the Black Barbie...

[syonanto]

So Mattel's brought in a new line of black Barbie dolls, featuring wider noses, dark skin (obviously) and thicker/curlier/slightly frizzy-but-only-from-the-bottom hair.

The article on yahoo.ca regards the news a little more critically, certain that the hair has a hell of an influence on young black girls, because their hair isn't naturally smooth,

Comments

[schellibie]

Another reason why Avatar is awesome!

I'm surprised that Mattel didn't do this a lot earlier...

[syonanto]

Indeed! xD Yeah, I'm hoping it just leads to further improvement. Like I said, they have nothing to lose!

[glockgal]

Y'know, I never gave much thought to Mattel's similar-features, different skintone Barbies before - when I was a kid, we only had white Barbies to play with - but once you see that they ARE making a conciliatory effort to acknowledge racial facial features other than 'generic white', it...it's pretty amazing that it took until 2009 for this to happen.

Still, as you say, it's actually happening - and while still very problematic, hopefully it'll only help to keep things progressive along that vein!

[syonanto]

Haha, I <3 your icon!

And yeah, totally agreed on that point. I think I was just so shocked they got this far that I didn't really have it in me to get put off by how painfully long it took them to actually make the improvement. And I know it's weird, but the fact that there weren't other types of barbies available to me back then doesn't bother me as much as the fact that they aren't as available or popular right now. Nowadays, people are so aware of issues like this but for some reason the change still happens so excruciatingly slowly...

[sidepocket_pro]

To me, the fact that the article even mentions that long strait hair is what we classify as "beautiful" says a shit load about our society and how fucked up it is.

Are you going to see "Good Hair" when it comes out?

[syonanto]

Haha, couldn't've said it better myself.

And sadly, I'm really behind on movie news ^^; Who's starring in Good Hair?

[sidepocket_pro]

It's a documentary staring Chris Rock on his adventures about how black hair is portrayed in the media stemming from when his daughter asked him one day "why don't I have good hair?"