Hey, Dollface.

This is a Bratz doll:



And she looks like she's had very bad cosmetic surgery. Dolls for children generally have idealised faces - pert noses, big eyes, the stereotype of perfect beauty. But how can bad cosmetic surgery have become the idea of perfection? Am I just being old and crabby and not seeing the inner beauty of having oversized blown up lips or something?

I've currently got one male child and one baby of unknown gender in my belly. It could be a girl and if it is I really don't want dolls like this to be a part of her life. But then as a parent you're faced with the difficult decision. Do you be the unkind Mum, the one who says no to the toys all the other kids have got, or do you allow your female child to be indoctrinated from a very early age into the fine art of the female form Hollywood stylee?

Hamleys has recently been shown up for dividing it's toys into gender stereotypes - pink and baby dolls for girls, Dr Who for boys. Female children are given really dull toy choices; kitchens and pretend cashiers tills and dolls that wee themselves whereas the boys are presented with toys that make them think and become spacially aware; geomag, lego, meccano. I know boys toys are stereotyped too - macho fighting characters and guns and such but I think that the lack of imagination, the belief that all the girls will need to aspire to is looking beautiful, having babies and working in a shop really should have been long gone from the toy industry. But instead of getting better, it appears to be getting worse.

I really, really don't think little girls should be given dolls which look nothing like any kind of realistic female, let alone ones which wear kinky sexy clothes as a matter of routine. I know that when I was a little girl we had Sindy and Barbie - dolls with very long legs and tiny waists, and tiny noses and huge eyes.



But Sindy dolls still look childlike, especially when you look at them with an adult eye. In fact in finding that picture I am quite surprised at how childish her face is. I remembered her to be more 'adult' more elegant and beautiful. No Bratz doll these days would have the same cute chubbiness.

Barbie, whilst also looking very doll-like has, redeemingly, at least had several careers including:

Astronaut, Doctor, Dentist, Aerobics Instructor, Fire Fighter, Athlete, Police Woman, Scientist, Business Woman, Flight Attendant, Teacher, Tap Dancer, Soldier.

If the Bratz dolls had done these things they might not be so bad, but the Bratz dolls are flower girlz and movie starz and pop divaz and pixiez. They like slumber parties.

So they look like pornographically stylised versions of women and they spend their time doing glitzy fame jobs with no real substance, or being fairies.

They annoy me.

Badly.