First it was Teletubbies. The SpongeBob Squarepants. Now, it is the American Girls line of dolls. Apparently the doll manufacturer has hooked with Girls, Inc. to do some a bracelet promotion and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association is urging a boycott.
Wildmon claims that Girls, Inc. is “a pro-abortion and pro-lesbian advocacy group.
Here is the article http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051014/ap_on_re_us/american_girl_protest
Here is a link to the Girls, Inc. home page. http://www.girlsinc.org/ic/index.php
It looks very subversive, wanting girls to be empowered. It must be stopped before girls start to think for themselves.
A bit of a mission statement:
Sounds reasonable, but I think these items from the Girls Bill of Rights are what have them up in arms:
Definitely a subversive group, suggesting that girls should grow up to be more than baby machines. No wonder the AFA is after them!
The AFA just exposes their ultimate goal, the crushing of women’s right completely.
They aren’t anti-abortion, they are anti-choice, in every aspect of the word.
I really hope that I live long enough to see these people taken about as seriously as the “I was kidnapped by aliens and spent 10 years on the planet Yzalkxx, and then they put me in their time machine and zapped me back to Earth – to the same instant I was taken, so no one even noticed that I was gone” types.
I’m reminded of listening to some extremist fundie “ladies” go on about how middle schools needed to be prohibited, prohibited! right this minute! from telling 12-13 years old girls that they shouldn’t get pregnant as teenagers because having a child too young would limit their options in life. This is bad, see, because if you give a child a “secular humanist” reason to avoid teenage pregnancy, it somehow interferes with a parent’s right to tell their daughters not to get pregnant before marriage because Jesus says it’s wrong.
Huh? I was thinking as I watched them. Still am.
So, you don’t want to hear that at age 14, I was abducted by alien women who told me not to get pregnant as a teenager and who urged me to go to college and start a career? Damn, that was my next diary.
Oh brother…
Yes, we can’t let women mistakenly think they have all the rights of white men. It works out better if they willingly submit to their assigned roles.
And the women? Its just like any cult — to protect their own beliefs, they have to get others to reinforce it by also buying in. Those who refuse are ‘evil’, and rejecting them does the reinforcing.
Our country is ruled by a death cult.
If only we could go back to the good ole days, the 50s. Women wore pearls and skirts, minorities weren’t uppity, and the rich were in something like the 50% tax bracket.
Opps, how did that last part get in there?
this line of thinking when I was 7 in 1947, or when I was 17 in 1957, or when I was 27, in 1967, or when I was 37, in 1977, or when I was 47, in 1987, or when I was 57, in 1997 and I will still not understand or Tolerate it in 2007 when I am 67!
What in the world is wrong with these people and the people who follow them? JesusHChristOnaCrutch, how can this utter bull still be taught and accepted by anyone in this day and age?
As hard as I tried, I have never been able to understand it and no one, no matter how hard they tried could ever get me to see the “acceptable place of females in society”, other than to choose to do what they wanted for their lives and soar to any heights they wished. And I don’t , and never have cared if it was a choice to be at home raising children or the President of the US!
Good thing I don’t have a hot button about this issue.
LOL
Good thing that you don’t have a hot button. I know I don’t, just hot flashes.
Gee, why don’t they boycott some of the more widely distributed (and much cheaper) dolls that include outfits that might charitably be called “whore-wear”? That is, skimpy, with totally unrealistic body shapes, etc.
Let me be clear: I’m am definitely NOT against sex! But in a choice between a doll that looks somewhat more like an actual child as opposed to an adult who has had a good deal of cosmetic surgery (e.g. big breasts and hips plus an anorexically thin body); I know which choice I have actually bought for children in my family – though being pained at the cost.
I’d frankly expect that the more sexually provocative “teenage” style dolls would arouse more attention from these “keep’em barefoot and pregnant” types that the American Girl series. Go Figure.
I was thrilled to receive a boy from China for many reasons, but one was because I wasn’t looking forward to telling family and friends that Barbie is banned in my house.
The line of dolls called BRATZ comes immediately to mind — those things are so far over the top, I had to have a discussion with my SON about them…..makes Barbie look almost sane in comaprison.
Those dolls are really scary. Why aren’t they targeted?
Have you seen the Hopscotch Hills dolls from American Girl? They’re the sort of thing you’d want your girls (if you had them) to play with.
These are the dolls Hubby’s granddaughters asked for last Christmas. We went to the store, took a look at the selection and just freaked! Good gawd, I exclaimed loudly, these are little slut dolls! A couple of mothers nearby with their daughters greedily pawing the merchandise were shocked, shocked at my language, I tell you.
The girls ended up getting books — “Anne of Green Gables” and “Little Women” — from us. The modern equivalent of socks, I guess.
Good on you.
Amazing as it may seem in our sexually obsessed consumption oriented culture there are other things in life beyond humping like little bunny rabbits.
One of them being using your brain for purposes other than keeping your ears apart & head from imploding.
Read a good book. Think about it. Learn stuff. Repeat.
You can read more detail about this at Feministing.
The article has several links but even more useful email addresses for Mattel and American Girl so that you can indicate your support for the project.
Thanks Andi, perhaps people could send a letter with a copy of a receipt for those who complete early holiday shopping.
It just happens that we own some mattel stock and so I really loved getting to start my email with “As a stockholder”.
Having an eight year old grand daughter it pleases me so that she loves the American DOll collection. She has one that looks so much like her it’s unbelievable. She has a very positive attitude about who she is and actually pays attention to what is on the news etc. During the debates she sat and watched with her parents and me. Most kids would have gone running to their bedroomsa to play, imho. She was very quiet and you could tell she was really paying attention. About three weeks later out of the clear blue sky she tells her Dad…”I decided who I would vote for if I was old enough, John Kerry. WOW! If it was that obvious to an eight year old…
I say go for it! Piss off all those little girls who fawn on their American Dolls. But don’t stop there: Barbie, that radical feminist lesbian Hillary lover is overdue for some conservative smack down.
Go for it Rev.
My fundamentalist christian brother and sister-in-law in Dallas have three daughters who have all grown up loving the American Girls dolls. Even though they’ve outgrown them for the most part now, I still get the catalogues regularly in the mail because I was such a good customer for them in buying for my nieces for so many years. It will be interesting to learn if they have heard about this idiocy. They struggled briefly with whether or not they would let the kids read Harry Potter books when these talibaptists first criticized them for promoting witchcraft. They relented (and the kids loved the books!) I think partly because their father was a total fan of “Lord of the Rings” since he was a child. I guess they couldn’t handle promoting one and not the other. Its a fine line they walk in order to avoid hypocrasy!
OH MY goodness… I shared this with some hockey friends. This is jsut …. OMG
Danni loves American Girls, she’s a little older now, but… maybe for a Christmas gift for one of those toys for tots types – we’ll get an American Girl doll. (those suckers are expenesive)
The AFA, they are the ones who didn’t want the vaccine for cervical herpes/cancer strains.
The AFA are the Talibaptists. They HATE freedom.
They HATE America.
They HATE WOMEN.
I say it’s war time.
What are going to do??
Ick and double ick. I’d never seen these, because I don’t have kids around, so did some quick googling.
The dolls are made by MGA Entertainment, whose other products are listed here, each more stupid-looking and tacky than the last. They’re sold at Wal-mart, Penney, Toys R Us, among others.
Letting retailers know your objections is a start. Dolls that represent what I will call, for shorthand, sluttiness seem to be at variance with Wal-mart’s holier-than-thou approach to retailing some other items.
Does AFA do any toys for tots type of activity. It might be worth it to send those dolls to their event, along with some SpongeBob stuff.