My Little Pony
Nov. 2nd, 2011 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamThe My Little Pony teapot cafe is a rococo concoction. No curve is left unswirled; no swirl is unembellished; no embellishment untopped.
I can’t find a photo of it online - there’s a newer Hasbro product along the same lines which comes up instead, so I shall attempt a word picture. It is a teapot shaped cafe, which opens along a central hinge. The teapot is pink with a white cream roof topped with green sprinkles, and purple and pink faux spoons which rotate the central turnpike. The handle is rounded and curved, it has hearts down the side and ends in swirls.
One side of the teapot is decorated with two blue windows, topped with arches and featuring flowers in bas relief. Inside the windows are stickers of ponies looking out at the viewer. The centre of the teapot is taken up with a green, bowed door, decorated with white flowers, a pink teapot and a heart-topped cupcake in bas relief. It features a pink sign which reads OPEN and which is, naturally, decorated with a flower.
The base of the teapot shows flowers and butterflies set against the pink background. The whole thing sits on a purple, irregularly and gently indented base.
I’ll skip over the other side and go on the shop interior which features, from top to bottom, the following:
stickers of flowers;
bas relief of ionic columns;
bas relief of lattice work;
decorative indentations;
a curlicued spiral staircase in bas relief;
a sticker window within an embossed window frame,
shelves in pink with white trim;
more stickers of teapots and cups;
a pink, curved bench;
more pink and white shelves with bas reliefs of cupcakes, a birthday cake and tea cups;
a white teapot and pink teacup;
a poster of pictures of cakes and pies on a fake window;
a yellow, round bench with a barley twist column standing on a purple turntable decorated with spirals.
I may have missed some details.
My first response to the Teapot House was to despise it as a plastic, pink pile of commercial sexism, but I have reconsidered this position.
It is plastic. But it is surprisingly well designed and well made plastic. Pearl inherited virtually all her My Little Ponies from op-shops and yet the ponies and their playhouses are all in quite good condition. I think they moved to the new pony designs in 2009 (is that right?) so they’ve lasted quite well.
It is certainly pink. Very pink. And swirly. With hearts and cupcakes and sugar on the top.
But, actually, why should I dislike this? What I am really saying is that it is rococo, that it is exaggeratedly, stereotypically feminine in its design, and what is wrong with this?
I now offer two possible readings.
Reading One - I think that ubiquity is the problem. It’s fine that the My Little Pony teapot house is an extravaganza of pink frilliness. It’s even OK that the whole of Ponyville (nay, the whole of Equestria) has the same aesthetic. What’s not fine is that every other girl’s toy in the market has the same aesthetic.
So - plastic, surprisingly not so bad.
Pink - can be read as an undervalued style generally associated with femininity... so in fact My Little Ponies is being feminist in revaluing a typically marginalised style.
Commercial - there lies the problem. I can make the devalued pink argument about My Little Ponies only if I read them in isolation. If I look at them in the context of pretty much every other little girls’ toy, then they aren’t edgy. They are just part of the tsunami of pink that drowns little girls.
Reading Two - This reminds me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s *History of Women’s Suffrage*. Yep, I’m I can’t be the first person to make this connection.
Her book made the classic yet confused argument:
Women can do anything men do.
At the same time women do different things to men and these should be counted as just as important.
The second part of this argument - that women have a different aesthetic and interests and experiences as a group - is sometimes used by feminist art historians to develop an alternative canon which includes traditionally marginalised areas like fibre arts, small scale art, ceramics.
In terms of My Little Pony, it could mean that you could argue that the designers are not resorting to a cliched range of stereotypically feminine design elements. They are re-claiming these elements as a valid, alternative aesthetic which is too often marginalised just because it is girly. Despising these objects because they are pink would be the equivalent of using the term ‘girly’ as a pejorative.
I am torn between these two interpretations.
I can’t find a photo of it online - there’s a newer Hasbro product along the same lines which comes up instead, so I shall attempt a word picture. It is a teapot shaped cafe, which opens along a central hinge. The teapot is pink with a white cream roof topped with green sprinkles, and purple and pink faux spoons which rotate the central turnpike. The handle is rounded and curved, it has hearts down the side and ends in swirls.
One side of the teapot is decorated with two blue windows, topped with arches and featuring flowers in bas relief. Inside the windows are stickers of ponies looking out at the viewer. The centre of the teapot is taken up with a green, bowed door, decorated with white flowers, a pink teapot and a heart-topped cupcake in bas relief. It features a pink sign which reads OPEN and which is, naturally, decorated with a flower.
The base of the teapot shows flowers and butterflies set against the pink background. The whole thing sits on a purple, irregularly and gently indented base.
I’ll skip over the other side and go on the shop interior which features, from top to bottom, the following:
stickers of flowers;
bas relief of ionic columns;
bas relief of lattice work;
decorative indentations;
a curlicued spiral staircase in bas relief;
a sticker window within an embossed window frame,
shelves in pink with white trim;
more stickers of teapots and cups;
a pink, curved bench;
more pink and white shelves with bas reliefs of cupcakes, a birthday cake and tea cups;
a white teapot and pink teacup;
a poster of pictures of cakes and pies on a fake window;
a yellow, round bench with a barley twist column standing on a purple turntable decorated with spirals.
I may have missed some details.
My first response to the Teapot House was to despise it as a plastic, pink pile of commercial sexism, but I have reconsidered this position.
It is plastic. But it is surprisingly well designed and well made plastic. Pearl inherited virtually all her My Little Ponies from op-shops and yet the ponies and their playhouses are all in quite good condition. I think they moved to the new pony designs in 2009 (is that right?) so they’ve lasted quite well.
It is certainly pink. Very pink. And swirly. With hearts and cupcakes and sugar on the top.
But, actually, why should I dislike this? What I am really saying is that it is rococo, that it is exaggeratedly, stereotypically feminine in its design, and what is wrong with this?
I now offer two possible readings.
Reading One - I think that ubiquity is the problem. It’s fine that the My Little Pony teapot house is an extravaganza of pink frilliness. It’s even OK that the whole of Ponyville (nay, the whole of Equestria) has the same aesthetic. What’s not fine is that every other girl’s toy in the market has the same aesthetic.
So - plastic, surprisingly not so bad.
Pink - can be read as an undervalued style generally associated with femininity... so in fact My Little Ponies is being feminist in revaluing a typically marginalised style.
Commercial - there lies the problem. I can make the devalued pink argument about My Little Ponies only if I read them in isolation. If I look at them in the context of pretty much every other little girls’ toy, then they aren’t edgy. They are just part of the tsunami of pink that drowns little girls.
Reading Two - This reminds me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s *History of Women’s Suffrage*. Yep, I’m I can’t be the first person to make this connection.
Her book made the classic yet confused argument:
Women can do anything men do.
At the same time women do different things to men and these should be counted as just as important.
The second part of this argument - that women have a different aesthetic and interests and experiences as a group - is sometimes used by feminist art historians to develop an alternative canon which includes traditionally marginalised areas like fibre arts, small scale art, ceramics.
In terms of My Little Pony, it could mean that you could argue that the designers are not resorting to a cliched range of stereotypically feminine design elements. They are re-claiming these elements as a valid, alternative aesthetic which is too often marginalised just because it is girly. Despising these objects because they are pink would be the equivalent of using the term ‘girly’ as a pejorative.
I am torn between these two interpretations.
