Would you buy your daughter a pole-dancing doll?
Gizmodo has an item about a new doll. Does it burp? Does it breastfeed? Nope. It dances. On a pole.
If anyone was wondering if the world was doomed, here is your confirmation.
The scoop on this new plaything came from Gizmodo's Jesus Diaz, and features a somewhat grainy photo of a doll in a shiny dress hanging on a pole. A giant heart emblazoned with the word "Pole Dance" is at the top. The box promises "Style." "Interesting." "Music." "Flash." "Up and Down." "Go Round and Round." It might've said "Ewww," "Gross," "Criminal"," but in all likelihood the upstanding manufacturers ran out of room.
No mention is made of inserting money anywhere.
In an email message, Diaz told us today: "As far as I can tell, it's a real product. It didn't seem PhotoShopped to me. It feels more like the typical Chinese-made product you can only find in low cost stores."
We were unable to confirm the actual existence of this product. Google searches turn up nothing more than references to the Gizmodo item. So perhaps there is some hope for the planet.
Then again, maybe not.
In case you haven't noticed, pole-dancing has become mainstream. Miley Cyrus' recent performance on the Teen Choice Awards on August 10th generated a lot of controversy.
Going back three years, there was an uproar over a real pole-dancing product that some felt was being marketed as a children's toy. In 2006, the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit was pulled from the toy section of a British store after a public outcry. The kit included fake money, a garter, instructional DVD and of course, a pole.
Even if the Pole Dance doll turns out to be fake, the real problem is how easy it is to believe that it's real. So when anyone says that the pole that Miley Cyrus danced around was not a stripper pole, they're wrong.
It was.
Let's face it, stripping has become mainstream. Does this mean that little girls who catch a glimpse of Cyrus will grow up and pursue pole-dancing as a profession? Hopefully not. If kids always became what they pretended to be when they were young, we'd be a nation of astronauts, fairy princesses and super heroes.
That said, sexualizing childhood is bad news from the get go. Little girls should not be learning that doing a sexy dance is a way to entertain?
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