Justin Bieber and the Internet Are RUINING DOLLS

Terrible news in the land of dolls: thanks to all the Lady Gaga videos and Miley Cyrus message boards, today’s little girls are abandoning their tiny best friends at earlier and earlier ages. The doll industry’s answer to this turn of events, however, is “make bigger dolls.” Why? According to a Toys ‘R’ Us exec,

Our research showed us that girls see large-sized dolls as someone they can relate to and identify with, to go shopping with and live out adventures with.

“Someone” they can relate to! (“She just gets me, you know?” Also, additional ugh on the idea of little girls imagining going shopping — “and now I walk through the store, and now I take out my card, and now I wait for the receipt.”)

So now all the dolls are giant, which, although I’ll give the doll scientists the benefit of the doubt (and a job application), actually sounds not so great. And I say this as someone who was herself once fascinated by giant dolls — so much so that I asked for and received a mannequin one Christmas. She was completely white and had no face or hair, and I broke her right away, but we fixed her and I named her Suzanne. But it turned out Suzanne was actually a huge pain to “play” with, because dressing her involved shimmying everything over the pole up her butt, and she was weird-looking because I drew her face too quickly, and then her leg fell off, and then something happened with her balance and she spent her twilight years lying on the floor on her face. In the dining room because she was too frightening to sleep near. Anyway, so if any doll scientists are reading this and considering making featureless, alarmingly fragile adult-sized dolls for children, I would say go for it!

Polly Pocket remains very small.