Last weekend, we were in Toys R Us picking out a present for my friend's daughter's birthday. I sighed loudly that Jovie still didn't have a doll. She had stuffed toys, but not a doll. Not the ultimate in declaring your child a true female. For some reason, it bothered me that she didn't have a doll to coo over. So we went about finding her her first doll.
Now, why did this throw me into a complete tailspin? Because there are no multi-racial dolls! The dolls are White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian. The hispanic doll came the closest, but that wasn't a true representation of who she was. If we got her the white doll, would she identify herself as white first? If we got her the black doll, would she identify herself as black first? Would she shun one of her races? Would she think she wasn't pretty enough because there are no dolls made in her color?
All of this went through my head as I had an anxiety attack in the aisles, running back and forth between the dolls. Jovie happily tried to pull toys off the shelf and Ryan kept talking about getting her a Cabbage Patch Doll. See, we both had Cabbage Patch Dolls growing up, so this was the perfect solution. Until it WASN'T the perfect solution; there were races of those little bastards too!
We ended up settling on the Black Cabbage Patch that came with 2 dolls; one little sister and one big sister. The little one has a little tuft of nappy curly hair on it's head and the bigger one has curly black hair. We were so proud of our purchase and when Ryan spent 30 minutes trying to wrangle them from the packaging, with Jovie wide-eyed in excitement, we were sure she'd be proud of her parents. She grabbed the dolls and flung them before toddling off to the next activity.
So yes....her attention span is still short, but she does play with them. Once she even coo'ed at the baby. I still worry about how she'll identify herself in the future or if she'll get teased in school. I worry about all those identity crises I read about for multi-racial kids and how that can affect them. All I can do is treat her like the beautiful little girl she is and keep reinforcing that. And try to keep her from biting the nose off her Cabbage Patch.
Here's the thing-she's going to be so awesome, how she got to be Jovie colored is going to be irrelevant. As will the questions of "Are you adopted?" when people only see one parent...(I know this from experience) You and Ryan look after loving and supporting her and she will know she is smart and beautiful, no matter the color of her CP doll.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, no biting the nose off, that has got to be a choking hazard.
The "standard races" of the dolls bug me too! Why can't they just come in a variety of colors without race labels? Juliana is a plain old white girl (OK, she has Asian and Native American way back there somewhere), but I have a hard time even finding a blonde doll with brown eyes. Blondes have BLUE eyes only, of course!
ReplyDeleteI guess our challenge is to show our daughters that being unique is much more interesting and alluring than being standard. :)
I got Eleanore precisely because she kinda looked like me. She's ambiguously Asian, I suppose. And for some reason liked hanging out on the toilet of our shared bathroom in Mahoney...
ReplyDeleteMarisa, I have no idea why Eleanore enjoyed taking photos and hanging out on the toilet in our bathroom. Weird huh? :)
ReplyDelete