Creative tools help to sensitise issues
The iconic doll Barbie will soon shed her long tresses and be bald for a noble cause. A campaign titled ‘Beautiful and Bald Barbie,’ is already creating buzz on social networking sites to urge the toy company to produce bald Barbie as an inspiration for children fighting cancer or suffering from hair loss conditions.
Can a bald Barbie help generate awareness among young children and help them to be sensitive about their friends undergoing chemotherapy? Should there be more such tools of learning for children to sensitise them about such issues?
The administrators of this group on Facebook feel that sick children also need a positive role model and a Barbie could help make that happen so they want to bring it to the attention of toy company. The introductory post on this site says, “We would like to see a ‘Beautiful and Bald Barbie’ made to help young girls who suffer from hair loss due to cancer treatments, Alopecia or Trichotillomania. Also, for young girls who are having trouble coping with their mother’s hair loss from chemotherapy.”
Beckie, who started this group on Facebook with Jane Bingham, reveals that there was a bald Barbie made for one little girl in New York some time ago. Beckie says, “Our idea is to produce it in a bigger mass for other little girls. Jane was inspired because dealing with cancer and hair loss was a difficult thing. I have a daughter dealing with cancer and have seen how hard the hair loss was for other girls dealing with it. We are not sure how Mattel will end up handling this but we would love to see it made worldwide. The response has been amazingly very positive. I think people are ready to see it.”
The production of ‘hope doll’ can help a lot of children going through crisis, feels Nupur Malhotra, a kindergarten teacher. She says, “It is a very humane approach to teach children about chemotherapy and sensitise them about people who suffer from cancer. There can be other ways to promote similar causes by distributing tee shirts and caps with simple inspiring messages for young kids. Using advertising as a medium, one can make children aware about prevention of cutting trees, keeping the environment clean, being kind to animals and physically challenged people.”
Richa Jain, the mother of a one-year-old girl, says, “Like this there can be other tools to teach kids about various day-to-day issues. There can be bald superhero dolls for young boys. Also the toy companies can create videogames and word games where children can be taught about diseases like measles, polio and other general disorders.”
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