I am so excited about a new toy that will soon be hitting the markets. Two engineering graduates from the University of Illinois have created a new doll for young girls (and boys!) that is not your average perfectly proportioned Barbie.
Dubbed “Miss Possible,” the dolls are modeled after famous women who made significant discoveries and advances in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math like Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace.
The dolls also come with information about whom they represent and an interactive game app that teaches those who play with the dolls exactly what these women accomplished in life and how any girl can also aspire to succeed in a male-dominated field.
In today’s society, gender roles are strongly enforced is during childhood. Girls are constantly given cooking sets to start a life in the kitchen making food and cleaning up after the men of the world. We are given dolls to model the behavior of a good mother.
Of course, this may all be completely good-hearted and unintentional, but the gendered constructs of our society still encourage little girls to pick a pink makeup kit over a blue chemistry set because that is what a little girl thinks she is ‘supposed’ to play with.
These toys, like it or not, actually make a difference later in life regarding what a girl might choose to do for the rest of her life. She’s either never been encouraged to excel in math and science, or she has attempted to show interest but was steered ultimately back to her Barbie dolls.
Interactive, technological, and fun, the “Miss Possible” dolls send an empowering message to young girls to help them to get involved in fields that most toys geared towards female children seem to ignore.
As a college student, I’m excited to see how these dolls will encourage more girls to grow up knowing they are capable of doing whatever the boys are doing, knowing they can play whatever game the boys can play — and win.
