3:31am October 11, 2013

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Natural Girls United (@NaturalIsUnited) is a fabulous Black-owned business that produces beautiful dolls to resemble Black women and other women of colour. The hair textures, colours and styles varieties are so diverse. Also, I love that the dolls have full lips, round noses and are a variety of complexions. These dolls are too cute and are for sale. The price range appears to be $45.00-$140.00, and the work is custom. Custom orders are also available.

As the founder, owner and designing artist Karyn Bird notes in her bio:

If a child is constantly looking at images, dolls, television, books and magazines - and only seeing beauty as something or someone with non-ethnic features and long, straight hair - then they are going to assume that this is what beauty is. It is something that has hurt our young people for centuries. But each day we learn that it is important to show them and teach them that their beauty is beautiful.

The only thing that I would want added are dolls with size variety instead of the usual thin frame. But with everything else, these dolls are on the right track.

I want Black kids to have dolls with variety; and I say “kids” since I am not about gender restrictions on toys. In the past I wrote something gender-specific (Black Girls and Dolls; Black Women and Pinterest) since even if all genders of Black children play with dolls like these (which would be great), the connection to beauty perception and beauty politics most heavily falls on Black girls. Thus, how that beauty is interpreted and how much it subverts hegemonic and Eurocentric beauty norms matters.