Consumer change written on faces of multicultural dolls

By pulling two non-white dolls from its lineup earlier this year, American Girl unwittingly sparked a social media firestorm centered on changing consumer expectations in a country rapidly becoming more racially and ethnically diverse.

In May, the company announced on Facebook that it was retiring four secondary characters in its historical line, including a black doll and its only Asian doll, prompting many to blast the company.

This was a "huge step in the wrong direction," wrote commenter Katelin Dausch on American Girl's Facebook post. Another commenter, Chrystina Lunn-Gilgeous, wrote, " I want more diversity, not less. So disappointed with you."

The country's makeup is more diverse now than in any other generation. USA TODAY's Diversity Index, an indicator of the likelihood the next person you meet will be of a different race or ethnicity, stands now at 55. It's set to increase to 71 by 2060 -- meaning in the next generation, there is more than a 7 in 10 chance that someone you encounter is of a different race or ethnic group than you.

Consumers are beginning to demand more variety and inclusion in everything they purchase, including the toys their children play with.

"Parents want to bring home dolls that look like their children," said Stephanie Oppenheim, founder of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, which reviews toys.

Financial incentives are also driving the greater diversity on toy shelves. Retailers see that future growth lies in minority spending, said Cesar Megoza, CEO of marketing firm Geoscape.

Geoscape estimates multicultural spending power was $1.2 trillion in 2012. Non-white spending is expected to eclipse white spending power around 2040, according to Geoscape -- around the same year Census projections say minorities will become the majority in the United States.

Non-whites are the "new mainstream," Megoza said.

For American Girl, the decision to archive the four dolls was to streamline the historical line by getting rid of friends of main characters, said Julie Parks,spokeswoman for American Girl.

The company says it has not turned its back on diversity. In fact, its most popular, best-selling dolls are the "My American Girl" line that allows children to customize what their dolls look like, Parks said.

But the customized dolls don't come with a story like the historical dolls. Two Asian-American sisters started a petitionto the company after its decision. In the petition, they said, "If you don't have the doll, you don't have the story."

Children and race

Children can distinguish race as early as three years old, according to child development experts.

"When you hand a child a doll and it's either black or white, that child totally notices the color of the doll," said Rebecca Bigler, psychology professor at University of Texas at Austin.

In the 1940s and '50s, husband and wife psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark conducted a series of studies asking black children ages three to seven if they preferred a black baby doll or a white baby doll.

Two-thirds of the children preferred the white doll and attributed positive characteristics with that doll.

Repeats of the so-called Clark doll test, in various incarnations throughout the decades, have found similar results.

As recently as 2010 -- six decades about the Clarks' original study -- CNN's Anderson Cooper worked with psychologists to ask children what of five different-colored cartoon pictures they preferred. White children had a high rate of white bias, and black children generally had bias toward whiteness too, the study found.

"We are still living in a society where dark things are devalued and white things are valued," University of Chicago psychology professor Margaret Beale Spencer, who helped with the study, told CNN.

Could multicultural dolls make a difference in how children perceive their own race and others?

That research hasn't been done. Dolls alone won't change children's self-esteem and self-perception, Bigler said.

"When black families give multiracial dolls to children, it's usually they're doing lots of other things too like raising their children in an Afro-centric environment with lots of pro-black messages," Bigler said. "You can't really say it's the doll that did it."

But long-time Barbie designer Stacey McBride-Irby believes dolls do help make a difference.

"Imagery is so important in building the self-esteem of our girls," she said. "They see everything out there of who they should look like. Dolls are the first thing little girls gravitate toward when they're growing up."

The doll industry doesn't operate in a vacuum, and TV, movies and other media messages have to change first before multiculturalism fully reaches the doll industry, said Angie Chuang, associate professor of communications at American University who researches race issues.

"There are so many messages that children are given about what beauty is and what 'normal' is ... But as the population changes, norms change," she said.

Controversy over diverse dolls

The release of non-white dolls carries the risk of tokenism and a reinforcement of one-dimensional stereotypes.

Last year, Mattel released a line called 'Dolls of the World' featuring Barbies dressed in traditional outfits from different countries. Each doll carried a passport and an animal from their home country. Mexican Barbie, for example, wore a ruffled dress and had a chihuahua.

"It's not necessarily a doll that is reflective of a U.S. Latina," said Felix Sanchez, co-founder of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts.

Earlier efforts to make more diverse dolls have also met criticism. The first black Barbie, released in 1980, had brown skin but the same face mold as white Barbie.

"It was white Barbie painted a little browner," Chuang said.

But recent years have seen a shift toward greater diversity and more authentic representations of race.

In 2009, Mattel launched the "So In Style" line of four African-American dolls with fuller lips, wider noses and varying skin colors, created by McBride-Irby.

Smaller companies such as One World Doll Project, started by Mcbride-Irby after she left Mattel, and Hearts for Hearts Girls are devoted to multicultural dolls.

"I do it because I am an African-American woman," Mcbride-Irby said. "I wanted to focus on dolls that are not represented on the doll shelves."

Beyond labels

The trend in the doll aisles could be toward greater focus on customization, as American Girl has done with its "My American Girl" line.

Barbie is introducing a new line of dolls next year that will have 10 different face sculpts, nine different skin tones and 11 different eye colors, said Lori Pantel, Barbie spokeswoman.

"We didn't check the box to say, white, black, Asian. We looked at a lot of imagery out there that inspired our multi-ethnic design team," Pantel said. Mattel is the parent company of Barbie and American Girl.

French doll-maker Corolle, also owned by Mattel, created a doll it calls "multi-ethnic" with light brown skin and dark eyes. The doll was purposefully left ethnically ambiguous in its labeling, said Corolle general manager Mathilde Dezalys.

"It was an answer to multi-ethnic families with a father who is maybe black African and mom who is white Caucasian," she said.

As families become more multi-racial, moving beyond the few categories offered on Census surveys, dolls also will have to go beyond easily characterized labels, Chuang said.

"You'll have three races, four races or people who say, I don't know how many races I reflect," she said. "The very definition of race isn't going to be five boxes anymore."

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