My Little Pony Makeover Gives Moms Another Headache

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Have you seen the My Little Pony makeover yet? Technically it's not really a makeover so much as a total reboot. Bye bye colorful horses with unique looks and personalities. Hello Equestria Girls, human teenagers who all look exactly the same.

And when I say the same, I don't just mean Hasbro's new pony/girl mash-ups look like one another. I mean these stick-thin waifs resemble every other darn doll on the market.

Sigh.

Not surprisingly, Hasbro is already getting a lot of flack from moms for the reboot. Surprisingly -- at least to me -- the main complaint is that the company is "sexualizing" My Little Pony.

As Patricia-Anne Tom over at Pop Sugar said this week, the "toys look less like ponies and more like sexified teenage goth girls."

I agree that there is very little "pony" to these new My Little ponies, but I don't see the Equestria Girls as sexy per se.

I do see them as another assault on our young girls' already perilous relationship with their bodies.

The Equestria Girls all have longer than long legs paired with teeny weeny waists. They're not far off the Monster High Dolls or Barbie or any of the teeming pile of dolls on the market with bodies that won't be found in nature.

Now, I should digress and point out that dolls do not in and of themselves cause body image problems. A social experiment with my daughter and a load of Barbie dolls a few months back proved that kids see things very differently than we adults do.

That said, it's important for us to talk to our daughters about body image, and for us to talk about the problems with the bodies of their dolls, lets the toys do the talking for us.

This is why I've always liked My Little Pony. My daughter can play with them for hours, and I don't have to worry about sitting down afterward for a refresher course on how every body is different, on being healthy.

There is no body baggage with a horse.

If it's money Hasbro is after (and hey, they are a company in a capitalist society), they will get it ... we mothers who have been sucked into the girl power themes of the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic are more than happy to buy DVDs and toys galore.

Just leave us one safe harbor, would you? One part of the toy store that doesn't keep us up late at night worrying about bulimia and diets.

What do you think of the new My Little Pony?

Image via Hasbro