"Lil Monkey"

“Lil Monkey”
The “Cuddle with Me” baby doll is an collection of dolls which capture the different ethnicities belonging to that of the very diverse America. The “Cuddle with Me” baby doll is a soft baby doll with a furry cuddling animal friend. This doll comes in three different versions to one’s preferences in ethnicity, like that of the Hispanic, African American, and Caucasians baby dolls. The doll wears an adorable matching outfit with a hat and footies, along with other accessories for both the doll itself and the animal friend. This 12 piece set accessories is set to provide our “little girls” with the opportunity to have lots of fun for nurture play.
The “Cuddle with Me” baby doll is primarily sold at your local Costco merchandising stores for $24.99, but was manufactured by BrassKey Keepsakes. Costco is known for selling goods in big bulk for a reasonable price and has a wide variety of daily customers, however everyone isn’t happy with Costco’s’ choice of products. The big issue here is the real difference in the “Cuddle with me dolls” based off ethnicity. Costco release the African American “Cuddle with Me” doll, and I must say the African American population wasn’t too happy with the stereotypical image that was splash in their faces again. This doll came with a monkey as it’s cuddling friend and a cap that quoted “lil monkey”, which in our American history during slavery and racism showed that blacks were portrayed has being related to monkeys. Monkeys are beautiful animals and I don’t mine that its being represented as a friendly animal, but the fact that the Caucasian doll was sold with a panda bear and with a hat that quoted pretty doll there has to be and underlying racist issue.
Many people have spread the word about Costco’s headline big mistake and some people are so upset with the “Lil monkey” doll that some people claimed that they’ll never shop at this well known retail store again. In regards to cleaning up this mistake Costco immediately took this doll off the shelves for consumption and has made it clear that all three ethnicity dolls will come with the same clothing, slogans, and animals to prevent their name of being associated with racism. “You think”. Furthermore high ranking representatives of Costco and the manufacturer BrassKey Keepsakes made public sincere apologies to those who were offended by this doll. President of Costco question that of Mary Gustaff, the CEO of BrassKey Keepsakes on her view regarding the doll about being offensive and she simply stated that her organization don’t work in terms of being racist and its sad that this issues is considered to be purposely set up.
I thought that people might be interested in that not only goods are sought out to persuade certain genders but ethnic groups as well. Even though the world has tried to act like racism doesn’t exist in our world today products such as the “Lil monkey” cuddle with me doll shows that we just fail to realize it as a society. Representation of different ethnic groups when it comes to consumerism still portrays the “white society” as the preference or this model of what’s considered beautiful and or what’s admired. Where taught through advertisements of fashion that you must be fit, pale-skin, straight hair to be beautiful and this effects many young children when they look upon themselves who may or may not belong to the “white population”. I applaud those organizations who push for diversity when it comes to their target audience. Gender and the Postmodern conversation of beauty is learn and as long as we aren’t truly open to diversity and can’t treat each other equally we cant expect young children to do the same, after all practice what you preach.
For Image: http://www.snopes.com/racial/business/cuddlewithme.asp