I read "I’m in a bad mood. Let’s go shopping’: Interactive dolls, consumer culture and a ‘glocalized’ model of literacy" pretty voraciously - I love analyzing toys. And Diva Starz are completely fascinating. I've never heard of them, which is interesting given that the article is from 2003. Was I simply not paying attention to kids' toys, 5 years before I became a parent? Did they really only exist in the United States? Or did their marketing fail utterly, making them a flash in the pan that only those who were actually buying toys at the time would remember?

To the internet! I said. Turns out, Diva Starz came on the market in 2000, so the fact that the author saw them on shelves in 2003 means they had at least some staying power. However, according to Wikipedia (I make it a practice never to cite Wikipedia in a paper, obviously, but you'll forgive me for citing it on a blog!)

"After the success of the debut model, Mattel released the Diva Starz Fashion Dolls. While generally identical to the original line, these dolls have clothing made of fabric, and were thinner and had more accurate proportions. Also, the dolls will speak recorded phrases when a button on their backs is pushed. This collection of dolls did not include the Summer doll, but instead introduced the Miranda doll. With the introduction of the fashion doll, the robot dolls fell drastically in popularity, and Mattel discontinued them. After a few successful seasons with the fashion dolls, they to began to drop in popularity. In the end, Diva Starz soon became discontinued altogether, and Mattel went on to improving Barbie dolls and creating MyScene dolls."

So it looks like what sold better than dolls that were interactive about fashion were dolls that were passive about fashion, kind of. I mean, it's not like you don't get to dress Barbie. I made tons of tiny clothes for my Barbies, and they had exciting adventures. My Barbie play was more interactive, really, than whatever constitutes play in talking to one of the Diva Starz.

To address Carrington's central theme of literacy, I think there is some value for sure in toys as texts which teach children about what exists in the world. And certainly, gender stereotypes of the sort that Diva Starz portray absolutely exist and will absolutely be a large part of any girl and eventually woman's life. But as Carrington says, these toys are not descriptive, they are normative. They don't say "You could act like this." They say "You SHOULD act like this." By making their speech come from the dolls themselves instead of from the imaginations of little girls, they are leaving no room for subversion. Everyone I know who had Barbies at some point had them say something aggressive, competitive, combative. A Diva Star can't say "I will defeat you, evil vacuum cleaner!" because she is already saying "I just know we’ll be the best of friends! "

I'm not sure how this turned into a defense of Barbie! I'm certainly no fan. Barbie teaches one kind of appearance and one kind only, and as a parallel, Diva Starz teach one kind of speech and one kind only. I'm not anti-Barbie because I think there's anything wrong about having large breasts and a small waist, and Diva Starz don't seem distasteful to me because I think there's anything wrong with shopping. I love shopping, and heck, I have large breasts and a small waist. But there are so very many ways to talk and ways to look, and little girls are just shown the same ones over and over again, so that they assume those must be the only acceptable ways to talk/look. It's the homogeneousness that makes these toys boring and dangerous.

And they don't really look that different, either:



Works Cited:

Victoria Carrington (2003). I’m in a bad mood. Let’s go shopping’: Interactive dolls, consumer culture and a ‘glocalized’ model of literacy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. University of Queensland, Australia.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diva_Starz