Dadventure

I should have seen this coming when Dora went all Princess a few years ago. Now she is getting the full tween makeover. According to the Mattel press release:

As tweenage Dora, our heroine has moved to the big city, attends middle school and has a whole new fashionable look.

Are you serious? One of the best role models on TV for young girls is heading down sassy Bratz route? A whole new “fashionable” look? Say it ain’t so!

The great thing about Dora is that she breaks so many stereotypes. She is a girl who goes on adventures in the wild, not in the mall. She has short hair, not long flowing locks. She wears shorts, not short skirts. She reads a map so we know she is into geography and science. All this is about to be reduced into yet another friggin trashy pop culture princess mess.

But you know what? It is going to backfire. We parents who love Dora love her for exactly those reasons. Dora IS the anti-Bratz and she will not survive this makeover. She can’t out-Bratz the Bratz. And parents will see through this crass attempt to cash in on trash. Dora is popular for precisely the opposite reasons that Mattel are trying to sell. And, as Packaging Girlhood points out,  we know who the real Dora is and will always be.

But we know the truth. If the original Dora grew up, she wouldn’t be a fashion icon or a shopaholic. She’d develop her map reading skills and imagine the places she could go. She’d capitalize on those problem solving skills to design new ways to bring fresh water to communities in need around the world. Maybe she’d become a world class runner or follow her love of animals and become a wildlife preservationist or biologist. We’ll never know because the only way a girl can grow up in tween town, is to narrow that symphony of choices to one note. It’s such a sell out of Dora, of all girls.

Voice your concern. Sign the online petition that has been started by the fine folks at Packaging Girlhood and send a message to Mattel that we don’t need Dora the Mall Explorer.

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