Introducing Angelica, the doll whose afro you can style for real
Move over Barbie -- there's a new doll in town, and she's got kinks in her hair.
"The Angelica Doll" is a natural-hair 18-inch doll designed to provide an alternative to "spray-painted brown Barbie dolls", and she is taking Kickstarter by storm.
Angelica's most striking feature is her mass of curly hair, which can be styled in the same way as normal hair, from washing and blow drying to combing, twisting and bantu knotting, without becoming tangled and broken. She also boasts a full nose, fuller lips and killer cheekbones.
The doll was created by Afro-American mother Angelica Sweeting after her daughter, used to playing with more conventional dolls, displayed a desire for straight blonde hair and began expressing dislike for her facial features and skin tone. After searching high and low for a more realistic doll for her kids and finding nothing, Sweeting took it upon herself to launch "Naturally Perfect Dolls", of which Angelica is the first model.
"As I began to develop The Angelica Doll and give serious thought to the things I wanted to do for young girls, I realized that I had been influenced by society's standard of beauty for as long as I could remember," explains Sweeting.
As well as acting as an important visual beauty reference for young girls, Angelica also aims to encourage them to be ambitious, bold and courageous. Angelica herself is a career woman who comes with her own business suit, and Sweeting claims that future dolls from the brand will have careers in journalism, PR, engineering and software development.
The project has currently raised almost $50,000 on Kickstarter -- almost double its original target. The doll can be purchased for pledges of $70 upwards.
Sweeting isn't the only entrepreneur to have recently spotted a gap in the market for "real" dolls -- last November saw the launch of "Lammily," an "anti-Barbie" doll with realistic human proportions, to much acclaim.
The enthusiasm surrounding this new launch is proof that Angelica is long overdue. As Sweeting says: "Our girls need to see a reflection of their own unique beauty. It's time for our young girls to have a new standard."
