Brash, consumerist, over-sexualised, and now on the big screen - is it all harmless fun or should we be dissuading our daughters from looking up to the Bratz, asks Fionola Meredith
If you have a daughter aged between six and 12, it's likely that your home has already been infiltrated by Bratz. These pouting, multi-ethnic babes - complete with midriff-baring crop-tops, skinny-fit jeans and armloads of chunky bling - are the must-have doll for any self-respecting female tweenager. Poor old Barbie doesn't stand a chance against these brash upstarts; her vacant gaze, fondness for ponies and sedate caravan adventures with Ken can no longer cut it with a new generation of girls who consider her seriously uncool. Knowingly versed in the faux-aggressive language of girl power, the Bratz share "a passion 4 fashion", which is marketed as "totally dangerous, totally ferocious and totally funkadelic". The finishing touch is the ironic halo which glints over the Bratz logo, coyly implying sweet but sassy, innocent but dangerous.
With a new Bratz film opening this weekend, Bratzmania among pre-pubescent girls is at fever pitch. But disapproval of the brand is growing with equal fervour. Provocative Bratz clothing is the target of much criticism, but it's the expression in the dolls' painted-on eyes that really gets the commentators fulminating. Time magazine described the look as "jaded, bored, if not actually stoned", British newspaper the Daily Telegraph characterised it as a "heavy-lidded, post-coital gaze", while the New Yorker called it "the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos".
Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association joined the anti-Bratz fray, in a report on the sexualisation of girls.
"It is worrisome," the authors stated, "when dolls designed specifically for four- to eight-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality. The objectified sexuality presented by these dolls, as opposed to the healthy sexuality that develops as a normal part of adolescence, is limiting for adolescent girls, and even more so for the very young girls who represent the market for these dolls."
Worst of all, in many critics' view, are the Baby Bratz, pint-sized toddler versions of the original, winningly accessorised with teeny-weeny crop-top, vast quantities of hair and a teated milk bottle on a chain. "Too sweet to be wholesome" is the phrase that comes to mind, but Sharon Lamb, professor of psychology at Vermont University and co-author of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers' Schemes, thinks the effect is even more pernicious, arguing that the toy resembles "a blow-up sex doll in a bikini".
The message is clear: these tiny, provocative Lolitas - with their slogans such as "Flaunt it" or "Xpress it" - are corrupting our daughters. And we, as parents, are blithely allowing this celebration of raunch culture to take place in our own living rooms.
So is it time to bin the Bratz? Debbie Ging, who researches gender in the media in the School of Communications, DCU, has publicly spoken out against the Bratz effect. She too believes that they are prime proponents of the classic virgin-whore dichotomy, combining "pre-pubescent, wide-eyed innocence with the clothing and make-up of the prostitute or dominatrix", and she warns that "girls, if they continue to be treated like this, will be sexual objects: in their own eyes and those of others". Yet Ging doesn't agree with banning the toys.
"My own children play with them, but we discuss the various issues I have with them all the time - insofar as this is possible with a five- and eight-year-old," she says. "They will often make a point of telling me that their Bratz are wearing shoes they can run in and that they are studying medicine or working as carpenters, just to show me that they are not internalising what they themselves call 'girly-girl' behaviour. I think that kind of pre-empting of parents' expectations goes to show just how sophisticated children's engagement with and understanding of mediated images is."
MANY PARENTS FIND themselves in Ging's position: feeling a personal distaste for the dolls, yet still - reluctantly - allowing them house-room. Marie-Louise Connolly, a radio reporter, says that while her daughter Niamh (nine) is the proud owner of nine Bratz dolls, she herself cannot stand them.
"They are really just floozies, a pack of scantily clad hussies - most disgusting," she says.
It's the fact that the Bratz resemble teenagers in appearance, Connolly adds, that is part of the attraction for younger girls. "One time, we were driving down a busy shopping street and Niamh suddenly pointed at an older girl on the pavement, dressed in a short puffball skirt and a high ponytail, and said: 'Look, Mum, it's a real-life Brat!' "
The starry-eyed perception that Bratz embody an older, more sophisticated sense of what's cool also excites Amy McCartney, aged 11. Amy is a fully-fledged Bratz aficionado, with more than 15 dolls in her collection. While she rolls her eyes with scorn when asked about the tamer charms of Barbie, she considers Bratz "the cool thing to have".
She adds: "I like their look - they seem confident, and I would like to be like that."
Amy's mother, Lindsay, is more ambivalent: "They're too thin, a size zero with big boobs. I'd like to think I have enough principles to say no, but the living room is full of them. I really don't like them, but I do buy them. But I guess when Amy is a teenager, I won't like her much either! Maybe my dislike of Bratz is just a fear of what my daughter might turn into."
But not all mothers dread the insidious effects of Bratz. Karen McCready, whose daughter, Ruby, is aged eight, is sanguine about having the plastic minxes about the house. "It's all about context, isn't it?" she says. "If Bratz were the only dolls Ruby played with, I'd be more concerned. But she has a wide range of toys, activities and interests that stimulate and excite her far more. So she might decide to wash her Bratz dolls' hair, but equally she might decide to play her clarinet or ride her bike. There's no point getting hysterical - we are talking about plastic dolls here, not the scourge of civilisation. I don't think playing with them will make Ruby want to learn pole-dancing when she turns 18."
Commentator and critic Catherine Bennett is another who isn't persuaded by the idea that "banning Bratz and their boas" would constitute a worthwhile advance in child protection. After all, modern life is saturated by sexualisation of youngsters and, she asks, what about "explicit content in advertising, on pre-watershed television programmes, in ruttish song lyrics by child-focused bands"?
But it's the gender stereotyping and consumerism that the Bratz brand appears to embody, rather than copycat behaviour, that most bothers Debbie Ging.
"The re-polarisation of gender identities in media culture - macho lads at one end and pouting babes in hot pants at the other - is supposed to be ironic, a jokey and self-conscious performance of stereotypes that are funny precisely because they are outmoded," she says. "But how can children decode irony when they are not familiar with the back- stories of feminism, post-feminism and raunch culture? And to what extent do parents discuss all this stuff with their kids? Increasingly, it seems to me, people are taking these images at face value."
GING FEARS THAT Bratz "equates success and happiness with acts of consumerism and narcissism, since the Bratz are almost totally defined by what they wear and what possessions they have. Although the accessories create a kind of pretext for activities, hobbies and even careers, such as the Bratz Angels band or the Bratz safari vet, ultimately shopping and being looked at are their favourite activities."
Whether we see the dolls as lascivious sleaze-merchants, tiny harbingers of raunch culture, or as just the latest garish plastic occupants of the toy box, their popularity shows no signs of waning. But perhaps our daughters are more resistant to the seduction of Bratz than we realise. After all, as Cait (nine), remarks: "Just because I enjoy playing with Bratz doesn't mean I want to be one".
Bratz: the Movie is on release.