Full frontal, Bratz!
So who is waiting wit bated breath for Bratz, The Movie?
At first glance, this looks like a mashup of Clueless and High School Musical, yet take a quick look at this trailer and tell me if you don't see this :
When Bratz were first marketed, they were supposed to be the 'urban' alternative to Barbie. These dolls were dripping in ghetto fabulousness with their dark skins, almondish eyes, texturized hair and in your face hiphop vixen attire. What happened with the ghetto dolls of the toy world? They've all moved on up? Not only that but their café con leche complexions have gone the way of a faint whiff of white chocolate with some dripping of vanilla essence tones.
Also, color me old school, but what do you think about the complete co-optation of grrrrrl power as a fashion statement? Because, you know they could never call it feminist empowerment ...
I wonder what Jessica Valenti thinks about this movie, which is basically being targetted to the same demographic their publishers are hitting with her Full Frontal Feminism
I don't know ... I am definitely getting older because I shudder with the thought of Bratz! girls getting a little too enthusiastic with chants of women empowerment. It would not be at all a move forward for whatever is called these days the feminist movement.
Y/N?
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Class | Ethnicity | Feminism | Grrrl Power | Race
Strong female characters
Submitted by mole333 on 20 June 2007 - 8:05pm.
Look to the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Most of his movies are excellent, beautifully animated, and have strong female characters. Not all are for young children, but many are.
He also has a comic book version of his movie "Nausicaa" that is spectacular...some of the best literature I have read. The plot is complicated, though. It, like his movie "Princess Mononoke," has two strong female characters who are both fundamentally good even though opposed to eachother. In both stories, everyone is acting from their best motives, but those motives clash.
Highly recommended. Though again, check them out yourself before you show them to a kid. Princess Mononoke, for example, is too violent for some children...though you would probably love it.
Other movies by him are: (English titles)
Totoro
Kiki's Delivery Service
Castle in the Sky
(all good for kids)
Spirited Away (his strangest...may be too "Japanese" for some Americans)
Nausicaa (excellent, though the comic book version is better)
Princess Mononoke (my favorite...though again pretty violent)
There are others I'm forgetting, but you won't regret checking him out.
You've got me stumped there
Submitted by liza on 20 June 2007 - 9:58pm.
The only strong characters I remember growing up with where ... aaaaah ... hmmmmmm ... none. Actually, that is not true. I remember thinking that Lucy from Peanuts was pretty cool. Then in my teens I discovered Mafalda:
"The bad thing about the human family is that everybody wants to be the father."
Years later I got into a Batman craze (before the first movie with Michael Keaton). Catwoman in the late 1980's was pretty cool.
But honestly, I can't think of 'strong' cartoon caracters drawn by women ... OH! Duh! For Better or for worse.
But that's a cartoon strip, not characters like Sailor Moon ---too late in the game for me.
Hmmmm .... now this is going to keep me awake all night 
Bratz are banned from our house
Submitted by LynnS on 19 June 2007 - 10:25am.
And Josie wouldn't see this on a bet.
ETA: You're right about the de-mocha-ization. That was the only thing interesting about the Bratz. Their main message to girls, though, is that it's all about shopping and boys, and all of the dolls are hyper-sexualized right down to the Baby Bratz. And that's not a message I want my girls getting.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
Not banned by me
Submitted by NanceConfer on 20 June 2007 - 8:04am.
Only because I don't have to. 
DD wouldn't touch these dolls with a ten-foot pole.
Shopping for toys yesterday for the 4- and 5-year-olds she is volunteering for at the art school, I pointed out some cute-to-me thing and she was appalled!
"But, Mom, it's Bratz! I'm not going to give these kids toys based on bratty hookers!"
Ah, music to a mother's ears. There's a grrrrl (gag) whose self-image I don't have to worry about.
Nance
Favorite Daughter Thinks
Submitted by JJ Ross on 20 June 2007 - 10:43am.
her high-tops of many colors are the height of self-satisfying female fashion.
I started to say something about stuffed animals versus "person" toys maybe being preferable to stay away from too much role model reality in playthings, but I suddenly thought that maybe at least this is a way of shrinking hypersexuality down to something commonplace that a girl can handle, toss around and then get bored with and through with, before it's ever a real-life issue?
Probably not -- just a thought that never came to me before --
Well ... that's kind of like it was for me with Barbie
Submitted by liza on 20 June 2007 - 10:14pm.
But at least Barbie tried to have careers. With Bratz, there is something indecent about how it tries to top Barbie's conspicuous consumption and then some by rejecting the careers path.
The way I 'get' Bratz is that they are just party girls, whereas with Barbie she the first supermodel for being such the perfect empty vessel upon which identities could be pitched to with the hopes of one or two sticking.
Y/N?
I Was a Barbie Lover
Submitted by JJ Ross on 20 June 2007 - 11:08pm.
until I was 6 or 7 -- then perversely perhaps, I switched to paper dolls, cut from catalogs!
interesting thought
Submitted by LynnS on 20 June 2007 - 1:15pm.
And probably an accurate one, but it's at best a coping mechanism; it doesn't stop the hypersexualizing.
And a thought occurred to me after I posted this. Part of what seems hypersexual about the dolls is their big, pouty lips. And then I remembered that white folks don't normally have big pouty lips but other folks DO. So I started thinking, am I just being a racist bitch? And then I remembered that neither white folks or black folks are born with eyeliner. And then I relaxed.
LynnS * The New Homemaker * Liza's Fairy Blogmother
ROFL!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 20 June 2007 - 3:43pm.
Lynn, someday we must meet, face to make-upless face!
I Do Know This Woman
Submitted by JJ Ross on 20 June 2007 - 3:46pm.
who had her eyeliner tattooed on by some mysterious beauty-is-pain ritual.
Do you think her daughters will assume she was born that way?
:wink:
Bratz rule!!
Submitted by learica (not verified) on 2 July 2007 - 1:32pm.
Well im 12.AND I LOVE BRATZ! And i hate seeing people talk bad about them.Oh anf f.y.i im not shopping addicted and boy crazy.And bratz show that you can do anything put your mind to.
i saw a trailer for bratz
i saw a trailer for bratz and decided i wouldn't be taking my 7 year old Olgita. It has also been hard to find comic books with strong female characters.