#and the second most well designed doll could easily have her skin colour swapped

[oak23]

hey, I'm legit interested in hearing you talk about the Mattel racial biases thing. I have a hard time understanding stuff like that sometimes so hearing your perspective would be good!

Okay, I'm kind of hesitant to write this cuz Im just a cis man of colour and not a woman of colour, especially one who experienced colourism but hey I'll give my thoughts.

Anyway, divorced from each other the designs are alright, but together they paint a picture of racial biases in design.

So the blonde, white mermaid probably has the most detail pored into her design. Like individually drawn pearls and scales and accessories. Plus she has a specific hairstyle happening. Along with her pearl themed colour palette, it's the most subtle and least garish in design. That, coupled with her being thin, and the lightest skinned of the group, it's hard to ignore that the designer put the most effort into designing her.

This doll has darker skin, but she has literally nothing else in her design that indicates she's been designed as a person of colour. She has blue eyes, her features are almost identical to the blonde mermaid AND her hair is almost bone straight. A lot of people have already written why swapping skin tones doesn't make for a more diverse cast, but yeah, little to no thought to challenging Euro centric beauty standards.

The fact that this design is only wearing a harness and some armor pieces doesn't go well with the stereotype of darker skinned men being overly sexualised, especially considering how desexualised Ken is when he's a white design. Like I am all about sexy men, but considering the lack of racial representation in Ken collector dolls, and one of the first darker skin Ken designs (that isn't a palette swap of white Ken) isn't even wearing a shirt like the other mermaids is iffy as hell.

Plus the fact he has blue eyes and straight hair again ties in with Euro centric beauty standards.

And yet again, Mattel only makes a curvy collector doll when it's a woman of colour. The fact that they decided to put her in the most garish colour scheme, with the least amount of accessories, jewellery or hair styling feels incredibly lazy especially compared with the blonde doll. It feels incredibly /othering/ to have your dark skin, curvy design to have a hot pink outfit that covers the most skin, and the least amount of thought go into the actual design. Slapping starfish on a dress doesn't equate to the amount of careful pearl decoration, scales and shells that's put into the blonde one.

Anyway, all together, the designs just show a person who's idea of "diversity" is two thin, straight haired girls with blue eyes, a dark skinned shirtless man with blue eyes wearing a harness, and a curvy woman of colour wearing a clown dress from the plus size section with like, no head wear much arm decoration