You might assume I have better things to worry about than Dora the Explorer’s (link) metamorphoses into a tween fashionista as she follows her aging viewers into tween-hood. You’d be right. I’m not worried about it, but it is going to be interesting to watch the media’s influence over yet another generation of television watchers as they change Dora — the precocious, exploring toddler, usually seen in backpack sneakers and shorts, exploring, helping or finding someone, while she teaches Spanish along the way — into something they think tweens, who started watching her ten years ago as toddlers, will want to follow.
The new brand of the “no longer a toddler but a tween” Dora will, according to the brand owners, “capture girls’ existing love of Dora and marry it with the fashion doll play and online experiences older girls enjoy”. Yea, those tween girls just love fashion doll play, way to go Mattel. Cha Ching.
I love the idea of an exploring inquisitive bi-lingual female out saving people and finding cool things. It must have thrilled parents to have such a role model for their daughters. Having never played with a doll in my life I really don’t understand this assumption Mattel has about tween girls either. True, it took me a few years to go out exploring on my own, having been psychologically damaged by the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are , but I did go, eventually. I assumed everyone did. I was ten years old or so when I ventured out alone to try and save people. I grew up reading ancient yellowed family copies of the Nancy Drew Mysteries. This lead me to believe I could be at the very least a detective, albeit one in an ugly uncomfortable looking old fashioned plaid skirt, bobby socks and saddle shoes. My parents never worried too much about media influence because TV wasn’t a mainstay, it was rarely watched until we moved back here, and I was cooked, almost done, by then.
Things are different for some people it seems. This Dora the Explorer show seems to have been very important in the lives of some kids, at least according to some upset parents. Some of these parents are so disturbed they’ve initiated a protest of sorts. They want Dora to remain on the same track, a role model for girls, not the same old same old product which clearly places a female in a category which limits her potential. There is a well intentioned petition called Let’s Go: No Makeover for Dora!, found here.
I’m all for exercising your rights in this very simple way, and why not. But here is the thing. Travesty that it is that Dora may soon be forced to wear skirts, uncomfortable thongs and starter make-up, you have control. If you don’t like it don’t let your kids watch it. Don’t buy their crap. Simple. The world isn’t going to end. Your power is in your pocketbook and in your kids viewing habits. Your kids don’t have to follow Dora to her grave. Get your precious Dora following tween up off the couch, shut off the TV. Buy your tweeney a color of her choice backpack, stuff it with some binoculars, compass, bag lunch, band aids, a decent cell phone with free text and picture messaging, get her some totally awesome four pocket camouflage pants, some decent hiking boots, spray her with some organic environmentally safe “will not cause seizures” bug spray, attach an electronic tracking device to her ankle, kiss her on the cheek, tell her not to come home until she’s helped someone or discovered something, and send her off.
If you are really ambitious, go with her.
It’s not the fate of Dora you need to be worrying about, it is the fate of your child, and that is in your hands. Even I know that.
Although your mind’s opaque
Try thinking more if just for your own sake
The future still looks good
And you’ve got time to rectify
All the things that you should
George Harrison
I understand your point and I’m with you as far as just don’t buy it, support it, watch it etc.
I’m not sure if you have kids but there is something precious about watching these shows with your kids, growing and learning together. Mattel is acting irresponsibly here. Dora is a preschool icon, PRESCHOOL thats like putting a Thug Life tattoo on Grover. Instead of taking the Dora character down the Bratz road of commerce and fashion they could have kept with the positive image and pushed more of an American Girl theme, introducing them to art music and lterature. My kids are still little so Im not too concerned about them freaking out wanting the doll, which I wouldnt buy anyway. I am concerned about broaching questions when the comnmercials start rallying this upcoming holiday. Mom why does Dora look like a BRATZ doll, wheres Boots?
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I’m too young to have or want kids, but while I was growing up my “special times” with my parents were never in front of a television set. That is what I see as the problem. I see not reason not to let Mattell know you are dissatisfied, I just think there are better solutions.
It’s all about the money.
Barbie turned 50 this year and so with keeping the coffers full, Mattel, to celebrate her longevity, decided to put a tat on her shoulder. Not a big deal but those in W. VA. decided to ban this “uncool” addition.
Great segue with George’s song — Think for yourself.
If only we’d all take those three words to heart.
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I never understood Barbie, or parents desire to buy little kids plastic dolls with large plastic breasts, but I never had a Barbie, never wanted one, and am not sure if my parents would have even allowed one in the house. Creepy looking they were.
As I roam the web, I have gained a great appreciation for my parents, that is for sure.
I wish I could find the picture of me as Sheena Queen of The Jungle – Halloween when I was seven. Apparently I believed (or my mother did) that girls who saved the world wore a lot of makeup. It was my favorite picture of me growing up and I made sure everybody saw it – wore a one armed leopard skin whatever, had a bat, wild hair (I was never allowed to wear my hair down) and lots and lots of makeup
My best friend’s mother had all the original Nancy Drew books and we spent endless hours reading them and then playing scenes from them
I wanted to be whatever the girl/woman was in the book I was reading that day and I read constantly but I was only allowed to be home if it was raining, I had homework or it was pouring. I could read outside
I think you had exceptional parenting for the times as the girls I knew who were born the year were weren’t allowed to explore the world on their own. I love them but they’re materialistic wimps who have just learned they have to be concerned about real life things
My best friend consciously set out to be a different kind of parent – which really isn’t easy in Manhattan as you really can’t let a kid under ten cross a street by herself. You can be turned into Child Services if you leave a kid under 14 home alone – that rule is of course constantly broken
Manhattan has many parks. again you can’t let a kid explore too far away from you – you can however have her run around by herself, go up to kids and ask if she can play with them. If they say no, you have to be firm and say “I’m sorry. But there are more kids to play with.…”
She also learned from watching her mother who is one of the best people I know – she loved her Barbies and decapitated them – always treated American Girl’s Josefina with respect and as the sister she didn’t have yet
I think it’s very hard to raise an independent non-materialistic kid in today’s society but it’s the most important thing a parent can do – and if parents didn’t understand that in the past they should understand now that money isn’t made in the ATM
Great post Cooper. I have too much to do so of course I wrote a post length comment
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What it is — my parents had exceptional parenting, and they didn’t take the little family dramas and disappointments that everyone has, and most people carry on forever like some salted wound and make it into an “I’ll never raise my kids like that crusade”. They discarded what they didn’t think worked with them and kept the rest — which was most of it– and carried on.
Cooper,you were a very lucky kid whether you knew it or not.
It’s probably better if those precious moments came from things you do with your kids instead of things you watch them. I think Mattel is doing the same old thing we’ve bought and sucked up for ages, and if no one buys it they will have to change it. TV should never have that much influence, Turn it off. I agree.
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You seem like a good parent Jacob. There are a lot of parents out there like mine just not enough. As it turns out most of the people I gravitated to in high school had similar parents, as least on some level.
I am all for your comment, “if you don’t like it don’t let your kids watch it”. If enough people actually did this then they would not change Dora.
I doubt enough people will. To many parents WANT their little girls to be lipstick BRATZ. I am glad I have three boys and not three girls!
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There are more creepy parents out there than you know.
Never watched Dora but she sounds cool.
Where the Wild Things Are did have some freaky pictures for a 2 year old.
I probably would have been pissed had they changed the look of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they were my icons.
Running around in the woods was always more fun than watching tv though, so yea, shut off the tv and stop with the protests.
yup
Why mess with a good thing? Leave Dora alone. For every child that moves into that next stage, one will move into the current ‘toddler’ stage & want Dora the way she is. Mattel is off on this one IMO.
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They are following a path they think will be more profitable as usual.
I don’t know – I grew up on the A-Team and I still hold the fantasy that I’m going to buy a van just like theirs to start my own team. I don’t think I grew up with any of my heroes. Nor would I want to.
It seems a lot of my favorites have a carefully selected time period they fight into. Try as I might I would never want to grow up with the kids on Avonlea. Their stories are better while they are young. It would only depress me to hear how they went kicking and screaming into the night of adulthood.
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Maybe they just need to start reading their their kids, those character never change.
We are done with Dora here. Just as we are done with Blues Clues, Sesame Street and others. Dora will never have tats in this house. And Bridget Bardot will never get wrinkles.
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“Bridget Bardot will never get wrinkles” — and we can thank her plastic surgeon for that.
Those kids and parents have got to move on. Don’t bet the parents who let them sit around watching Dora all day are going to get up off the sofa and hike with them. They’d rather complain that their kid’s cartoon is changing and is gonna mess the kid up, be a bad role model.
People complain too much. If they don’t like the change, move on, get over it. What do they teach their kids by whining about Dora? Aren’t there bigger fish to fry? She’s a frigging cartoon.
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exactly
I stopped trying to figure out why parents bother protesting trivial marketing schemes.
Kind of reminds me of those geeks trying to boycott Warner Brothers Studio to forbid any actor from attempting to portray the Joker, because apparently by their assumption no other actor could humanly do a better Joker than Heath Ledger.
I think people have WAY too much free time. I keep trying to point out that this society is based so obsessively in entertainment as it’s main purpose so much that everything that actually is important is usually ignored & left to people with very limited imaginations to solve these real problems that require expanded thinking.
I don’t know what it all means, or how to fix it.
I just feel like our people factories ‘schools’ are doing very little, but to pump out idiots that know more about the latest fashionable shoe wear, or cartoon catch phrase than the quantum structure of an atom.
Something about this feels quite wrong.
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Wouldn’t it be nice to have a full fledged coordinated effort by the parents whose kids go to shitty schools, at protest for sure and some kids of online new paper, where all the parents with kids in shitty schools can write columns about what their children are learning and how they are being taught, what they aren’t learning and what they are not being taught.
But no, they are worrying about Dora.
The conversation may be more important (or at least interesting) than the fate of Dora herself. As we can see above. here as well.