Growing Up With Color

I've always loved color. When I was younger I'd constantly bug my mom for only wearing earth tones- even now I generally eschew the color brown within my fashion palette. (Excluding boots belts, and eye make-up.) For me color doesn't right away bring up social issues such as food processing. Instead, it reminds me of childhood, of bright colored toys, clothes, and days. I appreciate how important getting your favorite color of whatever is to children, and how it leads a lot of their "decision making" when choosing new toys or clothes or which marker to use. That's part of the reason I chose the picture of the old shoe in my last blog. That children's sandal being found in an abandoned village was so poignant to me. Chances are the child didn't get to buy their shoes by color- the part of El Salvador I was in is pretty poverty stricken.
I just see it as such a small thing- getting to have something the shade of your favorite color.

This summer there's a pretty good chance I'll be working as an intern at the American Girl headquarters. American Girl is the company that makes the dolls that are from different periods in American History. American Girl is all about Girlpower and good self esteem and acting like a kid when you're a kid, which is an interesting juxtapose, since Mattel owns American Girl. Mattel being the company that owns Barbie dolls, which are pretty much opposite of the stocky American Girl dolls who look like they would be young girls instead of the 20-something super thin barbie doll.



I'm glad there's at least some company advocating for girls to just have fun, be the young girls they are, to like animals and colors and reading or whatever it is they do instead of growing up too fast.