Unkind cut: history of black paper dolls
.. Never realizing all the time that you were cutting, you were defining how you saw yourself, taking in the images of what the mass producers of toys told you was the standard of beauty.
Arabella Grayson knows what it was like for children to take in those images. And it is what led her to begin collecting paper dolls, black ones, and trying to understand their place in history. Her efforts are on display at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in "Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls: The Collection of Arabella Grayson."
The show, on view through April 29, traces the emergence of the paper dolls. There are dolls that date to the 1800s and others of current well-known faces.
The dolls produced from the 1800s to the 1960s show black people in subservient roles. The mammies, the butlers, the pickaninnies in torn clothing, grinning with their paper-doll smiles. There is Topsey, based on the stereotypical character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." And Aunt Jemima, and Little Black Sambo....
Read entire article at Seattle Times
Arabella Grayson knows what it was like for children to take in those images. And it is what led her to begin collecting paper dolls, black ones, and trying to understand their place in history. Her efforts are on display at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in "Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls: The Collection of Arabella Grayson."
The show, on view through April 29, traces the emergence of the paper dolls. There are dolls that date to the 1800s and others of current well-known faces.
The dolls produced from the 1800s to the 1960s show black people in subservient roles. The mammies, the butlers, the pickaninnies in torn clothing, grinning with their paper-doll smiles. There is Topsey, based on the stereotypical character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." And Aunt Jemima, and Little Black Sambo....