a letter to Mattel from my daughters
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When your eight year old daughters get riled up about injustice and ask, "Mommy, can we use your blog for something?" the answer is obvious: yes.
They didn't know I've already written about why diversity matters in dolls or successfully pushed back on Amazon for their whitewashed selection of sale Barbies. My girls just knew that a new Barbie movie is coming out this week. When they saw all white faces on the movie's cover art, they were frustrated.
"When is Barbie going to have a black girl as the main character?" I don't know, I told them.
(I thought, probably never. But I didn't say that because I try not to pass down too much of my cynicism to them.)
"Have they ever?" I knew the answer, but instead of just giving it to them, we sat down together to figure that out. We looked at the cover art for the 29 Barbie movies made since 2000, most of which can be found here. Our findings? Only two included black Barbie characters on the front (6.9%), only one of those did so prominently (3.4%), and none featured black characters in the primary role. We clicked through to find out who was the voice actor for the only featured black Barbie on cover art, and the girls were dismayed to find that a white woman spoke for her. Then we looked up racial demographics of kids in the US and found that about 15% are black.
That's when their question came about using my blog.
(I'm pretty sure they think I have far more readers than I do!)
And that's when this letter was written.
So, Mattel, what do you say? After all, I'm not the one asking.
They are.
They didn't know I've already written about why diversity matters in dolls or successfully pushed back on Amazon for their whitewashed selection of sale Barbies. My girls just knew that a new Barbie movie is coming out this week. When they saw all white faces on the movie's cover art, they were frustrated.
"When is Barbie going to have a black girl as the main character?" I don't know, I told them.
(I thought, probably never. But I didn't say that because I try not to pass down too much of my cynicism to them.)
"Have they ever?" I knew the answer, but instead of just giving it to them, we sat down together to figure that out. We looked at the cover art for the 29 Barbie movies made since 2000, most of which can be found here. Our findings? Only two included black Barbie characters on the front (6.9%), only one of those did so prominently (3.4%), and none featured black characters in the primary role. We clicked through to find out who was the voice actor for the only featured black Barbie on cover art, and the girls were dismayed to find that a white woman spoke for her. Then we looked up racial demographics of kids in the US and found that about 15% are black.
That's when their question came about using my blog.
(I'm pretty sure they think I have far more readers than I do!)
And that's when this letter was written.
Dear Barbie makers,We'll mail it tomorrow, but I know sometimes the power of the internet can be more effective than snail mail. Plus, they asked specifically for me to share it here.
There are only 2 Barbie movies that have black and white girls as main characters, and 27 movies with just white skin main characters. 15% of the kids in the US are black, and it is not fair. 0% main characters are black and 7% black characters are on the front cover. Will you please make more movies with black people who are main characters and more black people on the front cover? Can you also make black people [in your movies] more dark please? We want you to do this because we are sisters, one white and one black, and we are a little upset about this, and all of the black people in our family are more dark.
From, Jocelyn & Patience
P.S. Please make darker skin black dolls too, and more Asian dolls because our sister is from Taiwan.
So, Mattel, what do you say? After all, I'm not the one asking.
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| photo by Rebecca Keller Photography |
They are.