was. I remember once at summer camp -- this had to have been the summer I was either 4 or 5 -- a bunch of girls were doing that thing where everybody puts an arm out and they compare to see who has the best tan. I put my arm in, and was clearly darker than the other girls, and they told me that no, I didn't count, it wasn't fair because I started out darker.)

[burrell.livejournal.com]

My dolls growing up were all white. My favorites were my two Sasha Dolls, a boy and a girl.

Frances, unlike Casper, has a bunch of Barbies: a vintage Twiggy from her grandma, Belle, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, her Prince, Gabriella and Troy. And she has a black Barbie like the one Casper has (maybe not exactly the same, but same hair length and face). She chose an Hispanic American Girl doll.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

(Exposition: I am a white 22-year-old woman; fair skin, brown hair.) When I was a toddler my mother took me to the toystore and let me pick out a doll; I apparently told her, loudly, "I want a black baby!" (*) I don't know what was going on in my head then, but later when I was 7 or so I remember the Addy American Girl doll (a girl who escapes from slavery) was always my favorite, and always fought over between me and my friend when we played with dolls. When American Girl came out with design-your-own dolls, even later, when I was 9 or 10?, I deliberately chose the only doll with Asian features, because, I remember thinking, I definitely didn't need more dolls that looked like me, almost all the dolls out there looked like me; I wanted a doll that would let me model in my fictional doll universe someone who had an experience different than mine.

From my perspective now, I'd say that the reasoning I went through in that last round was... closest to my adult reasoning about race, representation, and my particular place in the world. The earlier instances, I don't remember any of my own processing-- I don't even remember the first story at all, and for the second I remember just a strong compulsion that wasn't reasoned. The fact that my friend and I apparently felt the same way-- and I think my sisters did too-- is interesting. I guess I can conclude that we were intensely aware of race (more exposition: I grew up in a wealthy and majority white area of Philadelphia. The public K-8, two blocks away from both our houses, which my friend went to and whose playground we spent a lot of time on, is attended by majority black students) and were searching for a comfortable way of processing it.


(*) I learned about this a few years ago because my mother brought the anecdote up in a larger conversation about race and representation-- someone said that everyone needs to see themselves represented in the world around them, and so little girl of minority races need to be able to play with dolls that look like them, or something messed-up is going to happen. My mother said, "I don't think it's that simple-- after all, my white daughter clearly wanted a doll that DIDN'T look like her. Children want to model their play on people UNLIKE them, too." But the logical step missing there is that I already had little white girls that looked exactly like me on TV, in almost all my children's books, in my majority-white schools, and in almost all my dolls.