Angela Dang
Macquarie Fields High School  
Popular Culture Award and High Distinction
Dolly See, Dolly Do: Examination of Popular Culture of ‘Bratz’ dolls - their influences on a person’s identity and the implications for society

The popular culture of ‘Bratz’ dolls have created an insightful ripple effect in society, causing critics and sociologists to question the prevailing modernized epidemic and its affects on children’s future personal and social development. The cultural shift in the rapid transformation of today’s fashion doll in the toy industry’s market patterns centre around ‘Bratz’, generating the belief that the dolls act to influence girls in building stereotypes, with narrow choices to sexualize childhood and materializing the ever-younger consumer age group of children. Because of this, psychologists fear the influence that ‘Bratz’ dolls have on sensitive young minds.1 From my questionnaires, I was able to gather quantitative information, through which 87% of all my participants agreed that ‘Bratz’ dolls’ influence on little girls was negative, with one parent commenting that “they bring attention to inappropriate issues, and changes the way females are perceived”2.

Through my primary research, my questionnaire results provided me with quantitative information as to the extent that ‘Bratz’ dolls influence girls, as illustrated in the figure 3.1. As demonstrated in the graph, 36% agreed that ‘Bratz’ dolls greatly influence little girls, followed by the 28% who said they have some level of influence.

According to research on equality issues in childhood, studies show that from the age as young as 3 or 4; children are able to decipher socially constructed roles between genders in the macro world through toys.3  This in effect, triggers feelings of pressure, confusion and conflict within their micro world to conform to society’s norms and expectations in the macro world during their adolescent and adult years.

Due to exposures of pervasive influences of the mass media and prevailing technology, ‘tween’ girls are increasingly being targeted with the social phenomenon of mature ideologies, generating a modernized culture of “KGOY” – ‘Kids Getting Older Younger’4  and ‘age compression’, both constituting the same belief that kids are maturing at an early age.

Through age compression, ‘tweens’ are ever more becoming caught between the life-stages of childhood and adolescence, adding another layer of ramification and causing the developmental stages to grow out of synch. As the phases of adolescence come earlier, it is no longer in conjunction with the brain development, and physical biology that would enable the persons to develop their cognitive capacity to a substantial level.

1  Bressington, George, “The Psychology of Pre-Adolescence”, Psychology Today, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, 2003 p. 54-68.
2  Questionnaire results. April-May 2006.
3 
Women’s e News article, ‘Holiday Toys Sell Girls on Primping and Passivity’, by Rivers and Barnett, November 23, 2005.
4 
Modernized corporate slogan according to Juliet B. Schor, Boston College sociology Professor and author of Born to Buy. Readers Digest article, Crowley, Michael, February 2005, ‘That’s Outrageous!: No-Strings Sex’.