I'm not a fan of Bratz because of the image they display to girls. I feel the same way about Barbies, and I hate to admit that I had quite an extensive Barbie collection growing up. However, I do agree with one statement from a mother in the article that Barbies are better for girls than Bratz. At least when I was growing up, they had a Barbie for almost every career and not all Barbies had "promiscuous" clothes. Yet I still feel that they are pretty sexist. In my opinion, it is another gendered toy that installs the idea that girls are meant to grow up, get married, and have a family (remember the "Happy Family" Barbie set they sold a few years ago?). I guess you could argue that Barbie also has a career etc, but Barbie is also thin, curvy, and gorgeous by society's standards. Thus, I don't like them. Kind of ironic how they used to be my favorite toy, huh?

Despite what you might think of Barbie and her friends, they are, in my opinion, much more "safe" than the Bratz dolls. The Bratz don't even look human, really, with their much too large eyes and mouths the size of their hands.

I used to work in a children's library, and we had a lot of the Barbie and Bratz paperbacks, and there was even a significant difference there. In one of my favorites (because it included illustrations of the actual dolls posed in zero-gravity) was a book where Barbie and her friends went to outer space as astronauts-- three women, and two men. Barbie was the pilot.

The Bratz books, by contrast, were about shopping and sleepovers. Not that there's anything wrong with those two activities-- I like both-- but, well, you can clearly see the difference in priority.

I liked the Bratz when they first came out--they were multicultural and the characters were shown standing together in a line (As contrasted with ads for Barbies and most other dolls where the blond-haired, blue eyed doll is shown front and center, and the ethnic dolls are placed behind her. If they are depicted at all.) And I liked their sly look--the Bratz looked like they had a thought in their head, unlike Barbie's straight-ahead, fixed vacant gaze.

But unfortunately, once movies and cartoons began assigning personalities to the characters, thy became "the dolls with the passion for fashion", but not much else. And fell into the more conventional trope of making blond haired blue eyed Chloe the lead Bratz, with the others as sidekicks.

I keep hearing about Barbies with careers, but growing up all the ads I saw were for Barbies who shopped, got makeovers and hairdos, rode ponies or pink Corvettes--the only time I recall Barbie actually DOING something was when they created a line of "rocker" Barbie dolls with (pink of course) to compete with the popularity of Jem and the Holograms.

So, though the Bratz were cute, considering what they became, they won't be missed. But I'd be equally happy to see anorexic pink-junkie Barbie disappear forever too.

I fully expect new things to pop up and try to replace Bratz. I don't see Barbie filling in, she's too old to appeal to the kids that Bratz did. Which is really disappointing, because while Barbie wasn't perfect, it's unlikely that anything else will be half as feminist.

That would be incredibly sweet, because the Bratz are just plain creepy and a horrible role model for the little girls they're marketed to. But I don't have much hope for anything better to come along. If you're a parent of young girls you know that more and more of the toys they market to them embody these horrible gender roles and/or are incredibly sexualized or sexualizing. It's so depressing.

I played with Barbies when I was little. I don't feel that Barbie had anything to do with body image problems I have struggled with (though Seventeen magazine did). At the age when I was playing with Barbie I wasn't yet concerned with attracting boys or my body, and besides, Barbie was something I saw as so unrealistic that I never saw her as a role model for what my body should look like or any other human should or even could look like. Of course, I also never got into the shopping and boys aspect of Barbie and instead created scenarios where one Barbie was a murderer (using a Clue gun game piece) and killing off the other Barbies who had to solve the mystery of who the killer was before it was too late. As an adult I'm not in love with the idea of Barbie and the way she "pushes pretty" but I feel like girls have many more damaging aspects of culture to deal with. That said, I hate the Bratz dolls because they are so sexualized and seem even more vapid than Barbie.

Honestly, I hated Bratz and Barbies. I preferred Yasmin to the other Bratz, though, because (in the movies, at least) homegirl actually had a BRAIN. But I really don't think they have that much of an affect on body image.

Then again, when I was a kid, I chopped the hair off my Barbies, popped their heads off, lost their other shoe (and their outfits) and then went outside to play kickball and football. Pretty much the only time I played with Barbies was when it was raining, and then I made up some pretty intense stories for them to act out. (Ah, imagination!)

Honestly, I hated Bratz and Barbies. I preferred Yasmin to the other Bratz, though, because (in the movies, at least) homegirl actually had a BRAIN. But I really don't think they have that much of an affect on body image.

Then again, when I was a kid, I chopped the hair off my Barbies, popped their heads off, lost their other shoe (and their outfits) and then went outside to play kickball and football. Pretty much the only time I played with Barbies was when it was raining, and then I made up some pretty intense stories for them to act out. (Ah, imagination!)