Doll-A-Day 2023 #149: Naturalistas

   Today's doll is three, and, in fact, more. But we're only looking at three of them. They're Naturalistas.

 Naturalistas is a line of dolls celebrating 'natural hair. In other words, natural hair of people of colour. Unstraightened hair.

  There are five dolls in the line, but I only saw three of them at Target. All of the dolls have a back story.  This is Paige. I'm guessing she's sort of the leader.

The actual doll's hair doesn't look like the picture. The curls are much bigger, but the hair style isn't.

  While Paige is a chemist and has developed products for natural hair, Liya was an engineering student until becoming a natural hair model.

Now that hair lives up to the box photo.

Kelsey is a fashion designer.

  I thought the dolls were pretty. I think Kelsey is my favourite. They aren't very articulated, just the standard five points. but then that might help account for their good price. They were only $12.99

  There were clothes for the dolls too.

  It seems ridiculous that anybody would think they have the right to tell anybody else how they should wear their hair. It seems even more ridiculous that some schools and other institutions have rules saying that people of colour can't wear their hair as it grows. I would be in trouble if I were African American, because I can't do anything with hair. I wear my hair as it grows out of my head. I have been known to braid it for some shape, and when I was young I got perms because my hair was always so limp and straight. How crazy would it seem for someone like me to be told that they aren't allowed to change their straight hair to wavy or curly?! But that's basically what's happening with 'natural hair'.

  When my kids were in school there was a rule that nobody could dye their hair an 'unnatural' hair colour. The reasoning given was that strange hair colours would be 'distracting' to the other kids. My reaction to that was always that if a kid was distracted enough by someone's hair colour, they had more problems that that.  And how were they ever going to function in the real world? There's always something distracting in the world, and you have no control over it. And how did anybody have the right to tell anybody else what colour hair they could have? AND my kids, like me, had bright orange hair, naturally. Were they expected to dye their hair a less distracting colour so that it didn't bother anyone?

  The Naturalista dolls were available at Target, but I haven't seen them there for a month or so. Some of them, and a couple of the fashions are still available at Target.com. You can find them HERE.  The dolls are down to $9.99, and the fashion packs are $9.49, except for Coffee Casual, which is only $8.99. There is also a styling head.

  Those are the dolls for today. You would have seen these ages ago, back when Target still had them. But as you might recall, I lost my phone, and that's where the pictures were.

  Anyway, see you tomorrow.