So, Nic treated Chuck and me to a movie today <thanks, Nic!>. We went and saw Pirates of the Carribean II, and it was pretty enjoyable in general. And so during the movie I'm remembering this episode of "Between the Lions" that Dillon and I checked out of the library called "To the Ship!" and it's about gender stereotyping and the brother lion saying to the sister that she can't be a pirate because she's a girl. (That was like, the best treatment of that subject I've ever seen, it is fantastic!) And in "Pirates", Kiera Knighley is a total kick-butt pirate and has some awesome swashbuckling scenes where she's swordfighting with the best of them and sort of pokes fun at the damsel in distress and all that. And I think, this is a pretty good movie, I'll have to buy this- because I love the action movies where the girls hang with the boys and blow stuff up and beat people up and everything… And I'm thinking about this sort of role model for my daughter-not that I want her to grow up and be a pirate, but you know, action heros are cool.
But then I consider the portrayal of black women in the film. And then you get the freaky medicine-woman and the cannibal tribeswomen with the bones through their nose, etc. Which kind of presents a problem, you know? And the lack of cool women heroes in action roles is compounded by the further lack of cool black women heroes in action roles. Not like this is new-I wrote a paper on it in college many years ago-but I am just feeling that more acutely these days.
Sort of like looking for some dolls, etc. to bring with for the plane ride home and being unable to find many with brown skin tones. I wound up getting a "groovy girl" who resembles (in size, shape, etc.) Dillon's doll, Babycakes, but was dressed unpardonably, so I bought another outfit to put her in. I also got two "groovy girl minis" which are smaller, poseable figures that I thought might come in handy on our thirty-hour flight. And two "Staceys", one brown and one white, because the brown one came in a tutu but the white one came in a soccer uniform, so I needed to have that outfit. But I was really surprised about the lack of dolls-of-color, so to speak, at a couple of different big-box retailers in our majority-minority city. I guess I shouldn't be, because feminists I know have been talking about it forever, but while Dillon has a few dolls, we don't spend tons of time in the toy aisles at stores (since he sort of has an unreasonable amount of toys already) and so I really never noticed. The one exception to this rule seems to be the Bratz dolls, but I am sort of anti-those right now…
Chuck looked at the bag of dolls and toys I was putting together and he couldn't believe I was packing five dolls to bring with to Ethiopia, but I am thinking, thirty hours traveling is a long time to try to keep a two-year-old focused on anything, so I'm bringing coloring books (with those magic markers that don't write on anything but the special paper-I'm thinking THAT will come in handy) and a few toys that we should be able to keep sort of all in one place. I don't want to spend the flight on my hands and knees looking for a lego or whatever…
Check out American Girl dolls. You can get them in various skin tones, eye shapes & colors, etc. You may remember the controversy they were involved in probably about a year ago – supporting a pro-girls charity that the “religious-right” had issues with.
Yeah, those dolls are pretty cool (and you have to love their values!) too bad they are super expensive! I think we’ll wait until she asks us for one. (And then I might have a hard time saying no…
I think that Mia Putia, a local store on Center St. had dolls of color. If I’m driving by and they’re open, I’ll check it out. They’d be the squishy, huggable kinds of dolls, not the plastic Barbie-type ones. You might also ask about it in local community centers, or something? Maybe there are local women who make dolls by hand?