AYA DE LEON’s Homemade Weaponry in the Battle Against Barbie
I’ve never been much of a holiday gift-giver. In my 20s, someone told me that the holiday shopping season is what keeps the US economy going. After that, I started telling people. “I don’t give gifts. Just doing my part to bring down capitalism.”
Despite my best attempts, my daughter is a girly-girl. She would faint from joy if I got her a makeup kit and high heels for the holidays. Not gonna happen. She also has started talking about Barbie. I tell her she can have all the Barbies she wants when she’s eighteen. She will also be allowed to wear high heels then. In related news, she has informed me how much she likes Belle from Beauty and the Beast. How did she even hear about that? We don’t let her watch Disney. I re-gift the stuff that we get. They don’t have those books at her preschool. Once I even scrubbed a Cinderella image off a pair of sunglasses someone gave her a year ago. She liked the “pretty princess” on the glasses. “It’s a sticker,” I lied. “It won’t stay on for very long.” The next day I got a tissue and some alcohol and rubbed the princess off. Underneath, the glasses were pretty cute.
So many of us African heritage parents are haunted by those studies in the forties of black children, quoted for decades in literature and captured on video. Which is the pretty doll? The smart doll? The good doll? The loveable doll? Time and again the children picked the white doll.
I’ve been vigilant I don’t allow her to have white dolls. Dora the Explorer is the lightest we get in our house. Her books are heavily weighted toward stories of African heritage girls. I have even written a children’s book of photographs of kids, adults and families with natural hair called Puffy: People Whose Hair Defies Gravity. My daughter would wear her hair out every day if I would let her. I don’t have time to comb the tangles out every night. On the days I do let her wear it out, she goes for the old school Michael Jackson fro. “Puffier mom! Make it puffier!” The Puffy book celebrates the perspective of the preschooler who is dazzled by hair that looks like a dandelion, a lollipop, a tree in bloom. I’ve been hustling to have the book out for the holidays, and somehow, as a working artist mom, I managed it. It’s available for pre-order on my website. But you can write all the positive African American hair books you want, but you can’t singlehandedly balance out the male domination and white supremacy that is whispering in your children’s ears from other parts of society.
Still, parents can fight back by creating the words and images we want our children to see. The Puffy book began as a personal book of photos I made online for our family. People said they wanted copies, so I developed the self-published project. It’s ironic – for the first time, as a momtrepreneur, I encouraged people to buy something on Black Friday. Although I called it #BlackHairFriday. So, I guess I still have a subversive holiday agenda, but this time it includes a gift-giving scenario. But that’s one of the things I’ve learned as a mother. While I can’t change everything about the world (at least not in time for the holidays) I can change my daughter’s experience of the world. As long as I stay vigilant with the Barbie army, stealthy with the princesses, and steady in creating alternative images, I’m hoping that will be enough.
About the Author
Aya de Leon teaches creative writing in the African American Studies Department at UC Berkeley. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning feminist heist series, Justice Hustlers: UPTOWN THIEF (2016), THE BOSS (2017), THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS (2018) and SIDE CHICK NATION in 2019 about the hurricane in Puerto Rico. She also authored the children’s picture book puffy: people whose hair defies gravity. She has received acclaim in the Washington Post, Village Voice, SF Chronicle, and The Establishment. Her work has also appeared in Ebony, Guernica, Writers Digest, Huffington Post, The Toast, The Root, Catapult, VICE, Quartz, Essence, Bitch Magazine and on Def Poetry. She is also at work on a children’s picture book to help talk to children about racism, a black girl spy YA novel called Going Dark, and an adult spy novel about FBI infiltration of an African American political organization. She blogs and tweets about race, gender, and culture at @AyadeLeon and ayadeleon.com.
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Great article. I def battle with these issues with my daughter too. She is super femme, and into princesses. I try to find alternative versions too. Like Sugar Cane, which is an alternative Caribbean version to Rapunzel. Though at the end of the story, she does marry the prince. But I think I have so far done a good job discussing that not every princess has to wait for a prince to come along. At the end of our reading, she said “But ma, she doesn’t really marry the prince.” And when I asked her why, she said, “Because she likes princesses.”
“But why can’t I have a Barbie doll?” my daughter asks. I can’t tell her the truth: “Well, honey, Barbie got her start as a German WWII sex doll and we don’t play with Nazi porn in our house.” So I settle for an activity-based explanation. “Barbie’s feet are permanently pointed for high heels so she can’t do anything. She can’t run. She can’t play soccer or basketball. All she does is stand around. I want you to have dolls that can do things.”
This is hands down the BEST simultaneous breakdown~rebuttal of the Barbie Industrial Complex I have ever read. Sharing madly.
Oh pu lease! Yo cannot just take your kid from girl stuff like that! This is coming from a girl who practically lives her life begging her parent’s for a doll or something that is even kinda girly! Sorry if I sounded mean but it’s just I know how that feels.