{"id":11518,"date":"2026-04-28T12:10:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=11518"},"modified":"2026-04-28T12:10:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:10:27","slug":"living-doll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=11518","title":{"rendered":"Living doll"},"content":{"rendered":"
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German antique doll\/creative commons<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When my daughter was given a Barbie doll by a well meaning but possibly misguided great aunt, she decided to give it a punk haircut. She didn\u2019t like or play with dolls anyway, so I quietly applauded her creative and decidedly feminist approach.  Now I am well aware that there are many children who do have dolls and enjoy playing with them, and I assume that the majority of them are little girls.  I\u2019m afraid I don\u2019t have the stats to either back this up or refute it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there seems to be an insidious move afoot to turn little girls into dolls. This is not the intro to a horror movie such as Chucky<\/em> or Devil Doll; <\/em>in my view it is worse.  It concerns the ever-increasing focus on skin care products and routines for children, and you won\u2019t be at all surprised to know that the focus is on girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does social media apparently.  The internet is awash with promotional material for skin care for tots, and I mean tots. Girls as young as two are featuring in videos encouraging the use of specific products to ensure their face is \u2018glowing\u2019.  I could have sworn that little children\u2019s faces glow naturally.  This has been insidiously creeping down the age spectrum; I was aware that facial products were being targeted to young teens, but that is so last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The implications of this are obvious, but let\u2019s spell them out anyway. As if it was not enough to body- shame women and young girls, let\u2019s face-shame them too.  It is also as clear as mud (not the face pack type and as far as I know not yet being marketed to nursery age kids), that there are only a few steps from being told that your face is not quite gorgeous enough to considering cosmetic treatments or surgery to improve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Aristotle who said: \u2018Give me a child till he\u2019s seven, and I will show you the man\u2019.  What happens when we give a little girl to influencers? What sort of women are we creating? Children are hugely impressionable, and it does nothing for gender equality if we are telling little girls that they need to look \u2018better\u2019 than they naturally are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we dames clearly need to consider how best to counter this latest attack on female self-confidence. One obvious answer is regulation, but those tech bros are masters in getting round that.  Nevertheless, the point has been made that there are very specific regulations around child actors on stage and screen, while the social media space does not have these guardrails.  Once again, legislation will have to play catch up in an environment that is constantly changing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want strong-minded, confident women we have to create the environment for girls to feel good about themselves, rather than seeing themselves as flawed unless they are plastered in product.  I hope Tiktok is listening, but have my doubts. Cliff Richard released the hit song ‘Living Doll’ in 1959. Unfortunately reality is stronger than fiction in this case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What happens when we give a little girl to influencers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,593,63,205,309,59],"tags":[76,624,93,97,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11538,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions\/11538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}