Almost every doll line that tried to please this shittiest side of the female empower movement has tanked. The only line that survived was Barbie and all Barbie really did was give us more diversity while still having the core Barbie be herself. Because ya know what? Barbie has been pushing out tons of empowering messages and you still have women who only care about her appearance.
(Point in case)
The problem is that these women are toxic to the movement they claim to support because they are just as shallow as they claim these lines to be because they blamed a piece of plastic for their own issues. What has happened is trying to please these people who do not even buy the dolls because their so feminist and progressive they don’t allow their girls to play with dolls damaged the line’s messages.
Bratz suffered slut shaming for dressing like modern teenage girls when the characters were all strong females in their tv show and movies where men really didn’t matter to them. The Bratz formed a name around an insult and decided to unapologetically be themselves. Monster high was a line of monster girls with interesting story lines who preached embracing your laws instead of hiding them.
Both lines listened to the vocal minority who said their appearances were harmful or bad and tried to fit into a new look that caused them to look more cutesy and less threatening. This made the lines suffer because the original fans soon became turned off by the new looks and the directional shift. So you had the people who complained left to complain about something else and the regular fans now complained about the drop in quality.
Barbie survived because she adapted while keeping true to her own message because “gaining weight” or wearing less make up won’t make the message of telling girls to fearlessly enter male dominated fields any stronger.
Her competitors (lammily for instance) made it all about appearance and tried to set a standard for what a woman should look like. It got it’s 15 mins of fame and praise, but since that was all lines like that had to offer mainly people stopped giving a shit.
There is nothing wrong with adapting…the new diversity for Barbie is amazing because it gives girls choices yet still never made it all about appearance. But doll lines should not toss away what gave them their popularity and drew us in just to please people who feel they’re already above them anyway.
Hell, Bratz is still trying to please that minority of jerkasses and has become a total laughing stock at this point due to their movie bombing.
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