Dora the Explorer joins the ranks of the Bratz, Bratz still sold on shelves

In 1992, my favorite Barbie of all time was Hollywood Hair Barbie. As the name implies, she had extra long platinum blond locks that could be dyed pink with a spray that was packaged along with a stencil to make stars in her hair. I used to spray so much pink dye that my mother bought me refills to continue to play with her.
I loved brushing and playing with her hair and admiring how beautiful she was and hoping one day I could grow up to be like Barbie and be so beautiful and have so many things to do.
Though I did not realize it at the time, Barbie was a vehicle the cosmetics industry had used to help me feed into them when I was of age. An age that seems to lower as the years go on.
The doll was supposed to teach me that changing hair is "fun" , that to be beautiful is to be acceptable, and the list goes on.
Although I am a normal college aged woman who enjoys her fair share of shoe shopping and makeup, I'd like to think that I haven't fallen slave to the cosmetics industry as it is so easy to do. I do not even wear makeup everyday and I loathe "changing" my hair, mostly because I've begun to go gray and its a pain in the neck to maintain. I find no joy in picking out lipstick because my skin tone is impossible to match to anything. But thats a whole other story all it's own.
The Barbies of the late 80's and early 90's and many years previous are very different from the Barbies now, and certainly drastically different than the Bratz dolls. So you can imagine my disappointment when I first became aware of the "new" Dora, a tween doll, entitled Dora Links. Although the cartoon version and doll are both rather adorable, I see major flaws. The original Dora was always seen drawn with her backpack, and map for exploring. The new Dora comes with... jewelry?
The major point of the doll is to change outfits, her hair can grow or become shorter, and here's the real kicker, you can change her unfavorable brown eyes to a beautiful blue! Dora is supposed to be Latina, but we're going to encourage young Hispanic girls to want to change their eye color. Nice move Mattel.
Dora also will now be limiting her exploring to a virtual city along with her shopping buddies, oops, I mean friends. I guess we won't be needing that map or unfashionable talking back pack any longer. They do after all promote exploring and broadening your horizons beyond how you look. I am curious to know if the new Dora will continue to incorporate Spanish words in her vocabulary, but perhaps being white and beautiful comes with growing up and being acceptable.
The new Dora joins the ranks of the ever horrific Bratz dolls. Bratz dolls strongly resemble pornography stars with botched surgery. They have unusually large round heads, enormous pouty lips, and tarty outfits. I recall my cousin owning one years ago that was supposed to be a pirate of sorts. It had platform dominatrix style boots and a belly shirt with all that makeup painted on. Not to mention how catty and unfriendly the faces painted on are. Gone are the smiling dolls of the 90's, they have been replaced with pouty large headed harlets.
The Bratz line is not limited only to dolls, they have lines of beginner's makeup, including lip glosses and hair dyes. Children are highly suggestible, and to suggest that a look that is in such poor taste is desirable is rather horrifying to me.
Barbie has gotten a poor reputation amongst parents and feminists, and usually for good reason. Her proportions are unrealistic and such a look is not one to aspire to unless you wish to walk on all fours. However, I must say that Barbies at least have dolls that have respectable themes.
As a child I had Barbies that were vets, doctors, teachers, even a space woman. Granted they always had senseless ones that were beach themed, but at least it promoted something.
To this day Barbie recently came out with a line of all African American dolls, entitled So in Style, some of which come with classical instruments for the doll to "play", whereas Bratz has very small minded themes, if you can even call them that. Bratz dolls are reminscent of girls when they play dress up for Halloween, their outfits are very tiny and very sexy, but you cant quite distinguish what they are supposed to be.
In 2008 Mattel filed a lawsuit against MGA, the creators of the Bratz dolls for infrigement, and was awarded $100 million. Originally the verdict also stated that the vile dolls would be pulled from shelves after the holiday season ended, but being as MGA still continues to fight against it, no such action has been taken.
In conclusion I will say that the only truly respectable dolls I see on the market are the Only Hearts Club dolls, which can be found here: http://www.onlyheartsclub.com/. They are cute dolls with no hint of sexuality, as it should be. I hope that these will become more popular as the overly sexualized dolls continue to be challenged and protested against. No child should even be thinking about their looks or makeup or outfits. At least not until they are a bare minimum age of 14.
I hope in the future that young girls will be given empowering role models, women who do great things that have greater value than how they look. As Judge Judy once stated, "Beauty fades but dumb is forever," Touche.