# Bratz BANNED **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 7, 2008, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114 "2008-12-07T08:46:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Robin\_Goodfellow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Robin\_Goodfellow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robin_Goodfellow)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/101 "2008-12-09T08:18:24Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > No, I just understand why you have a viewpoint (saying that calling women who dress in a provocative manner “prostitutes” is harmful) that I’ve never heard expressed by any of the guys I know. > > I have, however, heard vaguely similar things from one or two of my wife’s Ultra-Liberated Feminist Friends, and your username threw me off because I don’t know many women called “Lee” so I assumed you were a guy; hence the strange disconnect in trying to understand why you’d have a POV that (IME) is bizarre for a guy to hold, if that makes sense. That doesn’t make sense. I’m a guy, and I’m not even so much Ultra-Liberated Feminist whatever, tho I have hung out with radical feminists before. And I don’t think it’s too bizarre to say that: yes, if a hypothetical woman wants to dress as “slutty” as she wants to and be sexually unavailable to any of the guys ogling her, she’s well within her rights, and anyone who wants to call her out on the supposed incongruity is stepping way out of line. A person’s body and presentation, whether it’s male or female, makeup or clothing, prudish or ‘slutty,’ is solely their choice. No one gets to decide what that means they’re “available for.” No one gets to expect anything of them based on what such clothing might be associated with. _Absolutely_ no one gets to think less of them for wearing whatever the hell they want and keeping the goods all to themselves. Yes, you’re right - people will always have their perceptions. It’s when those perceptions are used against someone, either socially or legally (“I thought she wanted it - just look at how she was dressed!”), that it becomes a grave matter of personal liberty, and any group’s light assumptions are soon not worth quite so much. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/102 "2008-12-09T08:25:26Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > > [@Jaglavak](#): > > > > I have been forced to sign one of these bullshit contracts at every job I’ve had since school. The contract says that the company owns every idea I might have while working for them, and for a year after working for them. Including in my own garage on a weekend. They get the millions, I get a brass plaque. > > But that’s a topic for another thread: should such contracts be legal, or is there some better, less one-sided way to handle such negotiations than giving the employer all the cards? In general labor relations, the legalization of unions tipped managment’s hand; maybe there needs to be a revolution in contract law as well. Well, actually, that is what pisses me off. But if you want to start a GD thread, that’s cool. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/103 "2008-12-09T08:39:02Z")
> [@Ponch8](#): > > I like how you put the word “banned” in all caps, just like what it says underneath the name of somebody who got banned from the SDMB. Oh, so that’s where I got it. Really, this just bugs me a lot. Barbie has had its day (decades, really). Bratz was a reinvention of the concept, & not all blonde vanilla. They come in a range of shades, which is nifty. And it’s not like it’s the same mold. (I grant they’re goofy. I’m just not that bugged by the cartoony faces or the modish dress.) This hits a nerve for me: As a comix nut, I’m reminded of National suing Fawcett to stop publishing Captain Marvel just because Cap was outselling Superman. The difference is, Fawcett knuckled under & signed its moneymaker away, apparently without cause. MGA fought, when on shakier ground; I admire that. [del]I don’t know what the exact story of the development is. The thing is, I don’t much care. I expect either Mattel rejected it or he took it outside without pitching it. If he’d been working on Bratz for Mattel & it was in development there, I doubt he could have gotten in front of them like that. This smells of sheer spite.[/del] OK, just read post #54. That does change things. But if Mattel registered it just to torpedo production & sit on the component trademarks, that would be restraint of …something… well, dirty pool, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/104 "2008-12-09T08:54:31Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > Kaio, is this issue of an employer employing you to do something, but then claiming rights to something distinctly different which you did on the weekend an actual problem, or are you just indulging in recreational indignation at a non-existent problem? I’ve seen these contracts. I think I may have signed one on a job where I was just in assembly; a peon, not an engineer. They’re written \*\*very \*\*broadly, which is why Kaio & I jumped to conclusions about this case. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/105 "2008-12-09T11:37:49Z")
Even if so - and you seem very unsure - others have said that such a contract would be unenforceable. If so, Kaio is upset because the law should be what it already is. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/106 "2008-12-09T16:40:38Z")
> [@](#): > > You’d be amazed at the number of Dopers who think that if you hire someone, you literally own them. I think most of them would balk at waterboarding employees (without provocation of course) but everything short of that that employers want to do to employees as OK with them! Yeah. My pro-management opinions are undoubtedly the reason I keep getting re-elected as a shop steward for my union local. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/107 "2008-12-09T20:23:01Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You have given no real life examples of someone being employed to do A but being obliged to hand over their weekend work on B. Until such time as you do, you are making shit up just to get angry at it, which is Recreational Outrage. In fact, if I can coin a new term, it goes beyond recreational outrage and is frankly indulging in Fantasy Outrage. > > **Jaglavak** ’s post isn’t clear but certainly doesn’t confirm that he is an example of what you are talking about. > > It’s nothing personal about you, it’s just that it seems to me that you are giving a misleading impression. You are making it seem like there is some sort of major problem in this area, when in fact I don’t think that there is, because the situation you are outraged about doesn’t actually occur. Well, hey, if you want to continue to believe that [big business never screws over the little guy](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=496349) who am I to dissuade you. Nice of you to completely ignore my own personal example. If you want to believe that **Jaglavak** wasn’t forced to sign a contract that unfairly stripped him of _all_ of his IP rights, [when he explicitly said he did,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10542218&postcount=32) I have no idea how to help you. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/108 "2008-12-09T20:33:06Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > I pit the law. And the law won. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/109 "2008-12-09T21:34:08Z")
I just want to say regarding the Bratz-as-bad-influences concept of this thread (vs the copyright infringement discussion), what is the problem? My niece, who is 5, and I would imagine the age of kids to which Bratz are targeted, just got one and she was most thrilled that she could change the doll’s hair color. She knows nothing of whores, has no concept of “slutty dress”, and has a few Halloween costumes and such that might be considered slutty by the definition applied to Bratz. Hell, when I was a kid, I regularly watched cartoons where it was routine for heads to be crushed, arms and legs to be chopped off, shovels to be smashed into faces, and all manner of violent mayhem. But it didn’t corrupt us. It didn’t make us violent psychopaths. By the same token, all of the hullaboloo over Bratz is way over the top. Bratz dolls wear make-up? So what? What mothers with daughters among you, long before Bratz came along, didn’t have said daughters beg you to let them wear make-up way before it was appropriate? And I would think that by the time a girl understands the idea of prostitution, she will have long ago put away any Bratz that she once played with. ---
**Author:** ![Jaglavak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85f322/32.png) [@Jaglavak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaglavak)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/110 "2008-12-09T23:18:45Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You have given no real life examples of someone being employed to do A but being obliged to hand over their weekend work on B … **Jaglavak** ’s post isn’t clear but certainly doesn’t confirm that he is an example of what you are talking about. To clarify, I have not been yet dorked by my employer. However per the IP contract that I had to sign in order to keep my job, any idea that I may have is company property. Like a better Christmas light or a new improved grocery bag. Any idea. And yes, I do have a potentially lucrative invention that I am not currently pursuing because of this contract. A couple of them in fact. It is a long and uncertain road from idea to payoff. There are many (legal and illegal) things that can happen along the way that could derail the process. The basic foundation of the whole thing rests on me owning the IP to my invention. Without that I can’t protect or defend. And if I did manage to make money I could lose it all and then some in a lawsuit with my former employer. I refuse to build a house on sand. So the invention never benefits society. These are the incentives that are built into the law as it stands today. I don’t think it is the best balance. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/111 "2008-12-09T23:47:55Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Hell, when I was a kid, I regularly watched cartoons where it was routine for heads to be crushed, arms and legs to be chopped off, shovels to be smashed into faces, and all manner of violent mayhem. But it didn’t corrupt us. It didn’t make us violent psychopaths. No, but it did make you into the kind of person who thinks whore dolls are okay. 😉 Seriously, this is a line of reasoning that just doesn’t work for me. When my generation was young, there was Looney Tunes. Then we grew up to make Grand Theft Auto. It DID have an effect on us - it set the bar for violence in entertainment higher than it was for the people who made Looney Tunes. What will the new bar encourage in kids who grow up with Grand Theft Auto? Same with the dolls. Barbie \*was \*slutty for us. Come on, there wasn’t a clothed Barbie on the block - she was always nekkid and lying on top of Ken and GI Joe. And that set the bar for people who created Bratz, which are even more sexualized, and believe me, if your niece doesn’t display that at your family party, she’ll get it sooner or later - probably sooner. And her bar will be higher. What will she create when she’s a 30 year old doll designer? Madonna was scandalous for outfits then that look positively, uh,[like a virgin](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44591000/jpg/_44591409_madonna1984ap226.jpg) today. Girls who grew up with the bar set by Madonna are now setting the bar [here](http://www.clipov.net/free/oboi/pussycat-dolls1024-2.jpg) (might be NSFW, although all the genitals are covered). Where do we go next? And it’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with grown women relishing their bodies and showing them off, whether or not they’re offering themselves on the market sexually. I’m just enough of a ninny to not like it when it’s marketed to children, for their sakes and for the sakes of the adults who may be turned on by them and then disgusted with themselves as a result. If they’re not legally allowed to consent to sexual contact, they shouldn’t dress as if they are. But they’re going to want to dress like what they see on their dolls - that’s just how kids are. Now, I’d hope that parents have the balls to just say no, but why set up that conflict in the first place? Just make dolls of children for children, for goodness sakes. ---
**Author:** ![lee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lee/32/7455_2.png) [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/112 "2008-12-10T01:40:56Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Just make dolls of children for children, for goodness sakes. I liked Barbie because she was a grown up and she had a figure. I used to design and sew clothing for her and use her to act out what being a grown up would be like. I did not play with dolls of children. They were boring, tedious, and ugly. I used to imagine Barbie had various jobs, and had places to go where she had to dress nicely, sometimes in beautiful satin gowns, sometimes in nice suits, but most of all, I imagined that life would be less painful, less dangerous, and less sad for her as a grown up than it was for me as a child. While you are at it, are you going to just have them make child action figures for boys, and abolish all the action figures of grown up men? ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/113 "2008-12-10T02:56:03Z")
What lee said. Only child dolls for children? What? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/114 "2008-12-10T03:40:56Z")
> [@Jaglavak](#): > > To clarify, I have not been yet dorked by my employer. However per the IP contract that I had to sign in order to keep my job, any idea that I may have is company property. You don’t answer the crucial question: what is your work? What are you paid to do? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/115 "2008-12-10T04:05:08Z")
> [@Kaio](#): > > Well, hey, if you want to continue to believe that [big business never screws over the little guy](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=496349) who am I to dissuade you. Here’s a clue: when I say: \*“You have given no real life examples of someone being employed to do A but being obliged to hand over their weekend work on B” \* I don’t mean \*“I don’t think big business ever screws over the little guy”. \* The two sentences differ. They have different letters in them, making up different words, which gives the sentences different meanings. If you ask your mummy or daddy or a teacher or other grown up person who can read they \*may \*be able to explain to you how this sort of thing works. > [@](#): > > Nice of you to completely ignore my own personal example. Your orginal comment (at #59) was that “Absent a written and signed agreement that says so, it can’t and shouldn’t be assumed that all of an employee’s ideas are work-for-hire belonging to the primary employer.” You have not given any personal example of any employer trying to argue any different. > [@](#): > > If you want to believe that **Jaglavak** wasn’t forced to sign a contract that unfairly stripped him of _all_ of his IP rights, [when he explicitly said he did,](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10542218&postcount=32) I have no idea how to help you. He didn’t say what it is that he does for his employer, which is crucial for reasons that those who can actually read my posts will understand. You, perhaps not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/116 "2008-12-10T04:11:02Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > No, but it did make you into the kind of person who thinks whore dolls are okay. 😉 Chuckle > [@](#): > > Seriously, this is a line of reasoning that just doesn’t work for me. When my generation was young, there was Looney Tunes. Yeah, me too. What did you think I was talking about? > [@](#): > > Then we grew up to make Grand Theft Auto. It DID have an effect on us - it set the bar for violence in entertainment higher than it was for the people who made Looney Tunes. What will the new bar encourage in kids who grow up with Grand Theft Auto? Massive auto theft, accompanied by semi-automatic machine guns, I guess. 🙂 > [@](#): > > Same with the dolls. Barbie \*was \*slutty for us. Come on, there wasn’t a clothed Barbie on the block - she was always nekkid and lying on top of Ken and GI Joe. And what ill effect did a slutty Barbie have one you? All in all, I’ll bet none at all. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/117 "2008-12-10T04:39:23Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > Massive auto theft, accompanied by semi-automatic machine guns, I guess. 🙂 You know a “Semi-automatic machine gun” is a contradiction in terms, right? It’s either a semi-auto or a machine gun… ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/118 "2008-12-10T05:43:59Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > And what ill effect did a slutty Barbie have one you? All in all, I’ll bet none at all. In all honesty, I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies, for the same reason my daughter won’t play with Bratz at my house. I sometimes played with Barbies at friends’ houses, until I realized all they wanted to do with them was take off their clothes and make 'em kiss GI Joe, which I found tedious. At home, I had Carrie, the bestest rag doll ever, and a slew of other baby and childlike dolls, including one who had “real” hair I could brush and braid. No whore dolls. I’m not entirely serious about only child dolls for my children, but I do like to see \*nonsexualized \*dolls for children. That doesn’t preclude anatomically correct dolls, which I have no problem with, but it does cover both Barbie and Bratz. ---
**Author:** ![Jaglavak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/85f322/32.png) [@Jaglavak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaglavak)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/119 "2008-12-10T22:36:44Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > You don’t answer the crucial question: what is your work? What are you paid to do? I work for Anycorp as a None of Your Damn Business engineer. However I can tell you that the inventions I am currently not developing have absolutely nothing to do with my day job. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19adc/32.png) [@I\_Am\_The\_Lorax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Am_The_Lorax)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114/120 "2008-12-11T16:30:29Z")
> [@holmes](#): > > I don’t get all the Bratz hate…The thing about Bratz, despite what those who don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what the hipsters are wearing; is that they were one of the few lines of non-white dolls that the big chains like Walmart had in stock. > > If you come from a big ol’s multi-cultural family, come you know how difficult it is to purchase ‘off the rack’ ethnic dolls; I think there’s a value to a line of dolls, in which every character is designed with a certain ‘realism’ in skin tones and varied from the typical blonde we’ve all had stoved down our throats; for generations. > > I think this was one of the few times I could find a latin, an asian, and black doll and by black, I mean dark freaking chocolate, the kind you want you to just…um, yeah. > > Anyway, while I understand the reluctance to support over made-up dolls, i think that the attempt to try to create dolls that dressed like a lot of young people dressed…slutty or not and have dolls, male and female that weren’t the bastard children of Barbie; wasn’t such a bad thing…even with the extra make-up and teen pregancy clothes. The multi-culti aspect is the only redeemable thing about them, I agree. That’s why when I found a sale on Groovy Girls, I bought an armload of them for my four-year-old. They have the faces and figures of little girls, with really funky, not trampy, clothes. And there’s no nightclub playset to go with, just a couch, chair, pony, etc… I’m glad Bratz are going, I just wish it were for a better reason than copyright infringement. Sorry to the people I offend, but, who would buy these for their kids?! Do you want your daughters to aspire to be a cheap hooker with a bad additude? I thought Barbies were bad til these came out. :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bratz-banned/476114.md?page=5)