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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Nappy Barbie to promote self-esteem

                     By Mhaire Fraser
In Columbus, Georgia, a group of women began a camaign to donate 40 plus black Barbies to young black girls at a local Girls, Inc chapter.  Before donating them, they treated the Barbies’ hair with pipe cleaners and boiling water to create “nappy headed” Barbies, or “natural ‘fros” on the dolls.
They are doing this to aid the self esteem of young black women who are lacking images of themselves in the media.  The organization is called Frolific and appears to be a Meet-up group whose purpose is to “provide encouragement and support to sistas who are natural, transitioning, or considering going natural.”
Their purpose in providing these Barbies is let young women know that they are okay the way that they were born. They do not need whitening and straightening.  The goal is to let a doll better represent natural hair to help the young women develop a sense of pride in themselves.


And perhaps this is why the clothing line Rocawear recently partnered with Mattel to create a line of hip hop clothing for Barbie.  Trying to make Barbie more relevant to the current market is a great idea for Mattel, and may help with self esteem.  But it still presents that same problem and sends the same messages: “If you don’t look like Barbie (even nappy headed Barbie) you are doing it wrong.”
I applaud the last part as it reminds me of an assignment I give my women’s studies classes.  Take a Barbie and re-create her in your image.  It has been too long that woman remake themselves in Barbie’s image, and we do not have enough dolls that are made in our own image.   I think this is the point that Fro-lific is trying to make.

If only a doll could teach self-esteem, but unfortunately it take parents to do that. After all, there are very few teachers who could do that, not with class sizes getting larger and increasing curriculum. 
This begs the question, who is suppose to teach self-esteem, if the parents also lack self-esteem.
After all, one of my many jobs in life was at a cleaning service, where I was one of the very few Caucasian workers among the many African-American workers, who were a 'Union' among themselves and I was always the outsider looking in. Working with them was something else, part the time I was envious of the closeness to each other,other times I was angry at all the ways so many had to get out of work, but other times I pitied them beyond words--such as the many times, when they wanted to compliment  a fellow African-American for being intelligent, they would say that the person spoke like 'A White Person' which broke my heart and left me speechless. This also baffled me, since I could never understand how anyone could look at this Caucasian woman, who still has much to learn, and still stereotype Whites as the smarter, intellectually?

Then there was that time, when one of the newer African-American ladies came in complaining about the trouble she had with her daughter--her daughter who apparently had the 'nerve' to tell her mother that she wasn't a 'nigger', which angered my co-worker to the point of her dragging her daughter to the mirror and scolding her,'What are you talking about you 'ain't a nigger, look at you--look at you!'
Before I could say a word, all the African-American co-workers started patting her on the back and telling her how right she was and how wrong her daughter was, who was now corrected. If only I had the courage to speak up, I wish I could have explained to them all, It probably was not that her daughter was in denial of who she was, she was simply aiming for higher ground than the gutter that we are all living in, which was admirable and should have been encouraged, instead of being shot down.
Well, I am sorry, it has been a few years, since I worked there and remembering names is still something I am continually working at, who knows one day I might even succeed.

Another time, I remember there was a Mother, Desire, who worked with us briefly with her three daughters. There was an insident, where we ended up in an heated exchange and which climaxed in her--'Accusing All Whites (even the owner) of being either Overt White Supremacist or Cover White Supremacists). Because of the African-American majority, I was sent home without pay, while she went to work as if nothing happened. I was sent to work a couple days else where, but she was told that I was given a few days off to think about what I said.  Well, she and her family must have found out about the deception, because later they quit and the last job sight that they went on, they damaged to the point where it became a very costly repair.

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