Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Jolie in Training

For lil' Sunshine's first Christmas, Mrs. SoulSnax ordered one of those rare Asian dolls, because she wanted Sunshine's first doll to be Asian.

"Too late," I told her, because lil' Sunshine already had a doll, and it's a pretty little black doll in a pink dress.

"Aww... well that's cool, at least she's got some variety in there," Mrs. SoulSnax replied. "All my dolls were blonde and had blue eyes. And I grew up in the Philippines."

"Yeah, well a few more of these, and we can call her Angelina."

UPDATE: We've received a cease and desist order from the Philippine Colonial Ministry. Apparently, in our efforts to bolster the self-esteem of young Filipino children, we have been "complicit in undermining the Philippine media's Cultural Subjugation Programme."

We have been instructed to indoctrinate our daughter in the value of aspiring toward lighter skin and big, round eyes. They recommend that we give our daughter the same blue-eyed blonde-haired dolls that her mother had as a child.

Furthermore, they recommend that she watch any of the telenovelas on The Filipino Channel (TFC), since they feature a lot of mestizo "actors."

11 comments:

Puka said...

I got that same doll for my daughter, who turned three last month, for her birthday. For months, DD would go immediately to the doll aisle and ogle the dolls. I kept telling her that mommy will get her one that looks like her. That appeased DD for the longest time, and then one night a couple of weeks before her birthday, she had been carrying around a doll that I told her to put back when we were about to check out. DD refused and said in desperation, "I don't care if it looks like me!" It was hilarious. DD was happy to finally get her doll on her birthday.

But then her doll needed accessories, and since that doll in the picture is small, it was hard to find small bottles. I finally found some small things but were sold with another doll. I bought the doll because it was cheap, but the doll is haole. I tell DD that the haole doll is her adopted one. :p

Anonymous said...

my (X)MIL bought one of those American girl dolls for my daughter when she was much younger - it was a caucasian baby doll with black hair. a year later she bought a doll that was more "you know, chinese-like" (i'm korean, they're caucasian) - the doll had dark black hair, brown eyes and kind of a brownish-yellow tinge. but hey, at least she tried . . .

*you can customize your doll at american girl to make it look like your child (and get matching outfits, too) . . . kind of creepy to me, but whatever.

The Beast Mom said...

My girl doesn't want dolls. She wants fluffy stuffed rabbits. What does that say about her identity? ;)

-bm

Mama Nabi said...

My in-laws told me that I make a too big of a deal about stuff like this and bought LN a blond, blue-eyed doll last year.

Thank goodness, when we were in Korea, my aunt got her an asian looking doll and said, "I got this one because it looks so much like her."

Unknown said...

arrrrgh!!!! i swear the whole doll thing will most likely kill me.

we recently went thru a stretch where the paloma called the brunette dolls "bad" and "mean" and the blonde dolls were "good" and "nice".

and then one day, the blonde dolls (except the short haired blonde airline pilot doll) disappeared - *poof* - except for all their fancy clothes.... no idea what happened... cautionary tale... ;)

although, i was guilt ridden, it worked out for the better because when the paloma saw that all the clothes fit the brunettes she was fine.

and just an fyi - we bought all the paloma's dolls from asiaforkids.com except for her favorite doll (an AG knockoff) from springfield dolls - http://www.springfielddolls.com/meetus/lindseybio.asp - she looks A LOT like lindsey.

lastly, two new doll manufacturers that have shown up on our radar are the karito kids dolls and kimmie cares dolls.

thisislarry said...

Ah, Pony Princess has a small pile of dolls as well, none that look like her. Most are barbies. One is a Ken, that we got with an 80's barbie at a garage sale. With a matching pink corvette, too. Ken's hand is mangled, there was probably a dog in the house.

I told Pony Princess that Ken lost his hand in the War, which also explains his glassy stare and habit of showing up naked.

Really tho, Pony Princess has bypassed the dolls for the most part, much preferring to dress herself up. I mean, why waste time helping a piece of plastic look faaabulous when you could be helping yourself?

Anonymous said...

great topic!
i have a baby girl with mixed
ancestry (white & asian) and
she got a bald (unisex) brown
baby...i was totally cool with
that! her mom more than usually
picks out the blonde blue eyed
babydolls. baby girl chooses
dora the explorer who she
coos, "dorie" when she shops
for herself. it's the first
time i've seen that doll...
any way i could find her?

Anonymous said...

UPDATE: We've received a cease and desist order from the Philippine Colonial Ministry. Apparently, in our efforts to bolster the self-esteem of young Filipino children, we have been "complicit in undermining the Philippine media's Cultural Subjugation Programme."

We have been instructed to indoctrinate our daughter in the value of aspiring toward lighter skin and big, round eyes. They recommend that we give our daughter the same blue-eyed blonde-haired dolls that her mother had as a child.

Furthermore, they recommend that she watch any of the telenovelas on The Filipino Channel (TFC), since they feature a lot of mestizo "actors."

Bwahahahaha...balikbayan superstar!

We actually scored one of these dolls prior to finding out our son was, uh, our son.

http://www.molloytoy.com/

and he digs this one.

http://estore.websitepros.com/DollsLikeMe/-strse-252/Asian%2C-Black-or-Latino/Detail.bok

although it looks like more folks are tapping into the zeitgeist.

http://estore.websitepros.com/DollsLikeMe/-strse-Dolls-by-Ethnicity-cln-Asian/Categories.bok

http://www.storesonline.com/site/480020/page/536592

http://www.liveandlearn.com/asiandollslist.html

Anonymous said...

Yo! Check this, these dolls are actually bilingual!

http://www.littlebuddhababy.com/Product_Category_Toys3.html

Anonymous said...

We found a doll for our gray-eyed half Asian daughter at K-mart:
http://www.smarter.com/baby-dolls/jaggets-new-wave-shashi-mi/pd--ch-41--pi-445074.html

She's punk and is baring her tummy, but I'm happy to have found a doll in her likeness.

Anonymous said...

Sorry! Broken link:

http://www.smarter.com/baby-dolls/
jaggets-new-wave-shashi-mi/
pd--ch-41--pi-445074.html