You could call it a tempest in a toy box. While the J. Crew-clad Obama daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, are busy settling into life in the White House, controversy is swirling over their 12-inch doll doppelgangers, Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia.
In one corner are those who believe the makers of the new dolls have shamelessly breached the girls' privacy to make a buck. In the other are those who say Malia and Sasha are just the kinds of black role models American girls need today.
The two figures are part of toy manufacturer Ty's Ty Girlz line and were introduced earlier this month.
The company, best known as the maker of Beanie Babies, said last week that the brown-skinned brunette dolls are not based on the Obama girls.
Like many observers, the White House isn't buying it.
"We feel it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes," first lady Michelle Obama's press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, said in a statement Saturday.
In addition to the issue of whether Ty has shamelessly hitched its fortunes to the Obama family's success, critics are also suggesting the girls are being sexualized because the dolls have teenage curves.
This detail may be especially contentious, given the media glare Malia and Sasha are likely to face in the coming years. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was relatively successful at shielding his daughter, Chelsea, from the spotlight. Former president George W. Bush was less so, with the media gleefully reporting on his daughter Jenna's underage drinking exploits. Here in Canada, satirical magazine Frank was criticized for its spoof "deflower Caroline" contest in 1991 while her father, Brian Mulroney, was prime minister.
Many fans of U.S. President Barack Obama and his family appear ready to follow the White House lead and boycott the dolls. "They ought to be taken off the store shelves," Janet Shan wrote on the Black Political Thought blog.
But others see the dolls as symbolic of a positive evolution in U.S. culture.
Frank James of the Chicago Tribune pointed out that 55 years ago, civil rights lawyers leaned on upsetting research by psychologist Kenneth Clark that found when given the choice, young black children would routinely choose white dolls over black ones, describing them as "good and beautiful." The black dolls were described as "bad or ugly."
"How remarkable it is that in 2009 we should have a company believing it can profit by marketing brown-coloured dolls named Malia and Sasha," he wrote yesterday. "Maybe the dolls aren't so much a sign of exploitation. Maybe they actually signal progress."
BlogHer.com blogger Marisa P. wrote about how a visit to the online store Dolls Like Me, which sells multicultural toys including the new Malia and Sasha figures, led to her being in favour of the toys.
"As you might know, 'like me' has a solid history as a catchphrase for describing the dilemmas faced by parents of non-white children in the United States," she wrote. One of its most well-known uses, she suggests, is a Bill Cosby 1960s public service announcement called "A Boy Like Me" that described the negative ways black children are affected by "living in a world in which cultural objects of affection - dolls, stars, book characters, for instance - are all white."
The idea of highlighting black role models is a positive development, David Dunne, a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, said yesterday. But he pointed out the new dolls likely have more to do with the positive associations that go with the Obama family in particular rather than with African-Americans in general. The Ty Girlz line, for instance, continues to feature predominantly white faces.
"It may be a step forward, but not a huge step," he says.
