Читать книгу Steve Biddulph’s Raising Girls - Steve Biddulph, Steve Biddulph - Страница 53

My youngest daughter is five and spent the weekend penning a Christmas Wish List to Santa. Nestled between a backpack shaped like a koala and a detective magnifying glass is a request for a Bratz Masquerade toy. She saw it advertised while watching Finding Nemo on television. The doll is dressed in an outfit that would look great wrapped around a pole. She has swishy, knee-length hair with pastel streaks, hoop earrings and more black kohl eyeliner than a Kardashian.

I’m a little stuck because we don’t have any Bratz in our house. I’m not sure exactly what I don’t like about them. I loathe the lollipop heads and cushion pouts. Hate the heavy make-up. But I think what upsets me the most is their wardrobes. Seriously, these dolls wrote the rules on Red Light. A toy designed for five- to 10-year-old girls shouldn’t be so overtly sexy. Pretty, geeky, smart, ugly are all fine but scantily clad dolls should be reserved for lonely grown men who can’t get real girlfriends.

For me the message is just too narrow. The Bratz brand is 13 years old, which means the original crash-test consumers are just starting to flex their fashion chops. On the weekend, I watched some of these girls heading into the Eminem concert in Sydney. They were wearing clothes that defy description. Mainly because there was so little fabric covering their bodies that I’m struggling to come up with words other than naked and nude to describe how they looked. This is the first batch of young women to have been influenced by a society hell bent on fast-tracking them into womanhood and the first place we’re going to see the results is in the fashion choices they make. What struck me more than the bare skin was how homogenised their look was. Everyone was dressed identically. It was a sea of tiny, cut-off denim shorts and fluro crop tops. Teenagers have always copied one another – it’s normal to dress the same way as your friends – but there used to be so much more diversity and self-expression. I remember copying the wardrobes of Madonna, Wendy James and Diane Keaton at the same age. I experimented all the time. But there was none of that in this crowd. It was Same. Same. Sexy. Same.

We can’t blame this on Bratz or Barbie alone – there are so many influences that play on young girls – but it does make you despondent about the serious lack of role models both on the toy shelf and in the mainstream. Once they wave bye-bye to Dora and Angelina the choices are whittled down to Bindi Irwin, Harry Potter’s Hermione and a couple of exceptions on Nickelodeon. Otherwise it’s Miley, Taylor, Selena and The Biebs. Where are Pippi Longstocking and Nancy Drew? Why isn’t there a Kate Winslet for Tweens?

It would be so easy for me to capitulate on the Bratz present. Seeing her little face light up when she opens it on Christmas morning is a tempting trade. But every time I teeter, I close my eyes and visualise her dressing the doll up in its miniature thigh-high boots, a micro-mini skirt and green boob tube and … well, I want more.

More imagination from the toy manufacturer, more depth from the doll and frankly a little bit more fabric for my money.

Paula Joye is editor of www.lifestyled.com.au.

There is something really important to say here about dolls. In Steiner Education, where kids are rarely rushed and a lot of thought goes into stages and ages, they have dolls with no faces. These toys are just blank and plain, with perhaps some simple clothes. The amazing thing is – kids love them. What happens is that the child at play puts all her own imagination into the feelings the doll might have, what it might look like, and what it does.

The doll doesn’t programme the child. These dolls are the ones taken to bed at night with them, tucked in, and used to play out all their dreams, imaginings and fears. It’s the very opposite of a Bratz doll. For little children, boys and girls, the less corporate their toys, and the more natural and brand-less, the better.

Finally, no toy advice would be complete without a word about Lego. There is no doubt about it, Mr Lego, if there was one, was a genius. He deserves a Nobel Prize. There is no construction toy that comes close in its almost planetary popularity, usefulness and general magic. It can stimulate minds in different versions from babies to tech-headed teens – and it benefits and is loved by girls just as much as boys, given the chance.

But recently Lego got kidnapped by the marketers, who decided a girls’ version was needed. Listen to what they came up with: five curvy little friends who bake, home-make, decorate, hairstyle and shop! Anything gender limiting in that little selection?

Boys’ Lego, on the other hand, is about firefighting, space exploration, knights in armour, buildings, cars, houses and furniture and ANYTHING YOU WANT TO MAKE IT. Boys play in Lego World, whereas girls play in their own little ghetto called Heartlake City! (No firefighters or policemen there, they have to get the boys over if the beauty salon catches fire!) Naturally when this new product line came out, women rose up in outrage. One angry writer summed up this in one neat sentence. There IS a girls’ version – it’s called … Lego.

There’s no doubt Lego did their research, spending millions and taking years. Their head researcher told a Danish newspaper that they found that girls had a single overwhelming preoccupation – with BEAUTY. That’s what the new girls’ Lego was built around. Girls wanted to project themselves into dolls who were being, or getting made, beautiful. Now I am not arguing with their finding, but that’s a measure of how DAMAGED girls are now. ‘How do I look?’ is their strongest interest. If you want this to be your daughter’s preoccupation, then girls’ Lego is for you.

So by all means get your daughter Lego, but not the girls’ version. Not the pink and purple beauty salon or the café. Sure, she might build those of her own choice, but she might prefer rockets, castles, cannons, horses, trees, trucks and farms. And that would be a real shame not to have the scope for.