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Lipstick and Lace
Is There a Need for More Socially Responsible Toys for Little Girls? By Teri Brown
Are little girls' toys too sexy? Ask most mothers with little girls and you'll get a resounding "Yes!"
Dyanna Larson, mother of a preschool-aged daughter from Austin, Texas, is one of those mothers. "I find[some] dolls and their ilk disturbing for a lot of reasons," Larson says. "They are designed with a ton more makeup than your traditional fashion doll. The name [of some brands] actually bugs me a bit, too. Raising and disciplining children is hard enough without giving them toys that tout independence but package it with self-centered attitude."
Many dolls aren't the only toys being marketed with a new sexy attitude. They are just the tip of the iceberg of a whole slew of toys designed to be sleek, sexy and, above all, marketable.
Pretty has always been a marketing tool in little girls' toys. Young girls like their babies, stuffed animals and dolls to be pretty. But pretty is a very different concept than being sexy.
"We don't have research yet on these dolls, but girls who take in a lot of media (which has a lot of these sexualized girls in it) tend to have traditional beliefs about what it means to be a girl and endorse an ideal of beauty that's ultra thin ... [T]his of course can lead to eating disorders and poor self image," says Dr. Sharon Lamb, licensed psychologist and co-author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes (St. Martins Griffon, 2007).
Consider the following statistics:
- According to the Academy for Eating Disorders, between 4 percent and 20 percent of young women practice unhealthy patterns of dieting, purging and binge-eating.
