Ann linked to this story yesterday in WFR, but I just had to delve a little deeper and point out just how depressing this is.
Partnerships of Mattel and the cosmetics industry is no new thing; their “Barbie Loves MAC� collection this past Spring was MAC’s largest and most successful collection they’d ever had. (After all, who could resist looking like the "Barbie Loves MAC" scary doll-woman to the left.)
Now they’re collaborating with Bonne Bell to market a new line of makeup aimed at 6 to 9-year old girls. Mattel included in their announcement of the partnership:
"The Barbie and Bonne Bell partnership will bring girls a fun, feminine and unique beauty experience, leveraging the unparalleled popularity of two globally loved brands."
Because what’s the most unique and useful growing experience a girl could have? Placing beauty standards on her at an early age, of course! What's more rewarding than learning about the wonders of femininity?!?
We all know this is much more important than, say, the “I Can� campaign that came out of Mattel’s partnership with Girls Inc. This project was aimed to tell girls to believe in themselves, in their strengths and that they could make a difference in the world. But of course, that relationship wasn’t so “successful� because of the sexist, anti-choice and homophobic American Family Association’s disapproval of the organization; Mattel cut ties from Girls Inc. shortly after the AFA launched their attack.
So we've gone from “I can be myself, follow my dreams and always do my best,� to “I can apply make-up.� When will young girls be given the positive messages they need which tells them they can be more than...well, a doll?
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Life outpaces satire:
"It's not funny, Bart. Millions of girls will grow up thinking that this is the right way to act -- that they can never be more than vacuous ninnies whose only goal is to look pretty, land a rich husband, and spend all day on the phone with their equally vacuous friends talking about how damn terrific it is to look
pretty and have a rich husband!"
Wow. It's like my childhood experiences in Girl Scouts all over again, except on an international scale! Awesome! Pardon me, I'm going to go be sick.
(I do have to admit enjoying the Barbie Loves MAC line, though. Not as much as some of their others, but I liked it, despite my longstanding Barbie hatred.)
Just another reason why I'm so frightened about what kind of culture my unborn niece/nephew (hard to say right now) is going to grow up in.
I still think the most important influence on a child's self-image is their parents, but still. This crap is so effing pervasive that it's just scary.
This creeps me out. While I loved dress-up and playing with make-up when I was young (though my mother never really dressed up or wore make-up), purposefully pushing it on girls that young is pushing sexuality on girls that young. It's like the parents who put bikinis on their two-year olds at swimming pools. I'm sorry, why do you need the top half? They don't have breasts!
Can we have a time for female children when we don't think of them as sex-objects-to-be?
"When will young girls be given the positive messages they need which tells them they can be more than...well, a doll? "
WHen parents stop buying this sexist crap for their daughters.
Distressing -- but then again, maybe these new generations of girls will have as much fun sitting on top of their little brothers and forcibly making his face up as I did.
I wonder if all that time spent in sister-imposed drag as a kid has anything to do with why he drove himself to play varsity football and do such manly things as break many bones in such adolescent ways (including a hip fracture and a concussion from attaching himself with a jump rope to a moving moped and rollerblading downhill).
How young! Ugh. It's really sad how kids are so much more seperated by gender roles at such a young age now. It seems to me that 15 years ago, when I was that age, kids were LESS polarized. I played with Creepy Crawlers and Lego's just as much as my little boy friends did. It's odd how this has gotten worse rather than better since then.
I mean, when I worked in a preschool, you could really tell which girls played with Bratz dolls (the new Barbie, but 1000 time worse), and which girls' parents didn't expose them to this bratty exaggeration of femininity. They were 4 and already, many of them had made up their minds to not touch anything that wasn't pink and glittery. :(
I will admit, I found this kind of thing to be fun when I was little (along with the Creepy Crawlers and Legos - which are STILL fun at 21 years of age, but I digress), and I still find makeup to be fun now.
But with the huge gap in reasonable parental guidance that seems so obvious nowadays, this kind of thing goes from being fun to being a lifestyle, and THAT is when it gets dangerous.
It seems to me that this is just another oscillation in the coming-of-age (as it were) of common feminist movement (paired with and fueled by an admittedly traditionalist/ gender role driven organization).
As I have grown up, I've seen the feminist movement empowered, and the shunning of all things female in order to better equalize the genders. Then, it seems, women realized that they could enjoy things traditionally female things and hold onto their "equality". The side effects of this being a reemergence of pink, makeup, and all things "girlie". I fully support this, as I fully support any male that wants to partake (metros, gays, cross dressers, etc).
The problem is that this movement, started by people who are comfortable with this individuality, is now trickling down to a younger generation that does not have that solid base. Toys like this are not inherently bad, as long as the parent encourages that individuality. And if little girls want to play with legos, more power to them.
Great title.
I don't know what to think. I loved Barbie as a little kid and loooooved makeup. I would get my aunt to do makeovers and would sneak my mom's lipstick. Makeup was exciting and forbidden because it was, well, adult. But now, at the ripe old age of twenty-one, I haven't worn makeup in five years(minus stage makeup, ugh) and wouldn't be caught dead in it. I'm a liberal feminist tree-hugging dyke. So...I feel like makeup is pretty harmless.
(But little boys should get to wear it if they want to, too. Dammit).
"(But little boys should get to wear it if they want to, too. Dammit)."
In headlines today, Mattel and Bonne Bell team up with Eddie Izzard to promote a new "executive transvestite" action figure.
Damn. Someone beat me to the Malibu Stacy reference.
"Don't ask me, I'm just a girl! *giggle*"
Can someone please ban this Bryan troll please?
Seriously? No ad hominem attacks, logically consistent and amicably dissenting viewpoints constitutes trolling?
Maybe my sarcastometer is just off today.
Aw, don't ban him, he's funny! That Eddie Izzard gag made me laugh out loud. If only..!
Speaking of which, how cool is it that Eddie Izzard has the boy playing his youngest son on The Riches openly preferring and wearing girl's clothing and hair accessories, and the family being completely fine with it?
See, this is why my Punky Brewster doll is well-loved while all my old Barbies are hardly touched. Not only is a mostly-cloth doll more fun than molded plastic, but the Punky image was something I could relate to when the doll was marketed to me.
I was going to write more down, had it all planned out in fact, but I think the comment about Punky says it all. I mean, Punky was girlie. The older she got the girlier she became. At the same time, however, she was always this tough, spunky kid. She'd wear what she wanted, say what was on her mind, and to heck with anyone who tried to stop her.
As an aside, what's wrong with Bonnie Bell's staple product line of flavored lip balms? As far as I can tell, that's far more fun for kids at an age where even the girlie ones only wear makeup for dress-up, anyway.
Distressing -- but then again, maybe these new generations of girls will have as much fun sitting on top of their little brothers and forcibly making his face up as I did
Ha! Sara, I used to love doing that to my little brother when we were kids too!
I was a Legos girl as a kid too (still am, for that matter) and I just don't understand where the market for this is. There's always been Bonne Bell lipgloss and those neon colored water based play make-ups for girls. What's so different about this?
Some little girls will always want to play with make up and some little girls will always be happy with no make up at all. Mattel can't change a girl who wants to play in the mud into a girlie girl, no matter how hard they try. It's parents and classmates who tend to push kids one way or the other.
this doesn't excuse the barbie and bonne bell folks, but this isn't the first time that makeup has been marketed to little girls. does anyone remember tinkerbell cosmetics? the line consisted mostly of perfumes, lotions & powders but also included lip gloss and peel-off nail polish.
i remember having the lip gloss and nail polish as a girl (this was in the early to mid 80s). i remember specifically that my aunt bought me the nail polish in the hopes that it would stop me from biting my nails. no such luck! i still bite my nails sometimes, and most days, my makeup routine still consists solely of lip gloss, albeit not of the tinkerbell variety.
"Seriously? No ad hominem attacks, logically consistent and amicably dissenting viewpoints constitutes trolling?"
Aww, isn't that adorable. Bryan thinks none us read Pandagon.
Ditto Vera Venom, as soon as I saw his name and what he had to say i was like, damn, he's crawled over here.
I personally do not think it's good for young girls to be clogging their pores with makeup as such a young age but if their parents want them to do it there's nothing we can do. It does seem a genius way of instilling in girls at a young age that they need to be pretty above all else in life.
I'd compare this to the cigarette industry who constantly needs to find "replacement smokers" in order to stay in business so they advertise to young kids, same principle here, only it's with make up.
I don't read Pandagon. I had never even heard of it, though now I plan to check it out.
In the interest of full disclosure, I heard of this site from MenAreBetterThanWomen.com, and found it interesting. Don't pigeon hole me.
Distressing -- but then again, maybe these new generations of girls will have as much fun sitting on top of their little brothers and forcibly making his face up as I did
Ha! Sara, I used to love doing that to my little brother when we were kids too!
Unless the little brother was laughing along with the sister, this is exactly as funny as, say, if a big brother was sitting on a little sister and drawing a moustache and glasses on her with a marker.
Speaking of which, how cool is it that Eddie Izzard has the boy playing his youngest son on The Riches openly preferring and wearing girl's clothing and hair accessories, and the family being completely fine with it?
That is a huge part of why I love that show. Also, did anyone see the episode where Izzard's character had to defend a realtor's decision to refuse a lesbian couple a house and it was a -huge- ethical dilemma for him? And Minnie Driver's character got incredibly angry with him for doing it because both of them knew, unquestionably, that it was discriminatory and wrong? If my love for the show hadn't been cemented long before that point, that would have done it.
I was googling for more information on this Bonne Bell deal and found out that Bratz dolls already market cosmetics to this age group of girls, according to this link: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=62166
I hear what people are saying about Tinkerbell cosmetics, and it's possible this Bonne Bell stuff will be like that. But I bet dollars to donuts that the Bratz stuff is more adult-like, judging by how those dolls look (i.e. like made-up little girls). With no noses. Creepy!
Anyone else have more specific info or links, on either the Barbie or Bratz makeup?
I remember Tinkerbelle cosmetics, I had the lip gloss & peel-off nailpolish. In retrospect, that nailpolish seemed to smell much worse than regular nailpolish.
I played with makeup & Barbies when I was little. I used to have those fake makeup toys that looked like eyeshadow, etc., but were plastic, & those little fake nails that you slipped over your fingertips. But I also played sports & had G.I. Joes.
I think what made a difference is parental involvement. My mom strongly stressed to me how it was important to have good hygiene, etc., but it was also important to be active. It seems like a lot of parents nowadays don't have the time to be as involved with their children & they may not be sending the same messages that mine sent.
My mum was one of my Girl Scout troop leaders. We did a lot of feminine things, like cooking, but we also did some unexpectedly tough stuff like engineering & going to air & space museums.
Sorry for the double post: One of my issues with "real" makeup for kids is that it seems kind of like passive play (i.e. like some video games, it doesn't really engage children). Young girls seem to be encouraged to be quiet, I'd love to see games & toys that activate their minds & imaginations, & make them noisy & rambunctious (As long as it's not at Barnes & Noble j/k).
Moxie, it sounds like you were in a wonderful girl scout troop. I was in boy scouts, myself, and while we did a lot of "manly" things, I learned a lot about cooking, cleaning, etc from it too (You pretty much have to, as no one else is going to clean up after you or cook for you). I think thats the best thing for young children, showing them a wide variety of both useful skills and fun distractions. Nothing is wrong with cooking, makeup, etc, but young girls should be taught that they can do them, not that they unnecessarily should.
I loved Girl Scouts, but I kind of wanted to be a Boy Scout when it came to camping. All my friends that were Boy Scouts got to learn about knives (Flashback to The Simpson's Junior Camper's episode) & learn about trails, knot-tying, tracking, etc. They pitched & stayed in actual tents
The first time we went camping we stayed in cabins with attached bathrooms. The second time, we were on these platforms with canvas walls. It was fun, I enjoyed my time at Camp Hoover, but I learned more when my dad took me camping. We used a "real" tent, cooked on campfires, fished, & hiked.
"As an aside, what's wrong with Bonnie Bell's staple product line of flavored lip balms?"
Nothing. Heck, I bought an 8-pack for myself the other day. ;)
The normal Bonne Belle stuff is better than this partnership with Mattel or their partnership with junk food companies (as in M&Ms lip gloss, Dr Pepper lip gloss, etc.).
*Mina: I'm a total lip balm junkie. One of my faves is Bonnie Belle's original Dr. Pepper flavor.
I keep seeing branded (By branded, I mean things like Bubble Yum, Mike & Ike's, etc.) candy flavored lip gloss & that's a little weird/troubling. America is so oddly obsessed with food.
My 4 year daughter body surfs every weekend, attends Karate class, swims at the pool as often as we let her, and looks forward to the next parade or festival she can march in. She likes the Barbie movies, but not the products, which I would refuse to buy her anyways. She is however a fashion junky, and everyday nags me to take her shopping (how she learned about credit cards I have no idea), but luckily she doesn't usually want to buy anything, she just wants to try everything on. Being interested in beauty is not a bad thing, but the commercialized products for little girls get worse and worse every year. My advice; never let your kids watch TV except PBS and PBS kids, get the basic cable package (which usually includes PBS kids), and then subscribe to netflix or blockbuster, because if the show was any good, it will be released on commercial free DVDs.
If your kids watch too many commercials on TV, then they will become brain dead market zombies like everybody else. Getting you kids off of the consumer addiction is a tough task, but it is more than worth the effort to both your pocket book and conscience.
My son, who is a little less then 7 years old, reads a book a day.
"She is however a fashion junky, and everyday nags me to take her shopping (how she learned about credit cards I have no idea), but luckily she doesn't usually want to buy anything, she just wants to try everything on."
When she's a bit older and better at reading, try taking her "book shopping" at the library. That's how I get my go-out-and-browse fix. ;)
Actually I like to watch my daughter model clothes, and I am learning how to stare down shop clerks who try to guilt me into buying something (of course you do have to buy something eventually, and my daughter has a rather extensive closet of clothes that go to the good will or to friends after about 6 months).
The "book shopping" worked for my son, but he never had any fun going to shopping malls.
Bryan, you're not fooling us. I knew it was you before I got half-way through your post.
If this Byran guy disturbes you gals so much, then why don't you all activily ignore him (don't respond to his comments). Somebody suggested ignoring me (probably for good reasons at the time, but I learned from my mistakes) and it scared me to death.
Itazura: "Actually I like to watch my daughter model clothes, and I am learning how to stare down shop clerks who try to guilt me into buying something (of course you do have to buy something eventually, and my daughter has a rather extensive closet of clothes that go to the good will or to friends after about 6 months)."
It's really weird if you LIKE to watch your 4-year old daughter model clothes (weird. weird. weird). And a 4-year old having an "extensive closet of clothes that go to the good will or friends after about 6 months". 4 years old. What's going on? And now you suddenly have a 7-year old son? Earlier when some commenters suspected you might be a troll, you told us you had a wife and a 4-year old daughter. Why didn't the son enter the picture back then? I trusted you. But now you're freaking me out.
Libber
I have no idea how to respond to your attack.
Yes, I like to take my daughter shopping, and watch her have fun modeling clothes. No, I don't get a sexual thrill out of it, and I don't go into the changing room with her (she knows how to put on her clothes by herself). Yes, it takes 6 months for my daughter to grow out of the clothes I buy for her. What do you want me to do with clothes that are too small; throw them in the trash?
Yes I have a nearly 7 year old son, and yes I will e-mail you a picture of him and my daughter if you want one (just give me your e-mail address).
Who actually suggests sending pictures of their children to complete strangers? That's completely messed up.
Back to my actual point, what concerns me is the push for these products as actual makeup for young girl, instead of for playing dress-up. There seems to be a huge loss in the space between playing with Barbies and being made into one. Imagination seems to be pushed further and further away as an important part of play.
Also, I'm kinda tempted to breakout the box of Barbies and Kens from Mom's house to create my own executive transvestite Ken using Barbie's clothes.
I may not be fooling you, but you sure are fooling me. Who am I supposed to be? Have I fallen victim to a case of mistaken identity? I know of this site through another website, but started reading after I saw the editor on the Colbert Report. Are my remarks so offensive? Did I not state my opinions clearly? Have I attacked or done anything to any of you?
If I share a name with someone who has offended you, I apologize. If I share a writing style or opinion with someone who has offended you, I would ask you to judge me on my ideas, my writing, me, not based on someone elses remarks.
Isn't this a key of feminism? Are you not fighting injustice, intolerance, and prejudice? I only ask that you do the same of me.
Bryan, if you're not the Bryan I'm thinking of, I apologize.
But your writing style is exactly like "the other Bryan's." And so are your arguments. And www.menarebetterthanwomen.com?
Thank you Sarah, I have no idea who this other Bryan might be, but if you could point to some of his stuff, I would be interested in seeing it.
MenAreBetterThanWomen.com is a website I came across from FARK (a funny news site). I'm not actually sure what its intentions are, as its too ridiculous to be totally true, but a lot of the humour could not be purely satirical. I think of it more like CollegeHumor for guys. Definitely to be taken with a rather large grain of salt.