Tuesday, December 23, 2008

bratzzz

This is a photograph I took four days ago in Longwood, Florida:


The two most emotionally disturbing parts about this photo:

1) The multiplicity of Bratz doll types. Their names from left to right are: Yasmin, Meygan, Cloe, Monica, Lindsey, Sasha, and Jade (not pictured: Leah).

2) The resident of this house spent countless painstaking hours with a jigsaw and acrylic paints to get this desired look. Nothing screams more Florida than the plywood Christmas decor cutouts (except, of course, the nylon Santa alligator in the foreground with bedroom eyes).

After seeing this, I decided to research the Bratz dolls because I wanted to understand the motivation behind such aesthetic atrocity, but now I kind of wish I had rested content in my Bratz ignorance. They were created in 2000 by an Iranian Jewish immigrant Isaac Larin (wasn't Ruth Handler the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants???) because he thought Barbie dolls weren't diverse enough. Hence the main Bratz character Yasmin was born, with a Jewish-Latina background and a passion for fashion.

Unfortunately for the carpenter/creator of these delighful, sugary 4' decorations, the extinction of the Bratz dolls is nigh due to a lawsuit Mattel brought against their manufacturers. You can read the article here.

Here's my favorite quotation from the article:

A 2007 report by the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls called Bratz dolls' miniskirts, fishnet stockings and feather boas "sexualized" and argued that the dolls' "objectified sexuality ... is limiting for adolescent girls, and even more so for the very young girls who represent the market for these dolls."

From playing with unrealistic collogen-lipped dolls to two-bit trolling street whore in a matter of moments...how the kiddies grow up so fast these dayz.

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