Social Kapital Joel Postman

It’s the end of the line for Bratz dolls with a major courtroom victory by Mattel this week. According to an AP report “Toy giant Mattel Inc., after a four-year legal dispute with MGA Entertainment Inc., touted its win in the case Wednesday after a federal judge banned MGA from making and selling its pouty-lipped and hugely popular Bratz dolls.”

This is the best gift of the season! I despise Bratz dolls. They are emblematic of everything we do to trivialize our girls (don’t recoil at the word, they are girls at this age) and to pimp them out by the time they are seven. I am sick of slutwear, the hip hugger jeans, trashy sequined clothes, belly shirts and other items sold to pre-teen girls in the major chain stores. Retailers are truly shameless.

And Bratz are the worst. They are inconic of the message we send to girls at the earliest possible opportunity: Popularity, appearance, clothes, makeup and money are all that matter. What is inside, the real you, is unimportant.

Marketers know these toys are inappropriate for the girls they are manufactured for and sold to. According to the New Yorker “Marketers now invoke a phenomenon called K.G.O.Y.-Kids Getting Older Younger. (One research report) discusses the challenge of marketing a product like Bratz dolls which many mothers disapprove of.”

Honestly, Barbie is almost as bad. Both products are banned from my house. I want my daughter to grow up being proud of who she is, not what she has.