I'm Going to Talk about Dolls

I know this is a weird post coming from a 20-something male, but I think this subject deserves to be broached. Who better to than a guy in his 20's?

Probably anyone born with lady parts in the last fifty or so years, but who cares? I'm writing this and they aren't. Na na na na boo boo, stick you head in doo doo (or don't, I'd imagine that would be unpleasant... you know, because of the smell [also the consistency]). Is that correct usage of the brackets? As parentheses inside of parentheses?

Well, good thing I started this post off with a bang...

Anyhizzards, the other day, I walked onto my porch after work and immediately flopped down onto the couch. My work, though not terribly difficult (nor is it demanding at all),  tends to, for some reason that is a mystery to me, completely wipe me out. So, I sink deeply into the couch only to find, to my rather pronounced dismay, that the remote control has been placed out of my reach, by at least five inches.


I am a modern Tantalus.

In complete refusal to move my body any amount of inches to retrieve the remote, I looked at the TV which was tuned to Nickelodeon. Nick (as we cool kids call it) used to be a bastion of quality children's programming. They were shows with characters that children could relate to and incorporated humor at which even the parents could snicker in amusement. 


Pictured: Everything great about my childhood.

Now, Nick is home to some of the most banal, uninspired rot that television has to offer*, at least in terms of non-reality shows (shows like Jersey Shore and Teen Mom are in their own special circle of TV hell). I'll admit, I have sat through my fair share of  recent Nick shows (iCarly on more than one occasion has induced a chuckle), but, for the most part, what passes for humor on these shows is an insult to children and adults alike.

Pictured: One reason why the youth are terrible.

But I have seriously digressed, especially since there was no show on.

There was however a commercial for Bratz, a line of dolls who dress inappropriately and have disproportionately large heads and feet for some reason. Also, they have a serious case of fish lips, like the fish that plays the sax in The Little Mermaid. They are hideous and if they were to ever come to life it would be one of the top 6 scariest things I could think of to happen.

They look like aliens from the planet "We Give It Away for Free."

The commercial, though, is what really got to me (besides the body image issues that these dolls probably engender). It wasn't the visual content either, that was just a young girl playing with her doll, standard fare. It was the background music.

This woman was... singing? I mean, she was saying words kind of sing-songy. She was "singing" things like "Fashion!" "Style!" "Girl!" and other random girl-child-centric words. The words made sense in the context of the commercial... kind of, but if you took them out of that context, they would make no sense. Alone, it sounds like the disjointed ramblings of an aging woman strung-the-hell-out on acid lamenting the fact that she didn't make it as a fashion designer. Subliminal messages.

Donatella Versace looks like a Bratz doll.
Coincidence?

Sadly, I can't find that specific commercial, but here is another commercial that does basically the same thing. It's an average commercial of little girls playing with dolls, but the background music is priceless. Though, admittedly, the lyrics are dead on.

I just don't understand where jingles went wrong. Remember this, this, this, and this? All of those songs are quality. Well, maybe not quality, but, lyrics-wise, definitely better than, "Out of bed princess!" and "Quick! Wake up your roommate!"

So, this pretty much turned into a rant about how much better things were when I was a kid. Maybe they were, or maybe I was just so happy about everything back then that all of my rememberances have that dreamy haze quality. I guess we'll never know (the world will never know?).

*Except for Avatar: the Last Airbender. Have you seen that show? It is amazing! ... The Legend of Korra is pretty good too.