The Stranger

What is it that makes Bratz, as a cultural phenomenon, great? For one, they conquered the long and seemingly invincible Barbie dynasty. This marked the end of the American ideal as one type of beauty, color, class, size, education, worldview, lips, eyes, hair. Bratz brought into the toy world that Barbie once dominated the possibilities and beauty of diversity. The live-action movie is a celebration of what generates the cultural power of Bratz: imperfection. The Bratz are the new order, the coming future that will confront the approaching past: a rich, blond, white girl named Meredith. The movie basically pits the four girls and their differences against Meredith’s dictatorship of perfection. No one can be, and should not try to be, pure. Impurity, mixture, diversity, miscegenation—these are no longer setbacks but simply a fact of 21st-century American life. My daughter and her friend—both are racially mixed—absolutely loved the movie. By Charles Mudede