There has been much ballyhooing in the mommysphere about the new Dora all grown up. Based on just a shadow many fretted and worried that her pre-teen shadow was just too sexy. The wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth has gone on as parents stressed that letting a cartoon character and toy grow up a little just might be a slippery slope for our children into sex, drugs and teen pregnancy. Of course we as parents should be paying attention to what influences our children but could we have gone a little overboard on this? Then Mattel and Nickelodeon bowed to the uproar and released the image of the tween-age Dora.
Is she sexed up? Is she really trampy?
Perhaps it is because I am the mother of teenaged and tweenaged girls but all I see is a cute cartoon rendering. I see nothing sexy nor am I worried that Dora growing up a little bit is really going to lead to the downfall of my tweenaged daughter. After all, I am a bigger influence in her life than Dora the Explorer is or was back in the day ten years ago when Jodie was one of her biggest fans.
Like Jodie said when she checked out the older Dora, “Well you know we can’t be preschoolers forever, Mom!”
:::sigh::: out of the mouths of babes…
Your kids are all so expressive. They’re all natural performers.
I completely agree with you Laura! I was dumbfounded when I was listening to the callers on the radio yesterday morning complaining about the grown up Dora. If you ask me, it really is brilliant marketing on Mattel’s part. To take a preschooler through the tweenage years with a single character will do nothing but boost their sales.
I understand that parents want Dora to remain the explorer (or Dora the Destroyer as I would frequently refer to her as just to piss Caitlyn off), but eventually she has to grow up. and so will their children. These parents who are belly aching about this need to understand that their kids will stop watching Dora when they can no longer relate to her and find the expeditions she goes on to be mundane. They will seek out characters like Hannah Montana and iCarly because those characters are age appropriate for them.
Instead of worrying that Dora looks too trashy or trampy which will result in their daughters engaging in less than stellar behavior, let’s not rely on a cartoon character to teach our daughters proper moral behaviors. Regardless of what Dora is wearing, it boils down to parenting and the things that you instill upon your children.
And if you ask me, that Dora character looks more like my daughter than the younger one. She is all about wearing stretch legging pants with baby doll tops and flats. (I must add, she looks quite cute when she wears them too.) At almost 8 years old, I can no longer dress her in the cute little smocked dresses that I would like to, she will vehemently oppose those. Like Dora, she is growing up and I have to accept that.