It's a world away from bantams
I was going to blog about the bantams, who as I haven't clipped their wings this moult are enjoying themselves flitting about the rafters in their stable.
However, I was distracted. If My Little Pony is emphatically not your thing, and Bratz makes you long for the safe, pink horizons of Barbie, there is a new nightmare stalking the horizon. And I use the word stalking advisedly. These pony toys wear heels. Strappy heels. For this all I know, Jimmy Choos, for this is a far cry from real ponies with their inconviently mud-packed hooves. All this is aimed at, who else, little girls.
These ponies make My Little Pony look trapped in a world of childish innocence, for they are things imagined by someone who has realised that pandering to the worst instincts of small girls makes stuff sell, sell, sell. Girls love ponies, right? And they also LOVE the slutty style of Bratz, so why don't we combine them? Ta da! Strutz. Fashion with a kick, they say.
I don't like My Little Pony - I never have, though as I was around 20 when they first came out, I was hardly their target market. When I was small, I had epic quantities of Britain's models, and a few precious Julips, as well as a stable of felt ponies I'd made myself, and I never, not once, felt the desire for my ponies to get married, or do a fashion show, or go to school, save in my dressage arena, carefully constructed from the bottom of a chocolate box and filled with sawdust filched from the hamster. It does seem to me terribly sad that what's being presented to children with Strutz is the view that appearance is all. I never thought that anything would make My Little Pony seem positively desirable, but Strutz have succeeded.
I'm only glad my own daughter has now washed up on what seems in contrast the blessedly safe shores of Superdrug's teen makeup counters.
Comments
Thank goodness the Grey Mare is barefoot...
I was never a Barbie person, but I really liked Barbie's things....the car, the camper, the plane, etc. My mother tried to get me into the dolls themselves for years, till the day when I assembled the plane, which I'd just got for a birthday (both of my parents were absolutely hopeless about putting things together, so I learned very early), and said to her "I think I got it wrong....I can't get her into the front to fly the plane". She said, "no, she goes in the back, with the little cart, serving drinks and food to the passangers, giving them blankets, she's a stewardess". I eyed her and said "So, she's a flying maid? Who wants to be a maid? I want to fly the plane!".
I don't know if she just knew when she was defeated, or if she was actually horrified that she'd been unthinkingly pushing this sexist ideal on her daughter, but that was the end of the Barbies.
All of which brings me (down a long and winding road) to my point...what exactly is being sold to young girls with Bratz and Strutz? The look like toys for prostitutes in training!!!
Susan - I love the picture of you building your Barbie aeroplane, and Barbie not actually fitting into the cockpit. I don't know if there's a Barbie plane today, but I would hope that she'd be the pilot.
"Girls' natural love of horses" - fair enough, but I've never noticed that girls have a natural love of 4 inch stilettos!
Bring back Jill, that's what I say! Oh yes, I am...