Mom Creates Dolls As An Example For Her Daughter
Bratz are everywhere. Yet Kristi Necochea has no plans to buy her 5-year-old daughter one of the dolls popular among girls for their funky clothes, but decried by some parents for their short skirts and heavily made-up faces.
Now, the Temecula mother of three has an alternative: her own dolls.
This month Necochea, 40, started selling a line of dolls, Friends Forever Girls, through her Web site, www.friendsforevergirls.com. Necochea aimed to make the dolls wholesome but fun and stylish without crossing the line into sleazy. In the process, she wants to provide an example for girls such as her daughter.
Necochea first thought of the idea two years ago as a volunteer in her son’s kindergarten class, where she saw that social differences between boys and girls had already developed.
“Girls talk about, ‘You’re my best friend,’ and the next day it was, ‘I don’t ever want to talk to her again,’” she said.
Necochea thought about how those dynamics would affect her daughter, then 3 years old, and started dreaming up a way to teach her about friendship and self-respect in a way that wouldn’t induce yawns.
Necochea sought an antidote to the Bratz dolls, which she thought were “sexualizing young girls.” She wanted to make a contemporary version of the American Girl dolls, which are set in time periods such as the Revolutionary War.
“I thought you could hip up the American Girl doll and make it more about friendship,” she said.
Necochea’s dolls are also characters in a companion book that tells the story of three young neighbors who become friends and make friendship vows called “butterfly promises” — nine pledges in which the first letters form the word “butterfly.”
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