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Alexander's stance on the suitability of dolls
as toys for boys was quite progressive for her
time. Although she "would never advocate a
mother or father rushing out and buying dolls for
boys," she also did not believe that boys would
become "effeminate" if they did play with dolls. In
fact, she thought dolls could play an important
role in fostering boys' natural nurturing
instincts. "I don't think a parent should
ridicule boys when they show affection for little
sister's dolls," she asserted. "After all,
the paternal instinct in men is an important as the
maternal instinct in women, and it couldn't be good
to crush that instinct in a child."
Despite her progressive views, Alexander's
relationship to feminism was complex. As a strong,
outspoken, self-sufficient woman, she clearly did
not conform to traditional ideas about women's
roles and characteristics. She encouraged her
female employees to be self-reliant and in the
early years even brought them to Margaret Sanger's
clinic for checkups and birth control. According to
her secretary, "Madame Alexander was the
original feminist. She was doing a man's job when
the world was not always accepting or approving of
an independent woman."
Yet with many of her creations apparently
encouraging girls to be more concerned with
appearance and etiquette than with
self-fulfillment, Alexander was forced to respond
in the 1970s and 1980s to charges from the growing
feminist movement that the doll industry was
retrograde and harmful to women. Denying vigorously
that her dolls contributed to the oppression of
women, she argued instead that they helped to build
up a girl's "capacity to love others and
herself." The role of dolls—and of toys more
generally—in building children's sense of
appropriate gender roles remains hotly debated
today.
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