Hooching up little girlz

If there is a children's toy more odious than the slutty Bratz dolls, I don't want to know about it (here's the Wiki entry on them, and here's the official website). They, and their Baby Bratz spinoffs, are hugely popular with little girls. James Lileks nailed 'em right here:

Bratz are the main reason I do not keep a supply of bricks around the house, because everytime the commercials come on I wish to pitch something kiln-fired through the screen so hard it beans the toy exec who greenlighted these hootchie toys. The Baby Bratz are as bad as you can imagine: “Bottles with Bling.” Judas on a stick, why not just refit the Bratz so they have Real Oozing Gonorreal Flow Action?

“They know how to flaunt it, and they’re keeping it real in the crib.”

What exactly is the penalty for failing to keep it real in the crib? Someone busts a cap in yo Pamper? I know I am old and so out of step it’s a wonder I don’t just appear as an indistinct smear, but was it really necessary to push the Age of Sultry Hussyism down to the infant stage? And who, exactly, are the Babyz flaunting it for? Are we going to see a commercial with Elmo in sunglasses, sitting with his legs sprawled, spanking some pliant Babyz with one hand while gumming down some mashed crack?

Well, the Dec. 4 New Yorker has a long Margaret Talbot piece out (but not online) on how Barbie is in decline, losing market share to the Bratz. The NYer is not a magazine known for its cultural conservatism, but jeez, you don't need to be a cultural conservative, just morally sane, to despise the Bratz and what they tell us about our culture. Here's Talbot:

What Bratz dolls are both contributing to and feeding on is a culture in which girls play at being "sassy" -- the toy industry's favored euphemism for sexy -- and discard traditional toys at a younger age. (Girls seem to be growing out of toys earlier than boys are, industry analysts say.) Toy marketers now invoke a phenomenon called K.G.O.Y. -- Kids Getting Older Younger -- and talk about it as though it were a fact of modern life over which they have no control, rather than one which they have largely created.

They call it "Girl Power," but what empowering females in this context means is modeling for pre-teen girls overt sexuality and crass materialism as virtue. Can we talk about forming children's imaginations? Do you want your little girls growing up thinking that this is the icon of femininity that they should aspire to emulate? That's what's happening to today’s girls, as evidenced by the sales stats: Bratz are kicking perennial fave Barbie out of the top toy slot, girls' division.

But Barbie is learning to play the game. Here's Talbot again:

In 2002, Matttel introduces a new line of dolls: My Scene Barbie, which kept Barbie's basic dimensions but had bigger eyes, plumper, shinier lips, and and hotter clothes. A recent incranation of the line is the unsubtly named My Bling Bling Barbie. (The Barbie Web site says of one of these dolls, "Chelsea burns up the Bling Bling scene, in an ultra hot halter top and sassy skirt sooo scorchin'.") When not "getting their groove on," the Bling Bling girls are "mall maniacs." An animated video on the Barbie Web site depicts them struggling to lay off shopping for a day. They manage only a brief visit to the park -- where the puppies they coo over turn into high-heeled boots, the fountain spouts jewelry, and the clouds above them spell out "SALE" -- before they give in and head to the mall.

One hardly knows what to say about this aside from: Refuse and resist. I'm the father of a little girl now, and I refuse to give these people the opportunity to colonize her imagination.