(via K. Ramos)

Glad to see that someone as young as she is already conscious of gender normative marketing.

The other day, there was a little boy at the mall who kept asking his mom if she would buy him a Batgirl doll, and I kept smiling at that. Like the YouTube commenter said, there may be hope for the future yet...

I so want this API Civil Rights calendar from the Korematsu Institute. What an awesome idea! Sadly, for now it's only given as a gift for a $100 donation. Fingers crossed that it'll be available for individual purchase soon.

After taking Ethnic Studies courses in college, it was like a veil had been lifted from my eyes. I started seeing (and questioning) everything differently. Things that were once innocuous were revealed to be insidious. And it's hard because it's things you grew up on and were taught to be the norm your whole life, so it's going to take more than just a few years to break down a lifetime of inoculation. And once your eyes have been open, you can't unsee them anymore. So here are some things I think twice about now:

-Disney princesses/Disney movies
-feathers (I can't look at feathers anymore that are out of an indigenous context without thinking about cultural appropriation)
-the use of "woman," "history," "you guys"
-shopping at brands that use sweatshop labor (e.g. Forever 21)
-the Twilight series
-American holidays (e.g., 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas)
-Barbie

And when I say that I think twice about these things, it's not that I've completely rejected them from my life. I'm still a consumer sometimes. I still watch Disney movies w/ friends and half of my closet is from Forever 21. I just try to/can't help but be more conscious about these things now.

This topic came to mind yesterday when I was shopping for a Barbie as a Christmas present, and the whole time that I was walking up and down the aisles of Toys"R"Us, I kept thinking of how I was a traitor to my feminist values, and also really scared at some of the toys that are marketed at children, especially for girls. I probably had an aghast look on my face most of the time as I perused the examples of what a female is supposed to look like and the jobs/roles she's supposed to have.

So why was I contributing my consumer dollars to a corporate institution that I take offense at? Well, the last time I was shopping w/ a friend, she mentioned that she never had a Barbie growing up, and when she was talking about it, she sounded like she had missed out on an important childhood experience for American girls. So I made a note in my mind that I would get her a Barbie for Christmas (and yes, we are nearing our mid-20s). When I think about my childhood, playing w/ Barbies figured prominently in it.

Barbie options nowadays are more diverse than when I was kid, but not by much. Body types/proportions haven't changed from what I can see, unless you count the other kind of dolls that are supposed to be more cartoonish/plush-like or the ones w/ deliberately exaggerated features. And dolls of color are still very much lacking. In an ideal world, I would have loved to pick the doll with the deep skin tone rocking the afro, but I was on a mission to get the classic, white, blond Barbie in a pretty pink dress, because she's supposed to be the icon, right? In the end, that's what I bought: a Barbie with long, straight blond hair. And as she sits in my room waiting to be wrapped, every time my eyes fall on her, the back of my mind is thinking about the kind of toys I would want my children to play with, and the ones that I would buy for my friends' kids when the time comes.