Young female with a doll dressed up on a chair

Girls and Dolls

#LiberateDolls

Girls love dolls. That’s just a fact. OK, not all girls love dolls. But the preponderance of the evidence suggests that the ties that bond young females and inanimate dolls, is undeniable.

This photo, dating back more than 100 years, is a well-known image, a striking moment of photography, with a most captivating look from the eyes of the young girl, all dolled up in her outfit, complete with perfect dress and hair style, and placed sitting in the rocking chair beside her, is her baby doll.

Now, you might get creeped out a tiny little bit by the long, silent stare that stretches across so much time from the past and right up to the present, but in its day, this image was likely seen as a very happy image. One that represented all of the joys of being a young girl in a free society, replete with industrial design and manufacturing power, driven forward by laborers, capitalists and underpaid artists who plied their craft one way or another.

Be sure to checkout the video on this page, it’s a nice quick documentary film about the history of the Barbie Doll, which was first introduced to the market of mothers and daughters at an American toy convention in 1959.