A New Meaning to Horse Hair

What do you get when you cross a Bratz doll with a horse?

A Struts doll, I guess.

It's ads and products like this that make me wonder if the end times aren't near after all.

Check out the platform shoes and handbags -- handbags, for Freia's sake, these mares are sporting handbags. (Of course, they're wearing clothes, as well, decked out in lace.) Earrings and ankle bracelets, too.


This is the point where I get all emotional about the hyper-feminization inherent in these designs, and point out the thinness and length of the horses' legs. A girl can't even be interested in horses without being reminded of what her body's supposed to look like. These "oh-so-glam new models" have even got the "bashful knee bend" made famous by Erving Goffman in his classic book, Gender Advertisements.

Almost too depressing to contemplate: The company that makes these probably "tested" them on kids and found that they would sell. Hence, the full-page, back-cover ad buy in Nickelodeon magazine.

I was pinning my hopes on the fact that the product is made by a company I've never heard of: "Playmates" (I wonder if they drew their inspiration from the original definition or the Playboy version?). I thought that might mean they'd go out of business fast if the product doesn't sell.

But, unfortunately, a quick search told me that Playmates is a 42-year-old, Hong Kong-based company. They were responsible for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle dolls of the 1980s, which I believe was one of the earliest examples of preemptive toy-cartoon integration (where the toy existed before or at the same time as the show, contrasted with earlier examples where the show came first, then inspired the toy).

We used to be outraged about that, if I remember correctly. But now it's just business as usual. And you don't even need to make a television show any more, anyway. All you need is a web site.