Page 177 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

162 . Ethnically Correct Dolls

Joey and Clarice on their stoop.

silky hair is done up in braids, each held at the end with a small plastic
barrette. Like the doll, Clarice has her hair in braids and, like the doll,
the end of each braid is secured with a small plastic barrette.
The first thing one might notice about Clarice and her doll is that
Clarice is black and her doll is white. But Clarice and her doll are also
wearing their hair in almost identical ways. Several other Newhallville
girls had dolls that, while white or white-like (One brown-skinned doll
had platinum blond hair.) had distinctly un-white hairdos. What hap-
pens when you put a "black" hairstyle on a "white" head? When white
baby dolls with cascades of long blonde hair have got that hair heavy
with beads and foil, or tucked up into a braid-upon-braid 'do, what has
happened to the boundary between white and black?
One obvious development is a sort of appropriation: the image that
jumps to mind is Bo Derek in the movie 10, jogging along a Caribbean
beach in slow motion, her hair braided and beaded, a vapid smile on her
face, her sleek Barbie-doll body the main plot element in the film. Derek's
hairstyle sparked a sort of beachside cottage industry in the Caribbean,
where (native) women and children scour vacation spots persistently try-