I’m sure a part of this is down to contrasting light and dark colours in character design, but why not put dark-skinned characters in bright clothing? Characters don’t have to constantly have a light/dark contrast by making them have multicoloured eyes 🤷♂️
I knew that a lot of black people have a weird relationship with colored eyes when we had a light-skinned boy in my kindergarten class who had the prettiest apple-green eyes that I had ever seen and so many people made weird comments about his eye. It was uncomfortable how people treated him. One time, our black teacher told us that he needed to be careful because there would be people who would come cut out his eyes and sell them. Even at my young age, I was like, "Why would you ever tell a kid that?" It was just weird and uncomfortable.
@@Darth_Bateman God don't remind me, Pokemon was bad but when kids eat breakfast in front of TV displaying MVs doing seggs/gre crap then suddenly it was fine. F LOGIC lmao
This has bothered me since I was a kid! Companies & designers think "too much" brown on a doll is boring looking & won't sell. They think unnatural/uncommon colors make designs more "engaging". All it ever taught me is that you have to look a certain way to be worthy of attention, & being triple dark (dark skin, eyes & hair) automatically makes you a backgrounder.
Even as a kid, I found it suspicious how doll lines give black dolls light eyes sometimes, don't get me wrong, light eyes are fine but brown eyes are beautiful and its absolutely questionable how doll lines give black dolls light eyes instead of brown. Brown eyes are beautiful.
thisss, i had a vivid flashback to coloring sashas eyes as a little kid, and my reason? all the black women i knew had brown eyes so it was odd for me to see on a doll,, i just hope for the day they give sasha the dark brown eyes she always shouldve had
They have. I have 9 Sasha dolls with brown eyes and dark brown eyes at that. That’s just in my collection but she has more in her appearances in the Bratz series throughout the years.
Another example I can think of is the character Aisha from winx club, not only does she lighter eyes but the newer adaptations of the show they keep making skin lighter and lighter. The animated show would do that to all their characters that are supposed to be non-white. If these shows and doll-lines had as much representation for mixed race girls and black girls, we wouldn’t need to have this discussion.
ooooo ok so some of what yall are saying in the comments is a bit racially insensitive. yall are basically defending anti-blackness to a certain extended with giving an excuse as to why they are continually giving the black girls light colored eyes. if they wanted to have light/dark contrast, they can give the girls bright makeup looks. bright clothing. light eye colors and black people is something that has always been odd i say because as someone who grew up around black people who constantly praised black people for having light colored eyes i see the ignorance with it. edit: also to add on, it's one thing if the setting is a magically world or whatever where everyone has colorful eyes (like monster high) and very unrealistic. it's another when it is realistic to a certain extent (like my scene).
girl why does it matter, it's a doll you can color anything you want for them and back in the old times Black people had light color eyes Like girl chill the freak out!
It's the same thing in the book community, you can see green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes etc being described as storms and skies and trees but the minute someone has brown eyes the descriptions wither and die. It's like there's no effort put into the beauty of brown/dark eyes and that's really weird given how common those eyes are. (As I love Gangsta too, I agree, that shit was odd. Give my girl Alex brown eyes pls)
Colorism does that so sad that doll lines are perpetuating that honestly there’s nothing wrong with nut brown eyes they’re beautiful. This is why Representation is important in dolls, people and especially in media
I feel for Monster High they get a pass in a way for the colored eyes on the black dolls, due to the fact that they're one all monsters and two I'm pretty sure nearly all the Monster High dolls have colored eyes. Doesn't mean that they couldn't have had more brown eyed dolls for the brown/dark skin dolls, or that the lack in brown/dark skin representation is acceptable, but given it's more fantasy focused than based on realism (compared to Bratz or Rainbow High) it's less jarring that most the characters have unrealistic eye colors.
It does make me sad that people think blue eyed black people do not exist, i am a blue eyed black person. It is not unrealistic and i'm not a monster for it c'mon everyone 😭 Was this made just to dunk on every dark person with eyes that aren't brown
I remember as a lil kid that other black kids would be dunking on each other for having phenotypically black features. Internalized antiblackness was rampant, and I think it got a new coat of paint over the years. Being black with rarer features isn't bad, but positive and accurate representations are so slim that prioritizing those does way more harm than good. Thanks for making another hit, cap
I’m Indigenous and the (whole ass white) woman that adopted me alongside my sisters (who are Black and Latina) gave me a complex about my eyes. She told me that “women and girls with dark hair and blue eyes are the prettiest people in the world” while she made me watch a Miss America pageant with her. I’ve also noticed in a lot of the media I consume that any characters who explicitly aren’t white have light colored eyes. That’s why all of the characters in the story I’m writing have brown eyes except for the one singular white boy lol. Seriously, as an artist, there are so many different ways to add color contrast! One of my characters is a fashion designer so she wears a lot of bright colored makeup and clothes to contrast with her dark skin, and it also contrasts with the aesthetic of another character, who prefers to wear darker colors. Like… it really is just that easy! Anyways, sorry for rambling in your comment section lol. I love your content and once I have a steady job I’d love to support you on Patreon! Be safe out there! :)
It's sad what colorism and eurofeaturism does to you as a child. As a kid ive always wished for blue or different colored eyes because i thought i wasn't beautiful enough like the darkskin characters id look up to in cartoons and other places in media, especially partaking in the beauty industry. I've ever seen brown eyes on brown skin viewed as beautiful or special and it messed with me. As i grew older, now I'm 18, im now aware that there's plenty of wrong with the industry and there's no limit to beauty, black is beautiful🙌🏾
The eurofeaturism really is a problem, and I'm glad it's being addressed. I'm white and even I wanted blue or green eyes (still kinda do) SO badly when I was a young child with dark brown eyes.
@@annabelconstantine1241 are you seriously telling Black woman not to worry about Black people..? You must be a white person, because y’all hate each other and yourselves. As you should
16:53 Unfortunately, a lot of Asian women are also obsessed with colored (blue, green) eyes. I was watching a livestream of a Chinese artist and she kept going on about how she used to love blue eyes as a child, and always wanted to have blue/green eyes.
I remember as a kid noticing how sasha had hazel green eyes and it was first time I felt insecure about my looks. my dad and everyone on his side of the family had light eyes except me and my older cousin.
Girl you don’t miss, I’ve been thinking about this recently, I used to always make my sims and other avatars with green and gray eyes. I’ve been unpacking why and unlearning these habits that reinforce this weird beauty standard
people with blue eyes be like: 👁👄👁 ok jokes aside, I think darker eyes are beautiful. They look so soft. Edit: I think I might have to change Hazel's eyes from Green to brown, this definitely made me check myself.
I get that Rainbow High wants everything to be fun fantasy colors, but dark fantasy colors are so rarely used for anything but hair and clothes, which is a damn shame because the few characters with dark fantasy skin tones and the one character with dark fantasy colored eyes are gorgeous. As for brown eyes, I've only seen two with really dark eyes; one's white and the other is limited edition. All other brown eyed dolls have medium or light brown eyes. I admittedly haven't paid as much attention to doll lines that have painted eyes, since I like how inset ones look better (and eye swapping is fascinating) but I'm pleased to report that Barbie Looks 10 has dark brown eyes, black hair, and super dark skin. Textured hair would have been nice but at least it's saran and not polypropylene (trust me that's important).
not just doll lines, but cartoons I notice black characters will often have blue eyes , green eyes, red eyes. so strange to me because black eyes and dark brown eyes are so pretty, dont be shy give the dolls and cartoon characters brown and black eyes!
One of my favorite doll lines growing up was the Liv Dolls, and they only made them for a short time but they were really cool because they were slightly more realistic than other dolls. I thought for sure Alexis (the only black girl) had dark brown eyes but I double checked and in most of the pictures they're more of a hazel! They gave Daniella (who might be mixed?) the dark brown eyes! I was always annoyed by the lack of brown eyes in dolls as a kid but I didn't realize how deep the issue went! I appreciate you addressing these topics, now I know what to look out for when buying my little sister dolls!
IM SO GLAD SOMEONE MADE A VIDEO ABT THIS! I’m always told I’m being nit picky when I point out how some black representation is watered down by eauropean features like why does the only black girl have light eyes and loose hair? Ok that’s possible but that’s not MY representation personally as someone with kinky hair and dark eyes and it’s just so disappointing
I have 58 RH /SH dolls, all unique characters, and 17 have brown eyes, way less than half of my collection. Almost all orange / yellow girls have brown eyes but barely none pink or blue have brown eyes. They do this thing were most pink girls have purple eyes and most blue girls have blue eyes and that is why so few have brown eyes. At the moment they have like 4 different brown eye colors, one mixed with orange/gold (ex: Coco), one mixed with pink (ex: Georgia), a light almost pale brown color (Nicole and Priscila for example) and a unique one that Tiara Song has that is a bit darker and has rainbow colored accents. Olivia has hazel eyes but they are a bit more green than brown. They need to do more brown eyes that mix other colors, like a dark brown with purple accents. In general they lack dark colored eyes, a very dark navy blue would have been nice for Kim for example.
This is an interesting video. I’m Latina with a very mixed family & I would’ve never noticed this. I think the darker dolls with blue eyes are pretty, but I can also understand why it is problematic. One thing I have noticed in TV/ film, “black” male roles can go to actors who are dark or medium like Samual Jackson & Denzel, but the female roles go to Zendaya types or Latinas. It’s just weird. I would be hella irritated if they did that to Latino roles where the male actors chosen were way darker than the actresses.
I agree that proximity to whiteness could be a big factor for why black women aren’t given brown eyes. Other reasons could be: “How do we make this black girl stand out from other black girls” (black people look the same type bullshit) or “Since this is our only black girl, let’s make her unique” (white writers underestimating the need for black girls with brown eyes to be represented).
I actually did a custom of Daria to have brown eyes and... it literally suits her so much better??? Brown eyes are so stunning and gorgeous when Rainbow High bothers to do them, and there are some variety of shades that play with lighting and color in intresting ways! They've been getting better about this recently, Coco and Michelle are standouts, but both are still given straight hair over natural textures. I think that some of the dolls having straightened hair is fine, it adds more diversity and shows how versatile hair can be and they can style it in really intresting ways, but when thats the ONLY option it's just infuriating. We've seen Junior High Krystal with afro puffs and they look fantastic! When they bother to do braids like with Vanessa, they look great too, and also are really high quality! Rainbow High is capable of it: but they rarely ever try.
i've noticed this with other races as well, like giving east asian characters blue eyes, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as common as giving black characters light-colored eyes or hair.
I would even extend this conversation to include light brown vs dark brown/black eyes and how we hold light brown eyes on a pedestal and fetishize black people who have them, while dark brown or black eyes are considered “dull” or “eerie.” I’ve seen it in my own family and have had to unpack that baggage within myself, but rarely do I hear people discuss this as an example of featurism
I hate playing devil’s advocate but maybe those toy companies were inspired by models like Tyra Banks & Naomi Campbell, who wore colored contacts. Mattel also made Barbies with brown eyes
More likely that they’re both impacted by European beauty standards. Models don’t get to choose what they wear, that’s why Tyra was always messing with the contestants on ANTM
I get that dolls are bound to use fantasy colors that make them pop more, but it would be nice to see a black girl with brown eyes from Rainbow High. I was just looking at my Shanelle Onyx doll sitting on my shelf yesterday thinking how much more striking she wouldv'e been if she had dark brown eyes.
even when black girls are being pursued by crushes in these shows are only, if ever, complimented for their eyes if they have these lighter eyes. but typically their “sassy” personalities are often the things that are the topic of discussion when it comes to these “compliments” given to them when they are simply micro aggressions.. (side note, does anyone know the song at 12:40?)
I always thought it was strange that the black dolls always have light colored eyes like do they realize that not every black girl has light colored eyes its okay to give black dolls brown eyes just saying
I’ve pointed this out a lot too. Like I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing, because some people do have bright colored eyes (my grandfather is mixed Native American (basically I think we’d address it as white passing) and has blue eyes, so I don’t mind characters having these appearance in certain aspects), but it’s really weird that many doll brands especially have characters with bright colored eyes. Like Monster High is monsters, so I get that, but Bratz and My Scene have their main black characters have bright colored eyes (which Bratz do change each characters eye colors in many lines, even Cloe), but majority of the black characters in these lines (mostly talking about Bratz) have bright colored eyes, minus Felicia and Kiara. MGA, who make Bratz have this issue the most, because not only did Bratz and Rainbow High do this with their main characters, Project Mc² had Bryden, who is black on the show with brown eyes, but her doll (and even McKeyla’s doll as well) have blue eyes for no real reason. Even Jade from Bratz had green eyes, despite her being Asian and it’s a rare eye color for anyone mixed Asian or fully Asian. It’s not a bad thing, but I think we can make characters who look like the background they we representing.
20:45, girl, this feeling of confusion you said took me back. Even when my hair got relaxed, it was always poofy (imagine a lion's mane, I even got a nice nickname for it that I liked), so when I relaxed my hair freshly and it fell down, I was always happy that my hair was "normal". So sad in retrospection
huh, i never even realized i have a tendency to draw most of my characters with light eyes until now (granted, i draw a lot of non-human characters with unrealistic eye colors, but still). im gonna be giving more of my characters dark eyes from now on ^^ thx for all the work you put in to educating people!! i find your channel incredibly helpful for unlearning the harmful rhetoric i grew up around :]
This makes me feel a little guilty because my sister has green eyes and darker skin (we're both mixed race, I ended up light skinned with brown eyes), and I always send her pictures whenever I find a drawing or a character that's a black girl with green eyes. She saves every picture, and she always says "THAT'S ME!" it makes her so happy. But then again I do wish more girls can be able to feel like this too
yea i said that rainbow high makes sense because of the world being extremely colorful. also taking into account that so many of the girls have purple eyes lmaooooo. sorry if that section was a bit confusing i could have done better with explaining it.
I really appreciate videos like this! Im a white person who wants to get into character design so not only will it help me later on down the road but it helps me now with my ocs. I want to be able to create good representation for all people, its something thats really really important to me. I know that it definitely would have helped me feel less alone to see nonbinary representation when i was younger, i can imagine its the same for other minorities as well. I don't ever want kids to feel alone like i did.
I love my cali barbie Lea 2004 doll, my Liv Alexis doll and my baby doctor Nikki (from 2006 model?). But I notice as a teen that Barbie started to lighten Nikki doll and made her eyes a lighter brown like it was to a point that Nikki started to look the same in all the I can be barbie models. I love my collection of black dolls but none of them had really super dark eyes. Mostly cinnamon /light brown.
I'm mixed and I have dark reddish brown eyes and light brown skin. I wouldn't say I dislike my skin color. But I've always loved the darker rich brown skin tone black people have, and its unfortunate that when black characters are made, its usually light. Even lighter than my skin tone. And also a lot of time these characters/dolls have straight hair. Afro hair doesn't get enough love. I never liked how people would always want to straighten my hair, and would praise it over my natural hair. Never made sense to me. Black is beautiful. 🤎
It's funny I was just thinking about how Madison had blue eyes and how that was kind of odd. I always noticed a lack of brown eyes on dolls, especially in the 1980s when I was a kid. You were lucky if you could find ANY doll at all (fashion doll, baby doll, etc) that wasn't blond hair and blue eyes. As a brunette with brown eyes I would have liked a doll that looked like me. I know it's not the exact same thing. I am happy that they have much more diversity in dolls nowadays. And brown eyes are beautiful!
I'm a yt girl with blue eyes and even growing up i noticed this and was uncomfy with it/felt like it was whitewashing (before i understood the concept). I personally always wanted large dark brown eyes because I always felt like they had a "twinkling" or almost sparkling quality like Harriyanna's. Especially because my eyes are kind of small and thought they'd look nicer brown (when i cry, my eyes also look super red and lizard-like becauae of the color lol) Also, as a kid when i watched All Grown Up i was confused by how different they made Susie look that i thought she was a different character.. it was really disrespectful in my opinion to change her so much.
The best answer for doll lines doing this would probably be that a light eye color on a dark skinned doll gives more contrast and makes the dolls stand out more as opposed to even light skinned dolls with dark eye colors.
I feel this! Looking back on my childhood and teenage years, I had a lot of internalized antiblackness that my family and friends contributed, probably unconsciously. It’s crazy how much I wanted purple eyes as a kid 😂 But I’ve been working thru it, especially concerning my black character designs and how look at myself, embracing my blackness.
I started to notice this with Tucker and Valerie from Danny Phantom. Kwan and Paulina too. Same with Butch Hartman's other characters, like with Trixie and AJ. Even AJ's parents and Chad! They all had either blue or green eyes. They couldn't have made AT LEAST one of them have brown eyes? Also, Andrea from the original LEGO Friends, though her eyes were later changed from green to brown in the reboot.
as an artist (who is white) im so glad to see a video on this topic, it's something i noticed too in general artists will so often give their black characters light eyes instead of brown, and something about it struck me as odd that it's so common... like why are we avoiding dark eyes? i admit im very guilty of doing this too honestly, going forward I'm going to represent dark brown eyes in my poc characters. i have very dark eyes and they're cool
I’ve definitely struggled with internalize anti-blackness in middle school and high school, due to this one boy in eighth grade making fun of my nose. (He’s black) It took me til the end of high school to love my blackness.
i remember being kinda disappointed that there weren't any brown eyes on the rainbow high dolls until karma and her eyes aren't even a darker kind of brown either. i'm not black and didn't grow up in a particularly black community and the weird dislike of darker eye colors is still something i noticed all the time, like my brother would constantly get compliments for his really light green eyes while people pretty much never commented my eyes (which are a dark brown). i honestly don't remember have ANY dolls (not even light skinned dolls) that had my eye color which always made me really sad as a kid, so i imagine it would have been worse for any black girls whose main doll representation would have lighter eye colors and possibly other eurocentric features that they probably didn't have.
It makes me mad how rare brown eyes are in media in general, particularly character design. It's the most common eye color on EARTH! Green eyes are the RAREST and red hair + green eyes is the rarest combo on earth. Gingers are so over-represented in general, it's so sad that for so long brown and dark eyes have never been complimented or described as beautiful. I'm happy to see it changing somewhat.
I'm white so I don't know how relevant my comment is, but as a brown-eyed girl I've wished that I could have differently colored eyes because blue and green are cool and I thought brown eyes were boring. Although that's probably because I'm obsessed with fantasy eye colors and green and blue are the closest IRL people can get to those eye colors, and also appear in stories with colorful features.
I love learning about how people did stuff wrong in media, cuz now I can see if I have things like that in my own stories and can fix it. Being born in a country with most people being white and with the media being really bad at representation it's not surprising I had (and probably still do) some colorist views. I also one time accidentally almost wrote a character with one of the hurtful black stereotypes, but then I learned about it and fixed it. And I'll keep on trying to do my best to represent people in the right way. So thank you and people like you, who make it so easy to learn stuff like this.
It’s vital that black girls features, dark skin, hair, and eyes are the majority of the representation. It’s colorist and weird that the majority of dolls have funky eye colors
Thing is the opposite doesn't happen as much - there are tons of designs (in dolls and animation) with fair skin, blonde hair and light eyes but the opposite is deemed "too boring"
A thing that i don't like that is common in anime is when they give black female characters staight white hair. If they want to give the characters colored hair they should choose bright colors. 😀
I think another aspect of it in addition to colorist views of creators is the use of contrast and unique character designs. Light contrasting on dark or playing with color themes to go with style and character. However, this is also connected to illustrators and designers not knowing how to design diverse girls of color and the significant amount of ignorance involved in how these people design or even approve of designs. It doesn't help that it's more likely to be someone with more stale taste to be the supervisor who approves a design for characters within doll lines or cartoons.
lol. this but in animation. as a kid i always wondered why i've seen poc characters have lighter eyes like??? where my dark brown / brown eye ppl at???
I love watching your videos, because I learn a lot from you. Thank you so much for all your points of view. I personally want to start a doll line, and I see what is important as far as being inclusive. I definitely want to include beautiful dark skinned characters in my lines. So I will definitely keep all your points in mind while creating my own stuff.
I know some artist like to make characters with contrasting/ unique colors. But it sucks that brown eyes are never a feature and hardly ever romantised. Only time i ever heard brown eyes being mentioned was the song Brown eyed girl.
@@aoto8897 But why not keep representation of the minority? Many people don't even know about these eyes. I feel it's as silly as complaining that a character shouldn't be transgender because it isn't what everyone else is like. For me it was exciting to see someone represent this, i had never seen that before recent times. This video felt like they're saying "Woah ! They once gave a black character blue eyes! I have never seen someone like that irl so i must cancel art of everyone who looks different and is new to me"
about the eye surgery thing- She NEEDS to get that undone. I'm dead serious. She needs to do something about that or she WILL go blind. [tw for kind of graphic eye talk] I'm assuming this is a Bright Ocular situation where the new eye color is surgically inserted over the original eye color, sort of like permanent contacts. the problem with this is that with movement the inserts rub against your iris and pupils and over time the inserts will wear away at your eyes so much they become permanently disfigured and you go blind. These surgeries are completely illegal in most first world countries but some people with enough money still travel out of country to do it anyway. Sherliza Moe made a video about it a while back, but fair warning, the imagery used is very graphic and may be very upsetting to look at. It's a horrible procedure and no one should ever get it.
So I'm someone who's in the doll collecting side of Rainbow High and other brands . Rainbow High has a huge problem with not giving dolls brown eyes . The first wave of dolls had either blue,green, or purple eyes . And they still refuse to give allot of dolls brown eyes . Allot of use I myself included are sick and tired of the purple eyes and cause they are overused in Rainbow High.
As a Kenyan, I can say that personally that it just looks really cool to me. They're so pretty, and I see normal looking people with normal eyes all the time, so why not have a little fantasy?
Omg Hariyanna, this might be the reason child me was so obsessed with giving my fictional black girl characters blue eyes! And I loooved Myscene and Bratz and obsessed over their eye colors. Had me likeToni Morrison’s book Bluest Eye 😭 I took a class in college where we had to read all her books (of course she released on that year) and it was a lot and the content was so intense I would be sobbing, ptsd triggered reading the book then typing my homework response tears streaming down my face lol
I feel like the early 2000s black dolls were heavily influenced by tyra banks and Beyoncé which tyra isn't the greatest influence on children especially black children
24:20 I think you are talking about Aisha and yes - she is one of their prettiest dolls! I am from east Europe and I am white with red hair and green eyes, but I was always appreciating every type of beauty! And recently, Mattel showed voice-actress for Venus from Monster High and OMG!!! That lady is sooo pretty! Her name is Rutina Wesley and her eyes are definitely black, but omg sooo beautiful! I mean - people who are prefering one race over another are just stupid af, because every human can be pretty if you look at them at certain "angle"
There's also Wydowna. Although, I always thought that the hazel (I honestly thought it was yellow) eyes on the Wolf family was because of the werewolf thing, now that I think about it, some of the other werewolves did not have those yellow eyes.
Thank you for bringing attention to this. As My Scene collectors a lot of us are craving a character with dark eyes & Dark skin. There is a character Jai but she's a one off and extremely rare. She's very popular as she's the only character these features. The number one doll I crave is a My Scene character with similar colouring as Felicia. P.S I'm white as fuck with green eyes and I want this, plus most collectors I know regardless of race want this. So I pray companies will actually pay attention.
As much as I like Golden Kamuy for what it gets right, the main character Asiripa falls under this category of "blue-eyed hero." We laugh at Memoirs of a Geisha, but give GK a pass because Asirpa is mixed. I know a lot of mixed Ainu, and none of us have blue eyes either. She has blue eyes because she's special, she's special because she has blue eyes. 🤷🏻♂️
Another thing I wanted to add that I noticed was around that time alot of knock off brands that were making black dolls really similar to the ones I mentioned earlier bratz myscene they all had a common theme was they stuck with brown eyes on pretty much all of them. I Think it stands to speak volumes especially in those times there were even some afro textured styles in the bratz knock off but i feel they were mostly straight and very loose wave styled hair.overall as a whole there needs to be a serious change in the doll industry with brown eyes it needs to be represented more I feel like we are just seeing it with Barbie It's rare to find Black barbie,Ken with dark brown eyes if not damn near impossible.
Im sitting here, looking at my Rainbow High and Shadow High. Also LoL Dolls. The only doll that has the dark brown eyes is Speedster. I also have shelnelle from Mermaidz who has light brown eyes.
Madison from my scene is supposed to be biracial because the my scene line was designed by Lily Martinez and she designed the characters besides Barbie after her real life friends, the Madison doll resembles her best friend and Chelsea was originally supposed to be Latina (poc) but was later changed to white. I do want to say though that the line of my scene dolls weren’t that diverse at all, there has only been one dark skinned girl “Jai” she had brown eyes but was discontinued after only one release, I wish they would have kept her in the line.
I understand completely where u are coming from but as far as myscene and bratz go which are my favorite doll lines based on my age when they came out hella black girls were wearing contacts for fashion on their own just like the styles or trends the dolls came with. We also have Jai of myscene she is darkskin with brown eyes and most rare myscene doll. TYSON is light skin with green eyes even the flavas dolls did this.During those times fashion contacts werr very common in the early 2000s.i even had my good fair share of blue contacts and my nature eye color is light brown my dad and lots of people in my family dark skin with blye eyes. they absolutely do need more dolls with darker brown eye colors as well there is no reason it ahould be more black dolls with light eyes especially in more modern times like today hence rainbow high.Also natural textures we need it all not half dont half ass it.
I remember watching Wednesday with my parents and whenever Bianca was on screen my dad said that her eyes were strange. I thought it was just something that the sirens in the show had but I wonder if the siren thing was an excuse to give her light eyes.
There's actually one other black girl in my scene, Jai she was in Jamming in Jamaica but only got one doll but was darker skinned and had brown eyes she's one of my grail my scene side characters
ugh i wish i knew she gotten a doll i seen jammin in jamaica but had no idea she got one. when i looked for black my scene dolls the only ones who came up were madisons wtf
Something that will forever bother me is how they used to whitewash the hell out of Sasha in the commercials and arts on the dolls’ boxes. But I do agree, making black women characters’ eyes blue or green (or even lighter brown) was just another way to make them more “acceptable” to the “main audience”. Sad but not surprising.
I think it is a great topic to discuss, but I also think it probably is worth noting that early humans showed a preference for blue or light eyes either for aesthetics or nonverbal communication (a similar reason to why humans have white sclerae instead of black sclerae like other great apes) The mutation for blue eyes appeared in the human timeline before the mutation for light skin. So before Europeans were even _white_ a lot of them had blue eyes.
4:29 I immediately thought of Alex when viewing the thumbnail and was irked as hell when she has bright blue eyes when she’s supposed to be blasian. I know odd hair/eye colors are present in animanga series where Asian people can have odd hair colors, but Gangsta isn’t like that where gritty realism is more present and Alex having blue eyes is really odd to me.
Since I could remember I always thought green, blue and hazel colored eyes always looked pretty us people of color and never really had a “reason” why Thinking about it I didn’t think I felt brainwashed or controlled from media to think it’s pretty and I do like my dark brown eyes as a brown person I love brown eyes too and I honestly didn’t know companies and people had a history of giving people of color these eyes because they thought that’s how THEY thought we’d look best
It's not just dolls that give dark skinned dolls light colored eyes, most of the time blue eyes. Disney's Tarzan the animated series had a dark skinned character, Queen La with light colored eyes and white hair. The same thing Disney did with the Atlantians from Atlantis. And, why does Master Xehanort have light colored eyes and white hair despite being dark skinned, especially since he's the villain?
@@shinycutediva wow, i'm African blk & that's strange because black brown eyes are more likely to be found among African blk people anyway... as someone who was torn down by my mixedrace & blk american peers for being "very black(darkskin, black brown eyes, wide features, kinky hair, African ethnicity)," I relate to you so much nonetheless.🥲🫂
I’m sure a part of this is down to contrasting light and dark colours in character design, but why not put dark-skinned characters in bright clothing? Characters don’t have to constantly have a light/dark contrast by making them have multicoloured eyes 🤷♂️
EXACTLY.
I'm sure that's part of it but yeah there are other ways to create contrast on a character.
It's literally a fictional fking world. Do you really want your character to be a boring bitch?
Now with Rainbow high it's to match the hair or the outfit for color balance
but oh "Black people don't look good in bright clothes!!!"
I knew that a lot of black people have a weird relationship with colored eyes when we had a light-skinned boy in my kindergarten class who had the prettiest apple-green eyes that I had ever seen and so many people made weird comments about his eye. It was uncomfortable how people treated him.
One time, our black teacher told us that he needed to be careful because there would be people who would come cut out his eyes and sell them. Even at my young age, I was like, "Why would you ever tell a kid that?" It was just weird and uncomfortable.
DAFAQ THIS IS SO CREEPY WTF
Your teacher was probably a Junji Itou fan.
Probably the same reason you'd tell a kid he's gonna go to hell for playing Pokemon in the 90s, lmfao.
@@Darth_Bateman God don't remind me, Pokemon was bad but when kids eat breakfast in front of TV displaying MVs doing seggs/gre crap then suddenly it was fine. F LOGIC lmao
@@nfsiiihp Oh my GOD, FAXX. It's like cartoons are a WAR CRIME. But AMERICAN MOVIES WITH PSYCHOTIC VILLAINS ARE GUCCI. LMFAO.
I've seen alot of fetishization towards dark skinned women with light eyes in general or wanting to achieve such, it's just so weird and sad.
This has bothered me since I was a kid! Companies & designers think "too much" brown on a doll is boring looking & won't sell. They think unnatural/uncommon colors make designs more "engaging". All it ever taught me is that you have to look a certain way to be worthy of attention, & being triple dark (dark skin, eyes & hair) automatically makes you a backgrounder.
Just give them a bold lip like wtf 😭
Even as a kid, I found it suspicious how doll lines give black dolls light eyes sometimes, don't get me wrong, light eyes are fine but brown eyes are beautiful and its absolutely questionable how doll lines give black dolls light eyes instead of brown. Brown eyes are beautiful.
thisss, i had a vivid flashback to coloring sashas eyes as a little kid, and my reason? all the black women i knew had brown eyes so it was odd for me to see on a doll,, i just hope for the day they give sasha the dark brown eyes she always shouldve had
They have. I have 9 Sasha dolls with brown eyes and dark brown eyes at that. That’s just in my collection but she has more in her appearances in the Bratz series throughout the years.
@@nohimepeach yeah, I think the switch up her eye color often. Depending on the doll, she can either have brown or green eyes. I'm not sure why
Another example I can think of is the character Aisha from winx club, not only does she lighter eyes but the newer adaptations of the show they keep making skin lighter and lighter. The animated show would do that to all their characters that are supposed to be non-white. If these shows and doll-lines had as much representation for mixed race girls and black girls, we wouldn’t need to have this discussion.
Oh my god I HATE IT when they progressively bleach a black or otherwise darker skinned character across a franchise.
Did the same thing to Orange Blossom 🍊 😔…
@@marajones1828 yeah but in the 2021 shes back to her normal dark skin
Yep it sucks. I love Winx Club and the earlier seasons are better anyway. The animation style in the later seasons is not good at all.
ooooo ok so some of what yall are saying in the comments is a bit racially insensitive. yall are basically defending anti-blackness to a certain extended with giving an excuse as to why they are continually giving the black girls light colored eyes. if they wanted to have light/dark contrast, they can give the girls bright makeup looks. bright clothing. light eye colors and black people is something that has always been odd i say because as someone who grew up around black people who constantly praised black people for having light colored eyes i see the ignorance with it.
edit: also to add on, it's one thing if the setting is a magically world or whatever where everyone has colorful eyes (like monster high) and very unrealistic. it's another when it is realistic to a certain extent (like my scene).
girl why does it matter, it's a doll you can color anything you want for them and back in the old times Black people had light color eyes Like girl chill the freak out!
@@PeezyCoral_6 😐
It's the same thing in the book community, you can see green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes etc being described as storms and skies and trees but the minute someone has brown eyes the descriptions wither and die.
It's like there's no effort put into the beauty of brown/dark eyes and that's really weird given how common those eyes are.
(As I love Gangsta too, I agree, that shit was odd. Give my girl Alex brown eyes pls)
Thats sad because brown eyes can be
Garnets
Ebony
Caves
Molasses
Chocolate
Acorns
Coffee😊
@@freakytostadacartoon YES! This is what I want to see! You're cool af
@@meiday154 Thank you.
@@freakytostadacartoon I was told my eyes look like the bottom of a creek. (They're a little bit hazel brown green but still mostly brown) 🤎
i was so confused when i found out she was a biracial that wasn't half white cause of that lmaoooo
Colorism does that so sad that doll lines are perpetuating that honestly there’s nothing wrong with nut brown eyes they’re beautiful. This is why Representation is important in dolls, people and especially in media
I agree.
I feel for Monster High they get a pass in a way for the colored eyes on the black dolls, due to the fact that they're one all monsters and two I'm pretty sure nearly all the Monster High dolls have colored eyes. Doesn't mean that they couldn't have had more brown eyed dolls for the brown/dark skin dolls, or that the lack in brown/dark skin representation is acceptable, but given it's more fantasy focused than based on realism (compared to Bratz or Rainbow High) it's less jarring that most the characters have unrealistic eye colors.
Clawdeen has hazel eyes cause she's a werewolf, and wolves have yellow eyes
Exactly.
@@nicusilly Ah, that makes sense.
It does make me sad that people think blue eyed black people do not exist, i am a blue eyed black person. It is not unrealistic and i'm not a monster for it c'mon everyone 😭 Was this made just to dunk on every dark person with eyes that aren't brown
@@thecyclopsofrainbowleaf 😐
I remember as a lil kid that other black kids would be dunking on each other for having phenotypically black features. Internalized antiblackness was rampant, and I think it got a new coat of paint over the years.
Being black with rarer features isn't bad, but positive and accurate representations are so slim that prioritizing those does way more harm than good.
Thanks for making another hit, cap
YUP!
I’m Indigenous and the (whole ass white) woman that adopted me alongside my sisters (who are Black and Latina) gave me a complex about my eyes. She told me that “women and girls with dark hair and blue eyes are the prettiest people in the world” while she made me watch a Miss America pageant with her. I’ve also noticed in a lot of the media I consume that any characters who explicitly aren’t white have light colored eyes. That’s why all of the characters in the story I’m writing have brown eyes except for the one singular white boy lol. Seriously, as an artist, there are so many different ways to add color contrast! One of my characters is a fashion designer so she wears a lot of bright colored makeup and clothes to contrast with her dark skin, and it also contrasts with the aesthetic of another character, who prefers to wear darker colors. Like… it really is just that easy!
Anyways, sorry for rambling in your comment section lol. I love your content and once I have a steady job I’d love to support you on Patreon! Be safe out there! :)
It's sad what colorism and eurofeaturism does to you as a child. As a kid ive always wished for blue or different colored eyes because i thought i wasn't beautiful enough like the darkskin characters id look up to in cartoons and other places in media, especially partaking in the beauty industry. I've ever seen brown eyes on brown skin viewed as beautiful or special and it messed with me. As i grew older, now I'm 18, im now aware that there's plenty of wrong with the industry and there's no limit to beauty, black is beautiful🙌🏾
This
The eurofeaturism really is a problem, and I'm glad it's being addressed. I'm white and even I wanted blue or green eyes (still kinda do) SO badly when I was a young child with dark brown eyes.
Good 4 u stop worrying bout what everybody else doing
@@annabelconstantine1241 are you seriously telling Black woman not to worry about Black people..? You must be a white person, because y’all hate each other and yourselves. As you should
Self hate is depressing. Especially when black men express it against women.
Honey let them men go around and mess up someone else's life . There ain't nothing to be jealous of
Women do it equally dont get it twisted please.
16:53 Unfortunately, a lot of Asian women are also obsessed with colored (blue, green) eyes. I was watching a livestream of a Chinese artist and she kept going on about how she used to love blue eyes as a child, and always wanted to have blue/green eyes.
I remember as a kid noticing how sasha had hazel green eyes and it was first time I felt insecure about my looks. my dad and everyone on his side of the family had light eyes except me and my older cousin.
Girl you don’t miss, I’ve been thinking about this recently, I used to always make my sims and other avatars with green and gray eyes. I’ve been unpacking why and unlearning these habits that reinforce this weird beauty standard
people with blue eyes be like: 👁👄👁
ok jokes aside, I think darker eyes are beautiful. They look so soft.
Edit: I think I might have to change Hazel's eyes from Green to brown, this definitely made me check myself.
Nothing wrong with green eyes, you don’t have to change it just because of this video 😮
Most are probably mature enough to understand they're an oddity & not take this personal.
Thank you 🤎
I get that Rainbow High wants everything to be fun fantasy colors, but dark fantasy colors are so rarely used for anything but hair and clothes, which is a damn shame because the few characters with dark fantasy skin tones and the one character with dark fantasy colored eyes are gorgeous. As for brown eyes, I've only seen two with really dark eyes; one's white and the other is limited edition. All other brown eyed dolls have medium or light brown eyes. I admittedly haven't paid as much attention to doll lines that have painted eyes, since I like how inset ones look better (and eye swapping is fascinating) but I'm pleased to report that Barbie Looks 10 has dark brown eyes, black hair, and super dark skin. Textured hair would have been nice but at least it's saran and not polypropylene (trust me that's important).
not just doll lines, but cartoons I notice black characters will often have blue eyes , green eyes, red eyes. so strange to me because black eyes and dark brown eyes are so pretty, dont be shy give the dolls and cartoon characters brown and black eyes!
One of my favorite doll lines growing up was the Liv Dolls, and they only made them for a short time but they were really cool because they were slightly more realistic than other dolls. I thought for sure Alexis (the only black girl) had dark brown eyes but I double checked and in most of the pictures they're more of a hazel! They gave Daniella (who might be mixed?) the dark brown eyes! I was always annoyed by the lack of brown eyes in dolls as a kid but I didn't realize how deep the issue went! I appreciate you addressing these topics, now I know what to look out for when buying my little sister dolls!
I am happy that doll lines are becoming more diverse every day, but I didn't understand why they did that.
IM SO GLAD SOMEONE MADE A VIDEO ABT THIS! I’m always told I’m being nit picky when I point out how some black representation is watered down by eauropean features like why does the only black girl have light eyes and loose hair? Ok that’s possible but that’s not MY representation personally as someone with kinky hair and dark eyes and it’s just so disappointing
It's crazy hard to find a brown eye in rainbow high. I hate that, because there are so many shades of brown that are so gorgeous
I have 58 RH /SH dolls, all unique characters, and 17 have brown eyes, way less than half of my collection. Almost all orange / yellow girls have brown eyes but barely none pink or blue have brown eyes. They do this thing were most pink girls have purple eyes and most blue girls have blue eyes and that is why so few have brown eyes. At the moment they have like 4 different brown eye colors, one mixed with orange/gold (ex: Coco), one mixed with pink (ex: Georgia), a light almost pale brown color (Nicole and Priscila for example) and a unique one that Tiara Song has that is a bit darker and has rainbow colored accents. Olivia has hazel eyes but they are a bit more green than brown. They need to do more brown eyes that mix other colors, like a dark brown with purple accents. In general they lack dark colored eyes, a very dark navy blue would have been nice for Kim for example.
This is an interesting video. I’m Latina with a very mixed family & I would’ve never noticed this. I think the darker dolls with blue eyes are pretty, but I can also understand why it is problematic. One thing I have noticed in TV/ film, “black” male roles can go to actors who are dark or medium like Samual Jackson & Denzel, but the female roles go to Zendaya types or Latinas. It’s just weird. I would be hella irritated if they did that to Latino roles where the male actors chosen were way darker than the actresses.
I agree that proximity to whiteness could be a big factor for why black women aren’t given brown eyes. Other reasons could be: “How do we make this black girl stand out from other black girls” (black people look the same type bullshit) or “Since this is our only black girl, let’s make her unique” (white writers underestimating the need for black girls with brown eyes to be represented).
true ghteigbetihgbw
I actually did a custom of Daria to have brown eyes and... it literally suits her so much better??? Brown eyes are so stunning and gorgeous when Rainbow High bothers to do them, and there are some variety of shades that play with lighting and color in intresting ways! They've been getting better about this recently, Coco and Michelle are standouts, but both are still given straight hair over natural textures. I think that some of the dolls having straightened hair is fine, it adds more diversity and shows how versatile hair can be and they can style it in really intresting ways, but when thats the ONLY option it's just infuriating. We've seen Junior High Krystal with afro puffs and they look fantastic! When they bother to do braids like with Vanessa, they look great too, and also are really high quality! Rainbow High is capable of it: but they rarely ever try.
i've noticed this with other races as well, like giving east asian characters blue eyes, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as common as giving black characters light-colored eyes or hair.
Orange Blossom from Strawberry Shortcake 2003 going from dark skin with a dark brown afro to lighter skin with straight hair in 2010🥲🤦🏽♀️
She’s my favorite I hate when they did that 😢.
I would even extend this conversation to include light brown vs dark brown/black eyes and how we hold light brown eyes on a pedestal and fetishize black people who have them, while dark brown or black eyes are considered “dull” or “eerie.” I’ve seen it in my own family and have had to unpack that baggage within myself, but rarely do I hear people discuss this as an example of featurism
I hate playing devil’s advocate but maybe those toy companies were inspired by models like Tyra Banks & Naomi Campbell, who wore colored contacts. Mattel also made Barbies with brown eyes
Yes.
More likely that they’re both impacted by European beauty standards. Models don’t get to choose what they wear, that’s why Tyra was always messing with the contestants on ANTM
So you're telling me that there were no Black models with brown eyes for them to be inspired by.../gen It's cool of Barbie to have brown eyes though.
I get that dolls are bound to use fantasy colors that make them pop more, but it would be nice to see a black girl with brown eyes from Rainbow High. I was just looking at my Shanelle Onyx doll sitting on my shelf yesterday thinking how much more striking she wouldv'e been if she had dark brown eyes.
As for Clawdeen and Howleen I don’t see an issue because they’re meant to be werewolves, so the yellow and hazel eyes make sense.
oh yea for sure. it's not an issue bc of the world monster high is set in but still wanted to bring it up a bit.
Omg you replied hi 👋
even when black girls are being pursued by crushes in these shows are only, if ever, complimented for their eyes if they have these lighter eyes. but typically their “sassy” personalities are often the things that are the topic of discussion when it comes to these “compliments” given to them when they are simply micro aggressions.. (side note, does anyone know the song at 12:40?)
if it's lovin on your mind by the spice girls!
I always thought it was strange that the black dolls always have light colored eyes like do they realize that not every black girl has light colored eyes its okay to give black dolls brown eyes just saying
Now that I think about it, I had a lot of Sasha dolls. The only Bratz doll I had with brown eyes was campfire Felicia
I’ve pointed this out a lot too. Like I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing, because some people do have bright colored eyes (my grandfather is mixed Native American (basically I think we’d address it as white passing) and has blue eyes, so I don’t mind characters having these appearance in certain aspects), but it’s really weird that many doll brands especially have characters with bright colored eyes.
Like Monster High is monsters, so I get that, but Bratz and My Scene have their main black characters have bright colored eyes (which Bratz do change each characters eye colors in many lines, even Cloe), but majority of the black characters in these lines (mostly talking about Bratz) have bright colored eyes, minus Felicia and Kiara. MGA, who make Bratz have this issue the most, because not only did Bratz and Rainbow High do this with their main characters, Project Mc² had Bryden, who is black on the show with brown eyes, but her doll (and even McKeyla’s doll as well) have blue eyes for no real reason. Even Jade from Bratz had green eyes, despite her being Asian and it’s a rare eye color for anyone mixed Asian or fully Asian.
It’s not a bad thing, but I think we can make characters who look like the background they we representing.
20:45, girl, this feeling of confusion you said took me back. Even when my hair got relaxed, it was always poofy (imagine a lion's mane, I even got a nice nickname for it that I liked), so when I relaxed my hair freshly and it fell down, I was always happy that my hair was "normal".
So sad in retrospection
I’m an artist and I always find your opinions so helpful. Thanks for sharing!
huh, i never even realized i have a tendency to draw most of my characters with light eyes until now (granted, i draw a lot of non-human characters with unrealistic eye colors, but still). im gonna be giving more of my characters dark eyes from now on ^^
thx for all the work you put in to educating people!! i find your channel incredibly helpful for unlearning the harmful rhetoric i grew up around :]
This makes me feel a little guilty because my sister has green eyes and darker skin (we're both mixed race, I ended up light skinned with brown eyes), and I always send her pictures whenever I find a drawing or a character that's a black girl with green eyes. She saves every picture, and she always says "THAT'S ME!" it makes her so happy.
But then again I do wish more girls can be able to feel like this too
Rainbow high kind of makes sense considering the basis of the design. But I definitely agree about the other doll lines.
yea i said that rainbow high makes sense because of the world being extremely colorful. also taking into account that so many of the girls have purple eyes lmaooooo. sorry if that section was a bit confusing i could have done better with explaining it.
I really appreciate videos like this! Im a white person who wants to get into character design so not only will it help me later on down the road but it helps me now with my ocs. I want to be able to create good representation for all people, its something thats really really important to me. I know that it definitely would have helped me feel less alone to see nonbinary representation when i was younger, i can imagine its the same for other minorities as well. I don't ever want kids to feel alone like i did.
So as a white passing person who writes and designs characters, i found this to actually be extremely helpful, I'll keep your points in mind!
I love my cali barbie Lea 2004 doll, my Liv Alexis doll and my baby doctor Nikki (from 2006 model?). But I notice as a teen that Barbie started to lighten Nikki doll and made her eyes a lighter brown like it was to a point that Nikki started to look the same in all the I can be barbie models. I love my collection of black dolls but none of them had really super dark eyes. Mostly cinnamon /light brown.
I'm mixed and I have dark reddish brown eyes and light brown skin. I wouldn't say I dislike my skin color. But I've always loved the darker rich brown skin tone black people have, and its unfortunate that when black characters are made, its usually light. Even lighter than my skin tone. And also a lot of time these characters/dolls have straight hair. Afro hair doesn't get enough love. I never liked how people would always want to straighten my hair, and would praise it over my natural hair. Never made sense to me.
Black is beautiful. 🤎
It's funny I was just thinking about how Madison had blue eyes and how that was kind of odd. I always noticed a lack of brown eyes on dolls, especially in the 1980s when I was a kid. You were lucky if you could find ANY doll at all (fashion doll, baby doll, etc) that wasn't blond hair and blue eyes. As a brunette with brown eyes I would have liked a doll that looked like me. I know it's not the exact same thing. I am happy that they have much more diversity in dolls nowadays. And brown eyes are beautiful!
I'm a yt girl with blue eyes and even growing up i noticed this and was uncomfy with it/felt like it was whitewashing (before i understood the concept). I personally always wanted large dark brown eyes because I always felt like they had a "twinkling" or almost sparkling quality like Harriyanna's. Especially because my eyes are kind of small and thought they'd look nicer brown (when i cry, my eyes also look super red and lizard-like becauae of the color lol) Also, as a kid when i watched All Grown Up i was confused by how different they made Susie look that i thought she was a different character.. it was really disrespectful in my opinion to change her so much.
Can we trade eye colors? I have brown eyes and I've always wished I could have blue or green eyes (too afraid to wear contacts though).
The best answer for doll lines doing this would probably be that a light eye color on a dark skinned doll gives more contrast and makes the dolls stand out more as opposed to even light skinned dolls with dark eye colors.
I feel this! Looking back on my childhood and teenage years, I had a lot of internalized antiblackness that my family and friends contributed, probably unconsciously. It’s crazy how much I wanted purple eyes as a kid 😂 But I’ve been working thru it, especially concerning my black character designs and how look at myself, embracing my blackness.
I started to notice this with Tucker and Valerie from Danny Phantom. Kwan and Paulina too. Same with Butch Hartman's other characters, like with Trixie and AJ. Even AJ's parents and Chad! They all had either blue or green eyes. They couldn't have made AT LEAST one of them have brown eyes? Also, Andrea from the original LEGO Friends, though her eyes were later changed from green to brown in the reboot.
Always love your commercial breaks because it then feels like I am watching a TV show with your videos
as an artist (who is white) im so glad to see a video on this topic, it's something i noticed too in general artists will so often give their black characters light eyes instead of brown, and something about it struck me as odd that it's so common... like why are we avoiding dark eyes?
i admit im very guilty of doing this too honestly, going forward I'm going to represent dark brown eyes in my poc characters. i have very dark eyes and they're cool
I’ve definitely struggled with internalize anti-blackness in middle school and high school, due to this one boy in eighth grade making fun of my nose. (He’s black) It took me til the end of high school to love my blackness.
i remember being kinda disappointed that there weren't any brown eyes on the rainbow high dolls until karma and her eyes aren't even a darker kind of brown either. i'm not black and didn't grow up in a particularly black community and the weird dislike of darker eye colors is still something i noticed all the time, like my brother would constantly get compliments for his really light green eyes while people pretty much never commented my eyes (which are a dark brown). i honestly don't remember have ANY dolls (not even light skinned dolls) that had my eye color which always made me really sad as a kid, so i imagine it would have been worse for any black girls whose main doll representation would have lighter eye colors and possibly other eurocentric features that they probably didn't have.
It makes me mad how rare brown eyes are in media in general, particularly character design. It's the most common eye color on EARTH! Green eyes are the RAREST and red hair + green eyes is the rarest combo on earth. Gingers are so over-represented in general, it's so sad that for so long brown and dark eyes have never been complimented or described as beautiful. I'm happy to see it changing somewhat.
I'm white so I don't know how relevant my comment is, but as a brown-eyed girl I've wished that I could have differently colored eyes because blue and green are cool and I thought brown eyes were boring.
Although that's probably because I'm obsessed with fantasy eye colors and green and blue are the closest IRL people can get to those eye colors, and also appear in stories with colorful features.
I love learning about how people did stuff wrong in media, cuz now I can see if I have things like that in my own stories and can fix it. Being born in a country with most people being white and with the media being really bad at representation it's not surprising I had (and probably still do) some colorist views. I also one time accidentally almost wrote a character with one of the hurtful black stereotypes, but then I learned about it and fixed it. And I'll keep on trying to do my best to represent people in the right way. So thank you and people like you, who make it so easy to learn stuff like this.
I always just thought people liked the color contrast, sort of like dark skinned anime girls with white hair.
It’s vital that black girls features, dark skin, hair, and eyes are the majority of the representation. It’s colorist and weird that the majority of dolls have funky eye colors
Thing is the opposite doesn't happen as much - there are tons of designs (in dolls and animation) with fair skin, blonde hair and light eyes but the opposite is deemed "too boring"
@@dorizelion yess the they absolutely do need to have more brown eyed dolls in general.
A thing that i don't like that is common in anime is when they give black female characters staight white hair. If they want to give the characters colored hair they should choose bright colors. 😀
I think another aspect of it in addition to colorist views of creators is the use of contrast and unique character designs. Light contrasting on dark or playing with color themes to go with style and character.
However, this is also connected to illustrators and designers not knowing how to design diverse girls of color and the significant amount of ignorance involved in how these people design or even approve of designs. It doesn't help that it's more likely to be someone with more stale taste to be the supervisor who approves a design for characters within doll lines or cartoons.
i’ve literally always noticed this since childhood
*There are many Sasha dolls that have brown eyes, though, it depends on the Bratz doll.*
lol. this but in animation. as a kid i always wondered why i've seen poc characters have lighter eyes like??? where my dark brown / brown eye ppl at???
colored? um you can just say black ppl or brown ppl l, it's not hard
I love watching your videos, because I learn a lot from you. Thank you so much for all your points of view. I personally want to start a doll line, and I see what is important as far as being inclusive. I definitely want to include beautiful dark skinned characters in my lines. So I will definitely keep all your points in mind while creating my own stuff.
Me and all my friends when we where younger all thought that us having brown eyes made us boring
"Purple is a very rare eye color " 😅
I know some artist like to make characters with contrasting/ unique colors. But it sucks that brown eyes are never a feature and hardly ever romantised. Only time i ever heard brown eyes being mentioned was the song Brown eyed girl.
As a black person with blue eyes i'm rather depressed you made this video telling everyone i don't exist😭🤔
She didn’t say you don’t exist, she said the majority don’t have lighter eye colors like you do. Keyword is “majority”
@@aoto8897 But why not keep representation of the minority? Many people don't even know about these eyes. I feel it's as silly as complaining that a character shouldn't be transgender because it isn't what everyone else is like. For me it was exciting to see someone represent this, i had never seen that before recent times. This video felt like they're saying "Woah ! They once gave a black character blue eyes! I have never seen someone like that irl so i must cancel art of everyone who looks different and is new to me"
My great uncle had blue eyes, she wasn’t trying feel unwanted.
The conversation we needed.
about the eye surgery thing- She NEEDS to get that undone. I'm dead serious. She needs to do something about that or she WILL go blind. [tw for kind of graphic eye talk]
I'm assuming this is a Bright Ocular situation where the new eye color is surgically inserted over the original eye color, sort of like permanent contacts. the problem with this is that with movement the inserts rub against your iris and pupils and over time the inserts will wear away at your eyes so much they become permanently disfigured and you go blind. These surgeries are completely illegal in most first world countries but some people with enough money still travel out of country to do it anyway. Sherliza Moe made a video about it a while back, but fair warning, the imagery used is very graphic and may be very upsetting to look at. It's a horrible procedure and no one should ever get it.
So I'm someone who's in the doll collecting side of Rainbow High and other brands . Rainbow High has a huge problem with not giving dolls brown eyes . The first wave of dolls had either blue,green, or purple eyes . And they still refuse to give allot of dolls brown eyes . Allot of use I myself included are sick and tired of the purple eyes and cause they are overused in Rainbow High.
As a Kenyan, I can say that personally that it just looks really cool to me. They're so pretty, and I see normal looking people with normal eyes all the time, so why not have a little fantasy?
That’s my logic
Omg Hariyanna, this might be the reason child me was so obsessed with giving my fictional black girl characters blue eyes! And I loooved Myscene and Bratz and obsessed over their eye colors. Had me likeToni Morrison’s book Bluest Eye 😭 I took a class in college where we had to read all her books (of course she released on that year) and it was a lot and the content was so intense I would be sobbing, ptsd triggered reading the book then typing my homework response tears streaming down my face lol
Thank you! even as a dark guy myself I’m tired of seeing dark skinned characters with lighter eyes.
THANK YOU for that burst of nostalgia, w the pbs like into great video😊
I thought the hazel eyes was cuz Werewolf. Cuz anybody of any race is often depicted/signaled as not entirely human if they have yellow-spectrum eyes
Imo, I think they’re trying to water down their blackness which is sad…
THATS IT.
I feel like the early 2000s black dolls were heavily influenced by tyra banks and Beyoncé which tyra isn't the greatest influence on children especially black children
24:20 I think you are talking about Aisha and yes - she is one of their prettiest dolls! I am from east Europe and I am white with red hair and green eyes, but I was always appreciating every type of beauty! And recently, Mattel showed voice-actress for Venus from Monster High and OMG!!! That lady is sooo pretty! Her name is Rutina Wesley and her eyes are definitely black, but omg sooo beautiful! I mean - people who are prefering one race over another are just stupid af, because every human can be pretty if you look at them at certain "angle"
There's also Wydowna. Although, I always thought that the hazel (I honestly thought it was yellow) eyes on the Wolf family was because of the werewolf thing, now that I think about it, some of the other werewolves did not have those yellow eyes.
Is this video how I learn hazel eyes aren't just another word for brown eyes?
I always use it for Brown eyes😭
Hazel is like a mix of green and brown eyes. It’s like a greenish type of brown.
Hazel is like coffee with milk color, usually partially green too.
"Brown Eyes" is one of Destiny's Child's prettiest songs 😍😊😁
Thank you for bringing attention to this. As My Scene collectors a lot of us are craving a character with dark eyes & Dark skin. There is a character Jai but she's a one off and extremely rare. She's very popular as she's the only character these features. The number one doll I crave is a My Scene character with similar colouring as Felicia. P.S I'm white as fuck with green eyes and I want this, plus most collectors I know regardless of race want this. So I pray companies will actually pay attention.
Harri: They try to make black girls appeal to the white gaze
UA-cam Closed Captions: They try to make black girls appeal to the white GAYS.
😭😭☠
I mean, gays and gaze does sound similar as a gay and enby person myself.
As much as I like Golden Kamuy for what it gets right, the main character Asiripa falls under this category of "blue-eyed hero." We laugh at Memoirs of a Geisha, but give GK a pass because Asirpa is mixed. I know a lot of mixed Ainu, and none of us have blue eyes either. She has blue eyes because she's special, she's special because she has blue eyes. 🤷🏻♂️
Another thing I wanted to add that I noticed was around that time alot of knock off brands that were making black dolls really similar to the ones I mentioned earlier bratz myscene they all had a common theme was they stuck with brown eyes on pretty much all of them. I Think it stands to speak volumes especially in those times there were even some afro textured styles in the bratz knock off but i feel they were mostly straight and very loose wave styled hair.overall as a whole there needs to be a serious change in the doll industry with brown eyes it needs to be represented more I feel like we are just seeing it with Barbie It's rare to find Black barbie,Ken with dark brown eyes if not damn near impossible.
My scene ❤ Jai was darker and had brown eyes but they only made one doll of her witch sucks
And straight hair.
Im sitting here, looking at my Rainbow High and Shadow High. Also LoL Dolls. The only doll that has the dark brown eyes is Speedster. I also have shelnelle from Mermaidz who has light brown eyes.
Madison from my scene is supposed to be biracial because the my scene line was designed by Lily Martinez and she designed the characters besides Barbie after her real life friends, the Madison doll resembles her best friend and Chelsea was originally supposed to be Latina (poc) but was later changed to white.
I do want to say though that the line of my scene dolls weren’t that diverse at all, there has only been one dark skinned girl “Jai” she had brown eyes but was discontinued after only one release, I wish they would have kept her in the line.
I understand completely where u are coming from but as far as myscene and bratz go which are my favorite doll lines based on my age when they came out hella black girls were wearing contacts for fashion on their own just like the styles or trends the dolls came with. We also have Jai of myscene she is darkskin with brown eyes and most rare myscene doll. TYSON is light skin with green eyes even the flavas dolls did this.During those times fashion contacts werr very common in the early 2000s.i even had my good fair share of blue contacts and my nature eye color is light brown my dad and lots of people in my family dark skin with blye eyes. they absolutely do need more dolls with darker brown eye colors as well there is no reason it ahould be more black dolls with light eyes especially in more modern times like today hence rainbow high.Also natural textures we need it all not half dont half ass it.
I remember watching Wednesday with my parents and whenever Bianca was on screen my dad said that her eyes were strange. I thought it was just something that the sirens in the show had but I wonder if the siren thing was an excuse to give her light eyes.
There's actually one other black girl in my scene, Jai she was in Jamming in Jamaica but only got one doll but was darker skinned and had brown eyes she's one of my grail my scene side characters
ugh i wish i knew she gotten a doll i seen jammin in jamaica but had no idea she got one. when i looked for black my scene dolls the only ones who came up were madisons wtf
Something that will forever bother me is how they used to whitewash the hell out of Sasha in the commercials and arts on the dolls’ boxes.
But I do agree, making black women characters’ eyes blue or green (or even lighter brown) was just another way to make them more “acceptable” to the “main audience”. Sad but not surprising.
I think it is a great topic to discuss, but I also think it probably is worth noting that early humans showed a preference for blue or light eyes either for aesthetics or nonverbal communication (a similar reason to why humans have white sclerae instead of black sclerae like other great apes)
The mutation for blue eyes appeared in the human timeline before the mutation for light skin.
So before Europeans were even _white_ a lot of them had blue eyes.
4:29 I immediately thought of Alex when viewing the thumbnail and was irked as hell when she has bright blue eyes when she’s supposed to be blasian. I know odd hair/eye colors are present in animanga series where Asian people can have odd hair colors, but Gangsta isn’t like that where gritty realism is more present and Alex having blue eyes is really odd to me.
12:00 what is the music it feels... Nostalgic...Doremi ?
yes!
Since I could remember I always thought green, blue and hazel colored eyes always looked pretty us people of color and never really had a “reason” why
Thinking about it I didn’t think I felt brainwashed or controlled from media to think it’s pretty and I do like my dark brown eyes as a brown person I love brown eyes too and I honestly didn’t know companies and people had a history of giving people of color these eyes because they thought that’s how THEY thought we’d look best
It's not just dolls that give dark skinned dolls light colored eyes, most of the time blue eyes. Disney's Tarzan the animated series had a dark skinned character, Queen La with light colored eyes and white hair. The same thing Disney did with the Atlantians from Atlantis. And, why does Master Xehanort have light colored eyes and white hair despite being dark skinned, especially since he's the villain?
2 black girls @ school made fun of me because they thought I had “black eyes”, but I told them that I have “dark brown” eyes...
We’re they black or biracial ??
@@no-thanks they were Black African...
@@shinycutediva wow, i'm African blk & that's strange because black brown eyes are more likely to be found among African blk people anyway...
as someone who was torn down by my mixedrace & blk american peers for being "very black(darkskin, black brown eyes, wide features, kinky hair, African ethnicity)," I relate to you so much nonetheless.🥲🫂