42 Time October 7, 2019
child opens a box.
He starts jumping
and screaming with
joy—not an unusual
sound in the halls of
Mattel’s headquar-
ters where research-
ers test new toys. But
this particular toy is a
doll, and it’s rare for
parents to bring boys
into these research groups to play with dolls. It’s
rarer still for a boy to immediately attach himself
to one the way Shi’a just did.
An 8-year-old who considers himself gender-fluid
and whose favorite color is black one week, pink the
next, Shi’a sometimes plays with his younger sister’s
dolls at home, but they’re “girly princess stuff,” he
says dismissively. This doll, with its prepubescent
body and childish features, looks more like him, right
down to the wave of bleached blond bangs. “The hair
is just like mine,” Shi’a says, swinging his head in tan-
dem with the doll’s. Then he turns to the playmate in
the toy- testing room, a 7-year-old girl named Jhase,
and asks, “Should I put on the girl hair?” Shi’a fits a
long, blond wig on the doll’s head, and suddenly it is
no longer an avatar for him but for his sister.
The doll can be a boy, a girl, neither or both, and
Mattel, which calls this the world’s first gender-
neutral doll, is hoping its launch on Sept. 25
redefines who gets to play with a toy traditionally
deemed taboo for half the world’s kids. Carefully
manicured features betray no obvious gender: the
lips are not too full, the eyelashes not too long and
fluttery, the jaw not too wide. There are no Barbie-
like breasts or broad, Ken-like shoulders. Each doll
in the Creatable World series looks like a slender
7-year-old with short hair, but each comes with a wig
of long, lustrous locks and a wardrobe befitting any
fashion- conscious kid: hoodies, sneakers, graphic
T-shirts in soothing greens and yellows, along with
tutus and camo pants.
Mattel’s first promotional spot for the $29.99
product features a series of kids who go by various
pronouns—him, her, them, xem—and the slogan
“A doll line designed to keep labels out and invite
everyone in.” With this overt nod to trans and non-
binary identities, the company is betting on where it
thinks the country is going, even if it means alienat-
ing a substantial portion of the population. A Pew Re-
search survey conducted in 2017 showed that while
76% of the public supports parents’ steering girls to
Society
▷
Shi’a, left, and Jhase
play with Mattel’s first
gender-neutral doll