Page 170 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Ethnically Correct Dolls . 155

but Mattel rejected these suggestions in the interest of keeping costs
down, since modifying molds is extremely cost intensive. Shani dolls
come in three shades of skin: light, medium, and dark.
Ironically, in launching the Shani line, Mattel made racial difference
concrete in a way it had not before: while all of its previous black dolls
were part of the Barbie line (even Nigerian and Jamaican Barbie), the
Shani dolls are not technically Barbies. Mattel has designed, produced,
and marketed these ethnically correct dolls as a separate line, in effect
creating a market segregation between Shani and Barbie dolls, formaliz-
ing through commodification the dividing line between black and white.
To emphasize the difference between the Barbie and Shani lines, the
Shani boxes announce "From the makers of BARBIE!" This statement
seems to suggest at least a sort of corporate kinship between the dolls
but subtly underlines their basic difference as well, driving the point
home that Shani is not Barbie. The packaging is not the trademark Bar-
bie pink, but red. Barbie dolls and accessories in their packages lined up
on store shelves form what is called "the wall of pink" that can be rec-
ognized from long distances inside even the cavernous spaces of Toys-R-
Us. Shani dolls, however, do not make up the wall of pink, though they
may stand beside it.
The limitations of the market in reproducing ethnic or racial variety
have been much commented upon, especially in critical analyses of the
Shani dolls (DuCille 1996; Lord 1994). Even Cabbage Patch Kids, whose
market appeal derives largely from the much-touted uniqueness of each
doll, produce that uniqueness by the random combination of a set group
of prefabricated elements. Underlying the millions of "unique" doll faces
are a limited number of basic face molds to which are applied a limited
number of additional elements including skin tones, freckles, eye colors,
and hairstyles.
Compared to Cabbage Patch Kids, the Shani dolls cover a much
more limited ethnic diversity. With their three different skin tones Shani
dolls are meant to signify different kinds of blackness. The progressive
notion that black does not look just one way is not as progressive as it
might appear when one looks closely at the Shani dolls, whose facial
features seem to get more stereotypically black the darker the doll's skin
color: Asha, the light-skinned doll, has the smallest nose and thinnest
lips; meanwhile Nichelle, the darkest doll, has lips that are much wider
than the outlines of her stamped-on pink lipstick, and her nose is the
largest and widest of the Shani dolls. Light as Asha is, she is not so light
that there is any danger that she might be able to "pass" as white. Mattel's