"Well, Barbie/LEGO/Disney/etc is only doing all of this diversity and representation to sell more stuff!"
Yeah, I know. Believe me, I am very well aware. These are evil megacorporations who don't care about people, only profit, and they need to be gone. I get that. I get that all of this stuff they're doing is only for money.
But here's the thing- that doesn't make it bad.
Yes, obviously, the best thing would be if Disney or Mattel or LEGO or any other megacorporation got shut down. That would be wonderful. But the thing is, that's not happening right now. It will one day, but we haven't gotten to that point yet. Right now, whether we like it or not, these megacorporations exist and they're going strong and there's nothing we can do about it. For now, they exist. But they exist regardless of whether or not they do this diversity thing, they could just keep going with all of the abled white cisgender toys. But they aren't, they are expanding that. To make money, yes. But they're diversifying their toys.
So now, a little girl with albinism has a Barbie and a LEGO friend who look just like her. Children with hearing aids and cochlear implants have toys with those same devices. Children in wheelchairs have dolls in wheelchairs. Kids with prosthetic limbs have toys with prosthetic limbs. Kids with vitiligo have toys with vitiligo. Girls with Down Syndrome now have dolls who have Down Syndrome- hell, Black girls with Down Syndrome have a Black doll with Down Syndrome and she's even got natural hair. Girls with autism now have an autistic Barbie who even uses an AAC tablet! And I know, I know, a girl with scoliosis saw that Chelsea doll with her curved spine and her scoliosis brace, and she got so excited that she almost cried. Hell, Mattel even has the transgender and gender-neutral "Creatable World" dolls, and one of those dolls looks exactly like me and I tell you that I nearly cried as a grown adult because that was a transmasc doll who looks exactly like me. Children are finally getting toys that look like them, widely-available toys they can see themselves in, and that's beautiful. It's good for them to have toys that look like them. It's not fair that children have previously only had white, abled, cisgender, one-build-for-all toys. And it's good for other children, too, because now they're seeing people with disabilities, people of colour, people of different builds, people with natural hair, etc, and it's becoming more normal for them. That's good for them.
Yes, I know that all of this is just to make money. But that doesn't make it a bad thing. Because this is good for the kids. So yes, the motives are far from pure.
But I actually think this is still a good thing
