Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Disney's A Wrinkle In Time Dolls Are Mattel's Barbies, Not Hasbro's Princesses

Okay. Before we start. Full disclosure: I loved, loved, LOVED Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time series when I was younger. (I think I slightly preferred A Ring of Endless Light, but that may have been because of the dolphins.) Regardless, I love L'Engle's writing and her stories and, like all things from our childhoods that we love, I'm fiercely protective of them.

So when Disney bought the rights, I was initially skeptical. While I love Disney animation, their track record of live-action films is "meh," IMHO.

But then they brought Ava DuVernay on as the director and Frozen's Jennifer Lee to adapt the screen play and cast Storm Reid as Meg Murray. In the book, from what I remember, there isn't much mention made of the Murray's family racial identity -- although I think Meg has red hair, which would lean toward Caucasian -- and while I don't know much about L'Engle's personal beliefs, it's probably a safe bet that, given the 1962 publication date, they were a white family. But the Murray family is different, and viewed as such by their small-town neighbors. So DuVernay's decisions to cast Storm Reid as Meg, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as her mother Kate and Chris Pine as her father Alex, resulting in an interracial marriage, makes consistent thematic sense, especially in today's current cultural climate.

All of that is a rather long-winded way of saying: the film looks amazing and progressive and full of (black) girl power.

Cut to this photo that the official A Wrinkle In Time media released:


And here's director Ava DuVernay's tweet about them as well:

Now. The important thing to note here is that these dolls are Barbies. And Barbies are made by Mattel. Reese Witherspoon confirmed this in her tweet:
"Okay. So what?" you might be asking.

Well...the dolls do look like their real-life counterparts....at least in their face shape. That is,
Mrs. Which has Mindy Kaling's round face, Mrs. Whatsit has Oprah's elongated, oval face, and Mrs. Who has Reese Witherspoon's heart-shaped face. But...

But.

As a friend pointed out, the dolls all have the same body type which "is not in any way representative of the body shape of any of those three women." That's not to say that there's anything wrong with their body shapes -- in fact, I'd even strongly argue against that: while Reese Witherspoon may have a "normal" body size for Hollywood, both Mindy Kaling and Oprah are more representative of the average American woman -- it's just to say that, in real life, each of these three women are built very differently, a fact which isn't portrayed by their dolls.



It's not unsurprising though, given that the A Wrinkle In Time dolls are manufactured by Mattel. After all, Barbie has had an unrealistic figure for years. But we're moving towards a more inclusive, body-positive society and, yes, Mattel has started to recognize the marketability of Barbies with more diverse body shapes.

Which is partially why (1) these dolls and their body shapes and (2) Disney's decision to have Mattel, not Hasbro, manufacture them is so disappointing to me.

A little context/background/history:
Fact: Mattel used to have a contract with Disney to manufacture their Disney Princess dolls, arguably their biggest money-making brand.
Fact: Mattel lost that contract to Hasbro, who demonstrated more of a willingness to evolve and meet the expanding conception of "princess" as empowered (re: not just passive and pretty).
Fact: Mattel's concept for the Disney Princess dolls was basically Barbie-as-Princess-X -- that is, Mattel's Cinderella was basically Barbie dressed as Cinderella and so on for the rest of the princesses.
Fact: Hasbro's dolls look distinctly different from Mattel's dolls -- for example, Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine, and Mulan --  with different face and eye shapes. There's still not a ton of body diversity, but I suppose it's naive to think that the doll industry would be completely revolutionary in one step.

My Conclusion: as a mother, who will soon be faced with buying her own daughter (yeah, yeah -- I'm looking forward to it; no one's twisting my arm) Disney princess merchandise, I much prefer Hasbro's diversity to Mattel's homogeneity. That is, I didn't grow up with either one -- I was in high school when the concept of Disney Princess as a brand emerged -- so I don't have a preference or nostalgic bias for the Mattel Barbie-like dolls. (People online seem to be strongly divided over this issue, and several students indicated that they preferred the Mattel ones, but acknowledged that's what they grew up with.) But I like that the dolls look different, even if their heads are rather large.

Financially though...at least in the 2016 holiday season, Hasbro outsold Mattel. Now, there could be a lot of factors at play here, one of which being that parents will buy Disney Princess dolls regardless of who manufactures them, if they're even aware that there was a change. What's significant though, is that parents aren't not buying the dolls; that the dolls are still selling, whereas Barbie, before her image overhaul, just wasn't as popular.

All of this is to say that given Disney's marketing of  A Wrinkle in Time as a strong female-driven movie, and especially in light of their campaign to redefine what it means to be a princess (it's about character, not fashion) and evidenced through the new appearance of the dolls, I don't understand why Mattel produced the Wrinkle in Time dolls. Yes, giving them to Hasbro wouldn't mean that they'd certainly have different, more authentic body shapes. And yes, the larger head-sizes of the Hasbro dolls might work better for cartoon characters than they might for dolls based on real women, but...I guess we'll never know.
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