All About Dolls

Dear Teresa,
Can you help create the
UltraViolet Holiday Gift Guide: A 21st Century Guide to Non-sexist Holiday Shopping
?
It's easy--just nominate your favorite empowering toy, game, DVD or book.
click here
Click Here
Ever shopped for your niece, daughter, granddaughter, or another young girl for the
holidays? If you have, you know it can seem like the only options out there are super
stereotypical little girl--all pink, princess-themed, and sparkly.
There are great toys, books and movies out there-- gifts that show powerful, healthy
images of girls and women. But it can be really hard to find them sometimes, and
with the holiday season coming up quickly, we figured we could all use some help
making it a little easier.
That's why we're asking you--UltraViolet members--to help us put together the first
ever
UltraViolet Holiday Gift Guide: A 21st Century Guide to Non-sexist Holiday Shopping
. It's a way for the entire UltraViolet community to share their ideas for the best
powerful gifts, which will make all of our holiday shopping a little easier.
Do you know of a great toy, game, DVD, or book to recommend for the guide? Submit
it here.
Nominate a gift to UltraViolet's Holiday Gift Guide.
The UltraViolet Holiday Gift Guide will be generated entirely by our members, which
means we need you to nominate your favorite gift ideas for this to work. It's easy--just
tell us about a book, movie, toy, or other gift that you think makes a great non-sexist
gift for a girl or boy.
After all the nominations are in, UltraViolet members will vote on which gifts make
it into the final guide.
The Ultraviolet Holiday Gift Guide will be available our website, on Facebook, and
as a printable list in early December--just in time for holiday shopping.
There are already a few great holiday gift guides with a cause that come out every
year: U.S. PIRG has a guide to help parents avoid toxic and dangerous toys, and Environmental
Working Group puts out a guide to help shoppers avoid unsafe chemicals at the makeup
counter. But we haven't found any gift guides that are specifically aimed at helping
consumers find great, nonsexist toys for girls (and boys). So we thought--who better
than the UltraViolet community to create one?
But for this to work, we need to start with your best ideas for empowering gifts.
Will you add toy, game, book, DVD, or other type of gift?
Nominate a gift to the Holiday Gift Guide.
Thanks for helping out!
--Nita, Shaunna, Kat and Karin, the UltraViolet team.
I have to say that when I look at Barbie I can't find good role models.  Even Doctor Barbie doesn't help girls or boys with their own health concerns and she doesn't talk about how long she had to study to become a Dr.  Besides, the vast majority of kids will not become Dr.s, astronauts, Olympic atheletes, or President.  Ken and Steven have similar problems.  I wondered about female Power Team members, but they are pretty scarce and hard to find.

So I ended up with the non-fashion doll "Hearts for Hearts" dolls.  They cost about $35, compared to the $100 asked for American Girl or Canadian Maplelea dolls.  They have cultural diversity, I hope they come out with a girl from Africa soon.  They have African American girls, girls from India, Laos, Brazil, and several locations in the U.S.  The only doll I could find last year was from Bela Rus.  What truely amazed me about these dolls was the Intelligence of their bios.  The one I got lived with her Grandmother, so her parents could work to support the family.  She mentioned othr girls who weren't so lucky and had no homes.  With the help of a male photographer adult she was using her camera to document the lives of girls in her country, many of whom lived on the street.  She hoped that her inoproving photography skills would bring humanitarian and world attention to these girls and help them.  It was both believable and inspiring.

A part of the sail of each of these dolls goes to World Vision.  I'm not Christian, but I have NO quarrel with feeding the hungry and medical care in some of our world's poorest places.  I hate the practice of enforcing conversion to ay belief system via a promise of food, clothing, medical care, etc.  But although World Vision does evangelize, I don't believe that they turn anyone away.


I thought about Northwest Coast Barbie simply because she Almost looked authentic, but that isn't enough to qualify for this guide.  For this reason, Canadian Inuit doll Saila didn't qualify.

Does anyone else have a doll or other action figure they think Should be listed?

If the Get Set Club was still in operation, those dolls would certainly have been on my list for this guide.


New Doll Subject: I should have known those prices for G.I. Joe's were too good.  Although Amazon has a wonderfully accessible site for the blind, they Still rely on Pictures, instead of detailed descriptions.  The Joe's were small action figures and theMoxie Girls had no legs, just stands.  I returned them.

The Moxie True Hope doll Sophina looks like an ALIEN!  No eyes, at least none that one can feel, they must be painted on.  A dished in face, reminding me of the Sailor Moon dolls, only More dished in, action figure feet which spin around backwards, ok, that part is fine, she can stand up sometimes, Alone.  But the legs are atenuated, chemo. Doesn't make you taller.  And the Huge head!  I'm told that when some of us have bald heads the head Looks bigger.  But either they enlarged this one to make that point, or All Moxie Girls must have huge heads!  I kept her, just because she is a One of a kind.  I want to compare her head to those of Flavas dolls, whose heads are somewhat bigger than needed.  Lots of room for head painting, I'll say that.  Her outfit's not too bad, compared to what the kids are wearing.  Think I'll get her head painted with a turquoise spiral of life, (green for plants, blue for water and Earth from space, and a spiral to help her remember the cyclical nature of life:  matter to energy to matter, so she won't be so frightened.)  Then I'll do a write up and see if Ican sell her.  I'll have to be sure and mention she probably shouldn't go to any totally blind person.  They will think she's an alien, too.  Not just a girl undergoing chemo.

Hope you doll lovers enjoyed this post.  I enjoyed having enough Doll Relevant material to write only about dolls!  If anyone has a suggestion for the above list, please share it with me too.  Thanks.