So Serious Saturday #28

Fiction needs a basis in reality. Exercising non-fiction muscles once in a while benefits an active imagination, channeling creative energies as it focuses on a subject. So Serious Saturdays will be an active place for critical essays or writing about reality in the context of real events - even when it is not written on Saturdays.

Type: Philosophical/Inspiration

Self-Image, As Reflected By A Doll

          I was watching the local news when I saw a story about a girl receiving a doll with a prosthetic leg. The story could have stopped there, with the idea of how toy makers should create wider diversity in dolls, but what made the video go viral was how the little girl reacted.   

         Oh, and did I mention the little girl also has a prosthetic leg?
         Imagine this little girl going through her young life and seeing cookie-cutter dolls in bright pink boxes, when she already sees lots of her peers who don't have a prosthetic.  

         It surprised me when she broke down like that, but it really shouldn't have: She needed to see that doll. Even if she never got to touch, hold, or own that doll, she really needed to know that it is okay to be different. That it is even better than okay - it is beautiful.

         I thought about the older news I had heard about different sizes of Barbie dolls being made. At the time, I had believed that this was just a marketing ploy to get girls (and their mothers) to buy many more clothes to fit various plastic hips. That still might be how it originated. 

        However, after seeing the tears a certain doll brought a certain girl, I can imagine that there are many other girls (and their mothers) throughout America, looking at the same cookie-cutter dolls on the store shelves, all wondering, "Where's the one who looks like me? Aren't I beautiful?"  

        Truly, I remember looking for dolls that looked anything like me.  It was easy to find my eyes in one, or my hair in another, but finding both features together was magical.  Finding a model who was considered pretty and who looked like me meant that by extension I was pretty.

        I'm tempted to turn this to a discussion of how females are taught to value how they look much earlier on than males, but I am not that kind of feminist. 

        Instead, I'll take note that every person needs that confirmation from society, or somewhere closer, that they are valued individuals, whether that is beauty or skill or something deeper attribute. 

        It is cheaper and easier to make one mold, but there are so many different kinds to value, each unique in its beauty and each irreplaceable.