Disney faces backlash over new “sexy” Merida; pulls new image from web site as a result

UPDATE, May 16, 2013: Disney has stated that 1. the 2D image was never on their official web site in the first place (though, oddly, it’s all over the official Australia/NZ version of the Disney Princess site–which may have been the source of any confusion), and 2. they will not be retracting the new Merida.

Click here for my new post, in which I argue they missed the whole point of the petition. Clearly, we still have work to do.

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On Saturday, Disney held a “coronation ceremony”(1) for Merida, star of the Disney-Pixar film Brave. In the coronation, Merida officially became part of the Disney Princess lineup. This means that her image has been added to the 2D collection of princesses in a cartoon form that fits stylistically with that of her princess peers.

Unfortunately for Disney, the new cartoon image of Merida that Disney created for the lineup overshadowed all conversation online about the coronation. The reason? The new cartoon sexualizes Merida.

That’s right: Although Merida was created by a woman as a role model for girls, the male-dominated consumer product division at Disney has ignored the character’s intended benefits for young girls, sexualizing her for profit.

Compared with her film counterpart, this new Merida is slimmer and bustier. She wears makeup, and her hair’s characteristic wildness is gone: It has been volumized and restyled with a texture more traditionally “pretty.” Furthermore, she is missing her signature bow, arrow, and quiver; instead, she wears a fashionable sash around her sparkly, off-the-shoulder gown. (As Peggy Orenstein noted when she broke the news of the redesign, “Moms tell me all the time that their preschool daughters are pitching fits and destroying their t-shirts because ‘princesses don’t cover their shoulders.’” I’ve heard the same from parents, as well.)

It doesn’t have to be this way. Some might argue that the changes to Merida are simply a result of her being rendered in 2D, but these are deliberate, calculated changes. She has been presented in 2D form in children’s books since before the movie was released, and she’s still looked like herself.

No–these changes to Merida’s appearance are significant. Sadly, they align with the American Psychological Association’s definition of sexualization, which says that sexualization occurs when any of the following four conditions are present:

• a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
• a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
• a person is sexually objectified — that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
• sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

Since Merida is beloved for breaking the princess mold, proving that a girl needn’t be stereotypically “girly” to be a princess, realigning Merida’s look to echo the other 10 Disney Princesses’ narrow range of appearances is a huge mistake. 

The backlash from parents has been tremendous; a petition on Change.org already boasts more than 120,000 signatures. The petition explains:

The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls’ capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value — to be recognized as true princesses — they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty.

What’s more, Brenda Chapman–Merida’s creator–has gone on record voicing her outrage at this redesign. Chapman argued:

They have been handed an opportunity on a silver platter to give their consumers something of more substance and quality — THAT WILL STILL SELL — and they have a total disregard for it in the name of their narrow minded view of what will make money. I forget that Disney’s goal is to make money without concern for integrity. Silly me.

As of today, Disney has quietly pulled the 2D image of Merida from its website, replacing it with the original Pixar version. Perhaps we’ll be spared an onslaught of sexy Merida merchandise yet.

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If you haven’t yet signed the petition, you can do so at Change.org and at MoveOn.org.

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For further reading: To view more of my posts on Merida, click here. For more of my posts on the Disney Princess brand, click here.

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Do you like this post? Follow Rebecca Hains on facebook or twitter.

About the author: Rebecca Hains, Ph.D. is an associate professor of communications at Salem State University, where she teaches advertising and media studies. Her new book, Confronting Cinderella: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years, will be released by Source Books next year.

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(1) Disney holds “coronation ceremonies” for its princesses about a year after a film’s release–a great way of bumping up interest in a princess after her film’s momentum has died down.

Halloween and the rise of sexy costumes for women and girls

For years, families struck a balance between store-bought and homemade Halloween costumes. But these days, DIY Halloween costumes are out; store-bought costumes are an $2.87 billion business.

What does this mean for consumers? Well, for one thing, we’re seeing a lot of costumes that reproduce tired gender stereotypes. Sex sells, and in an $8 billion seasonal industry, it seems designers and retailers are maximizing profits by creating more and more “sexy” costumes for women and girls.

Cartoon by Andy Mariette, via Sociological Images

In today’s relatively new, hypercommercial Halloween, it’s become an expectation for females to dress in sexually provocative ways–even when costumed as, say, a children’s cartoon character, like Nemo from Finding Nemo, or a mundanely macabre item like a body bag. Are you a man? Your body bag Halloween costume will resemble an actual body bag. Are you a woman? The ladies’ version of a body bag costume will be (drum roll…) a skimpy dress with a hood that zips over your head. Seriously.

Adding insult to injury, the definition of “sexy” applied to the majority of women’s Halloween costumes is appallingly narrow. Tiny dresses with a lot of revealed skin available in a very limited range of sizes make it clear: Mainstream, readily-available “sexy” costumes aren’t being made for the full-figured, despite the fact that a size 14 is the average American woman’s size.

The typical sexy Halloween costumes divide women and shortchange young girls by conveying the same old message: if you don’t fit our society’s narrow beauty ideal, this culture doesn’t want to think of you as being sexually desirable. So you’d better focus on your appearance above all else. Note that even the new “sexy” costume for Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid is scaled down, available in tiny sizes, even though the original character from the film is a confident, full-figured woman–which seems really incongruous.

Unfortunately, as parents of young girls know, today’s girls’ Halloween costumes are highly sexualized, too. This reinforces the same unhealthy messages about what female bodies are considered desirable and undesirable in our culture.

Although the issue is not just with costumes modeled after sexualized dolls, Bratz and Monster High costumes are a perennial source of concern; several years ago, in her book The Lolita Effect, Gigi Durham wrote:

Last Halloween, a five-year-old girl showed up at my doorstep decked out in a tube top, gauzy miniskirt, platform shoes, and glittering eye shadow. The outfit projected a rather tawdry adult sexuality. “I’m a Bratz!” the tot piped up proudly, brandishing a look-alike doll clutched in her chubby fist. I had an instant, dizzying flashback to an image of a child prostitute I had seen in Cambodia, dressed in a disturbingly similar outfit.

But, no–even the most inane girls’ costume ideas are rendered in skimpy styles, calculated to be provocative. From sexy witches and sexy vampires to sexy crayons, costumes that encourage young girls to sexualize themselves are everywhere.

No wonder some are complaining that Halloween has turned into “Happy Sexualize our Daughters Season.” Ugh.

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Readers: Do you remember wearing a homemade Halloween costumes when you were a child? Which childhood Halloween costume was your favorite? Are you planning to make a costume this year for yourself of your kids? Share your ideas in the comments!

Reimagining Disney Princesses with racial diversity: From Tumblr to D-Tech

A couple of weeks ago, a young woman named Lauren reimagined the white Disney Princess characters as women of color, posting recolored images of them on her Tumblr blog. Her inspired designs quickly made their way around the blogosphere. Responses ranged from supportive (“I love this!“) to perplexed (“This was done because…?“; “But why?“); from grateful to critical (including requests for more inclusivity); and, sadly, from defensive to exclusionary (people of color “should come up with their own princesses and heroes“) and clearly racist.

I wrote a little about the Disney Princess franchise and race earlier this year, when I noticed that in the Disney Store’s 2012 redesign of their Disney Princess dolls, Disney westernized Mulan’s dress and lightened Pocahontas’s skin. So when the Huffington Post Live asked me to be their expert guest on a segment called “Black and Brown Princesses” about the reimagined Disney Princess characters from Lauren’s Tumblr, I was happy to oblige.

Although I have my criticisms of the Disney Princess franchise in general, I do think it’s important for young girls to see characters on screen and elsewhere in popular culture that look like them. I’ve been doing academic research on the Disney Princess phenomenon for a while now, and I’ve heard about the heartbreaks caused by Disney’s predominant whiteness: The little black girl who came home from first grade from first grade in tears because her classmates said she couldn’t be a princess. Their reason? She wasn’t white. (This was pre-Tiana.) The little Latina girl who would brush and brush her tightly curled hair, completely frustrated that she couldn’t smooth it out so that she would look more like a princess. (New princess Merida is the only one without silky smooth straight hair.)

While conducting field research for my book, Growing Up With Girl Power, I also saw firsthand how important diversity in dolls and other products is to pre-adolescent African-American girls. For example, as I mentioned previously, the racial diversity of Bratz dolls was really important to the African-American girls in my study. For them, the diversity was often much more important than the dolls’ skimpy fashions, which have resulted in a lot of negative publicity for the brand. The girls also cared tremendously about whether popular characters like Dora the Explorer and those from The Proud Family were represented on toys and other products with the same skin tone as they had on television. (I remember that a beach towel depicting Dora with the wrong skin tone had been a serious affront.)

As these girls and I talked and talked about how few characters looked like them, I found myself remembering being a young girl and wanting nothing more than a doll that had brown hair and brown eyes, like me. Unfortunately, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, these were almost impossible to find, as my mother can attest: she had to hunt high and low to find a single brown-haired doll whose eyes were brown, not blue. When I shared this memory with the girls, they were surprised. “How rude!” one said.

That’s one of the brilliant things about the “My American Girl” dolls. Although they are prohibitively expensive for most families (sigh), girls can customize the dolls to have whatever skin tones and hair colors they’d like–just like Lauren did with the Disney Princess images on her Tumblr blog. Of course, there’s little diversity in actual facial features, which is an ongoing problem in the doll business: even when racially and ethnically diverse dolls are available, their facial characteristics typically reflect white beauty norms. In the essay “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandizing of Difference,” scholar Ann duCille famously criticized such dolls for being merely “dye-dipped”–brown versions of their white counterparts.

In this context, a new experiment from Disney is fascinating. As of this week, children ages 3 to 12 who are visiting Walt Disney World’s Downtown Disney Marketplace* may order custom-modeled 7″ Disney Princess figurines made to look like them. Just like them. As in, modeled after images taken via 3D scans of the children’s own faces.

The price is about the same as an American Girl Doll, but thanks to the 3D technology, these new “D-Tech Me” princess figurines won’t just have the children’s eye and hair color; they’ll also have their noses, cheekbones, lips.

The service is being offered for a limited time–”at least through Thanksgiving,” according to one Disney rep (see comment #12 here), but not much longer. The characters available are Ariel, Aurora, Belle, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Tiana. (Sorry, Mulan, Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Merida!) The sample images are diverse: Ariel, Rapunzel, and Snow White all have darker skin and dark brown to black hair, Aurora is a redhead, and Tiana is a fair-skinned blonde.

I have to agree with The Business Insider that the samples images Disney has shared so far look pretty creepy–a little too “uncanny valley” for my taste. And I’m not sure why three of the four characters of color from the Disney Princess franchise are being excluded as choices in the first place; it seems a little insensitive to me. (Anyone have thoughts on that?) But I don’t agree with Marketplace that the figurines are a sign of the apocalypse.

Although the Disney Princess franchise teems with stereotypes about girlhood, femininity, physical appearance, and race (and although I strongly dislike that the girls’ heads will be as large or larger than their waists on these figurines) the reality is this: Little girls are growing up in a princess-obsessed girls’ culture, and feeling excluded hurts.

By letting any girl see herself as a princess–well, at least any 3- to 12-year-old girl whose parents can bring her to Disney World and afford to pay $99.95 plus shipping and handling for a figurine–Disney has taken another small step in the right direction. I’ll be curious to see whether the experiment catches on.

*Some reports have stated this service is available at Disneyland, but a Disney rep on the Disney Parks web site has clarified that the D-Tech Princesses are only going to be available in Walt Disney World in the Downtown Disney Marketplace.

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Boy teeth, girl teeth, and the gendering of ungendered things

My three-year-old son had a check-up with his pediatric dentist yesterday. The dentist is a friendly fellow who is good with kids, and we like his practice a lot.

Shortly after a dental hygienist cleaned my son’s teeth, the dentist approached us and warmly greeted my son. My son was in great spirits because moments earlier, we had played a game of thumb war, and he won. (Okay, okay… I admit I threw the game. I would be a bad Olympian.)

“Hello!” said the dentist. “I just want to count your teeth today,” he said reassuringly. “And let’s make sure they’re all boy teeth, okay?”

As my son smiled and opened his mouth per the dentist’s request, I said, “Gee, I’m pretty sure they’re all people teeth, doctor.”

The denist began the exam but seemed to have missed my point. “Let’s see. Boy tooth… boy tooth… boy tooth…”

I didn’t like where this was going. In a gentle effort to redirect his script, I asked a playful question: “Hmm…Are you sure none of them are puppy teeth?”

“Puppy teeth? No… But, uh, oh!” In a voice of mock concern, he asked, “Is this one a girl tooth?!?!”

Smiling at my son as naturally as possible, I said in a bright, upbeat tone, “Gee, it could be!” (Meaning: and there would be nothing wrong with that!)

The dentist frowned and furrowed his brow. “No, no,” he said, “this is a boy tooth. You are a boy. You don’t have any girl teeth! Phew.”

Boy teeth. Girl teeth. Let’s unpack this: What’s going on here?

Dental exams are considered unpleasant by most people, and they can be downright scary for small children. The dentist was obviously trying to make my son’s exam as playful and entertaining as possible. I’m a fan of playful parenting strategies myself, so I appreciate his intentions.

But I can’t help but wonder why everything has to come down to gender.

My son is only three. Gender isn’t an issue for him yet; he isn’t worried about what things are supposedly for boys or girls. (In fact, at the end of his exam, he was allowed to choose a toothbrush and a toy prize. He chose a blue toothbrush and a pink toy lizard. Yes, a pink lizard–imagine!)

My son’s indifference to matters of gender is normal. Studies show that it is only at about age five that children internalize gender rules. When they do, though, they really do: Kindergarteners often perform the role of gender police zealously, monitoring themselves and their peers for the slightest signs of gender deviance and attempting to squelch any hint of it.

This behavior has to do with an uncertainty about what makes boys boys and girls girls, as well as an uncertainty that gender is fixed. Researchers report that children of kindergarten age fear that if they do things associated with the opposite sex, they might suddenly become the opposite sex–finding themselves a boy instead of a girl, or vice versa. As children of this age are usually happy with their gender identities, their gender policing can be read as an effort to do everything possible to protect and cement those identities.

In grade school, children’s attention to gender is often channeled into what developmental psychologists call an ingroup/outgroup bias. This means that children often have positive feelings about their own sex, favoring it over the opposite sex. This doesn’t necessarily mean they feel hostility towards the opposite sex–just that they have preferential biases for their own (as in the “girls rule” mentality of girl power).

When media texts dichotomize boys and girls–presenting them as entirely separate and distinct from one another–it both plays into these developmental stages and exacerbates them. That’s why many media scholars, including myself, would argue that it’s important for television shows, movies, toy packaging, and so on to present boys and girls interacting together at least some of the time. Although gender is an organizing concept in our culture, boys and girls have more in common than not, sharing things such as feelings, family structures, racial identities, educational experiences, and so on.

Unfortunately, our culture often trivializes interests categorized as “girlish,” and boys therefore often eschew them, because our society regards girls and women as second-class citizens. (Examples of this abound, but consider the recent New York Times article that quoted a psychologist as saying that girls are the “lesser gender” without even pausing to problematize that quote. The reporter actually presented it as fact. Great, huh?) Therefore, directing at least a bit of attention to childhood’s common ground is an important task for parents, educators, and media producers alike. Boys and girls really aren’t opposites, and it’s healthy for children to know this.

Teeth are one of the many things in life that have neither sex or gender. They look the same and serve the same function, no matter whose body they are in.

Unfortunately, when a well-meaning authority figure such as a dentist feigns alarm at the horror of an imaginary opposite-sex tooth in a child’s mouth, it reinforces the message that boys and girls are very, very different, from head to toe, and that children must guard against contamination from the opposite sex at all costs.

Just imagine “girl teeth” and “boy teeth” as a diagnosable medical condition! I suppose “girl teeth” would be regarded by boys as embarrassing and shameful. It would certainly not be something a kindergarten boy would want his peers to hear about. (I can just hear the sing-songy playground taunts now: “Timmy has girl teeth! Timmy has girl teeth! Na-na-na-na-na!”)

But even though I’m not a dentist, I’m confident that feminam dentes exists in imagination only. So I’ve asked the dentist’s staff to please put a note in my son’s chart: no “boy teeth/girl teeth” talk, please. The dentist is a smart fellow; I’m sure he can come up with another script.

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Order my book, Growing Up With Girl Power, today!

I’m delighted that my book, Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood On Screen and in Everyday Life, is now available from my publisher, Peter Lang Press! Won’t you buy a copy?

You can order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from PeterLang.com. Orders placed now should arrive by the end of February.

Here’s a synopsis:

For more than a decade, girl power has been a cultural barometer, reflecting girlhood’s everchanging meanings. How did girl power evolve from a subcultural rallying cry to a mainstream catchphrase, and what meaning did young girls find in its pop culture forms? From the riot grrrls to the Spice Girls to The Powerpuff Girls, and influenced by books like Reviving Ophelia and movements like Take Our Daughters to Work Day, Growing Up With Girl Power charts this history. It considers how real girls who grew up with girl power interpreted its messages about empowerment, girlhood, strength, femininity, race, and more, and suggests that for young girls, commercialized girl power had real strengths and limitations–sometimes in fascinating, unexpected ways. Encompassing issues of preadolescent body image, gender identity, sexism, and racism, Growing Up With Girl Power underscores the importance of talking with young girls, and is a compelling addition to the literature on girls, media, and culture.

Professors: Are you considering assigning Growing Up With Girl Power in one of your classes? Request a free desk copy here, and check out my book’s companion website–it’s full of great content to prompt class discussion. If you adopt it for your course, I would be glad to visit or chat with your class via Skype. Email me for details!

New at the Disney Store: Princess Dolls with Extra Sparkles! (and extra problems)

On a recent visit to my local Disney Store, I learned that Disney had just released a new line-up of Disney Princess dolls at the holidays. The new line-up was on the shelves–and so were some of their older counterparts.*

All of the dolls had new face molds (with larger eyes) and new dresses (which were sparklier than ever). Here’s what I saw:

The old Belle doll (left) has sparkling swirls on her gown's skirt, while the new Belle's dress is 100% sparkles. She also looks kind of worried. What's wrong, Belle?

The old Jasmine doll (left) has sparkly swirls on her pants, while the new doll's outfit is sparkly all over. Great news: She isn't wearing eyeshadow! She looks a little angry, though. What's wrong, Jasmine?

Our local store only had the newer Mulan doll in stock. It made me a little sad: Disney seems to want to “girl up” its tomboy. (Maybe that’s why the new Belle doll looks worried!) Check out Mulan’s tulle:

Hey, Mulan! Where'd you get that enormously poofy pink gown??

They didn’t have last year’s doll in stock (a sign that customers who like Mulan want a dress that’s true to the character?), so I found these online:

The old Mulan doll has swirly sparkles, like all of the older models; hers are just around her waist.

Watch out, Mulan--you're being swallowed by a rampaging ball gown. Run!!!

Did they put Pocahontas in a ball gown, too?

No ballgown here--but perplexingly, her feet are shaped for high heels. Old Pocahontas doll (left): sparkly necklace. New Pocahontas (right): sparkly necklace AND sparkly waistband! Good point: Her face mold seems truer to her on-screen counterpart. Big problem: The newer doll has noticeably lighter skin.

Disney lightened their Native American character’s skin? Hey, I bet that’s why Jasmine looks angry.

Not cool, Disney. Not cool at all.

In short, the new dolls have some good points (e.g., less makeup, a wider range of facial expressions) and some that cause concern (e.g., Mulan’s westernized dress and Pocahontas’s lightened skin).

Parents and Disney fans: What do you think of the new dolls?

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*Note: My local Disney store did not have the older models of several dolls, including Rapunzel and Tiana (which have been selling very well). Has anyone seen the other dolls side by side? What did Disney do well? What could they do better next time?

My Little Pony: Even better than The Powerpuff Girls

A children’s television cartoon that appeals to boys and girls, men and women, is a rarity.

The Powerpuff Girls exemplified this. In 1998, it stunned the television industry by crossing demographic barriers. The combination of extreme cuteness and extreme strength in well-written characters proved a point: Boys (and men) will indeed watch a show about girls, IF the characters have … well … character.

(Writers, take note: To be successful, girl characters need to be defined by more than their sex. “Girl” is not a character.)

Because of The Powerpuff Girls‘ success, the networks greenlighted a bunch of other girl hero cartoons. After years of being depicted in passive secondary roles or insipid leading roles, girls were everywhere.

Near the end of the decade, cool cartoon girls were no longer on-trend. But while working on Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Powerpuff animator and writer Lauren Faust was developing a new concept: Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls. Despite her best efforts (chronicled on her blog), these great characters never got a television show (though they did enter production as some really nice plush dolls).

Enter the Ponies

When Faust pitched the Milky Way show to Hasbro execs, her approach resonated with them. They didn’t have a place for Milky Way, but they wondered: would she re-imagine the My Little Pony brand with them?

At first, Faust felt “skeptical”; as she explained in Ms. Magazine, “Shows based on girls’ toys always left a bad taste in my mouth, even when I was a child. They did not reflect the way I played with my toys.” But she realized that if she took the lead on the new My Little Pony, she could rebut “the perception that ‘girly’ equals ‘lame’ or ‘for girls’ equals ‘crappy’”. So, she developed the characters and the show, and she led the production of season one of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.*

MLP: Friendship is Magic vs. The Powerpuff Girls

I love putting current media texts in the context of their predecessors. So, let’s consider: how does MLP stack up against those pioneers, the PPGs?

1. Both feature a range of female characters who are individuals in their own rights.
2. Both feature lead characters who are active, smart, and have agency–arguably making them good role models for children.
3. They appeal to boys and girls alike, thanks in large part to their non-stereotypical characters. (I recall one mom telling me that her five-year-old son “insisted Buttercup is a boy”; similarly, my three-year-old son seems to believe that the pony Rainbow Dash is a boy, calling her a “he.”)
4. They appeal to adults as well as children; MLP has a devoted following of male teenagers and adults called “bronies,” who are such dedicated fans they even have their own MLP convention.

Furthermore:

• MLP is produced specifically as a children’s show (rather than for Cartoon Network), so the producers had to adhere to Educational and Informational standards. This means there’s less chance of the characters modeling bad behaviors.
• The PPGs featured a lot of fighting, and many parents objected to the frenetic violence. In contrast, the ponies exist in a more peaceful realm. For example, when the ponies attempt to drive a dangerous dragon away, only gentle Fluttershy succeeds: after giving the dragon a stern talking-to about bullying, he agrees to leave.

Finally, while the PPGs offered three character “types” — Blossom, a smart girl; Bubbles, a cute girl; and Buttercup, a tough girl — MLP’s six leads have more range, individually and collectively. Perhaps my favorite quote from Faust’s piece in Ms. is this, on what she really wants viewers to take away from the show:

There are lots of different ways to be a girl. You can be sweet and shy, or bold and physical. You can be silly and friendly, or reserved and studious. You can be strong and hard working, or artistic and beautiful. This show is wonderfully free of “token girl” syndrome, so there is no pressure to shove all the ideals of what we want our daughters to be into one package. There is a diversity of personalities, ambitions, talents, strengths and even flaws in our characters–it’s not an army of cookie-cutter nice-girls or cookie-cutter beauty queens like you see in most shows for girls.

::nodding:: Yes. That’s really important.

Parents: Have you seen My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic yet? What do you and your children like best about it? Are there any elements that give you pause?

Interested in reading more about girl heroes and girls’ television cartoons? Check out my new book, Growing Up With Girl Power.

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* I was sorry to learn that Faust left her position as MLP’s producer after its first season was complete. I wonder what the second season has in store, with Faust in only a consulting role. But I’m definitely looking forward seeing whatever she moves on to!

Challenging our assumptions: Is there anything good about Bratz?

Bratz dolls came back on the market this fall. They’d been out of production for a few years while their maker, MGA, fought a legal battle with Mattel. MGA emerged victorious—and critics everywhere shook their heads. What good can come of girls playing with sexy toys—toys that the American Psychological Association has singled out in a report [pdf] as contributing to the sexualization of girls?

I am no fan of Bratz. A few years ago, at the height of their popularity, I witnessed little girls’  delight in Bratz “fashionable” clothing—their revealing, age-inappropriate styles.  One girl asked her eight-year-old friend, “Do you wish you could dress like the Bratz dolls?”

Her friend replied longingly: “Oh, I do!”

Ugh.

But.

Children are full of surprises—and while I was conducting research for my book, Growing Up With Girl Power, I spent a lot of time with girls. Enough to experience the unexpected.

One afternoon, a group of girls shared their Bratz dolls with me. And much to my surprise, as their play got underway, they decided to ignore the dolls’ clothing completely. The reason?

They were using the dolls to “play slaves.”

As their collaborative play unfolded, these girls–who were African-American–acted out a chapter of U.S. history, focusing not on the dolls’ sexy clothing, but on their skin tones.

I was blown away.

Their white dolls were slave owners and underground railroad conductors; the black dolls were runaway slaves, empowered by Harriet Tubman.  And as they played, the girls imagined that they had “raggedy clothes.”

This kind of play was possible for one important reason: Bratz dolls featured more racial diversity than the other dolls the girls owned.  Even though the dolls directed children to focus on fashion, the girls in my study had enough agency to use these dolls in a way that MGA never imagined. In this instance, at least, diversity trumped too-sexy fashion play.

To me, this experience presents an important reminder to parents, educators, and critics: In addition to critiquing children’s popular culture, we need to spend time with children, exploring how they play and watch media. It’s important to get as full a picture as possible. Children have agency–and witnessing this process in action won’t necessarily mitigate our concerns, but it might challenge some of our assumptions.

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P.S. Don’t think for a minute that the Bratz dolls’ racial diversity vindicates the brand. I’m not happy that Bratz are back in the market, even if their marketing team has promised they’ll be more “wholesome” this time around. Sorry, but girls wearing bustiers in the new Bratz ads? Please. I’d rather see an affordable line of dolls that are racially diverse and non-sexualizing gain success.

Parents: Any suggestions on good, affordable, diverse alternatives to Bratz?