Mary Eubanks is the CEO and owner of Children of America Dolls. Her company is helping the wide variety of ethnicities in America to embrace and celebrate their differences. By producing dolls of racial and ethnic diversity, she is helping little girls develop a healthy image of themselves from an early age and allowing them to develop a sense of beauty that’s inclusive of their ethnicity.
As a little girl, Eubanks, like many other non-caucasian Americans, only had dolls to play with that didn’t look like her. These dolls represented the standard for beauty. They were what we as a society deemed as “perfection.” This uneasiness stuck with her throughout her life and eventually led her to create Children of America Dolls in 2010. “If we could go back a hundred years and the toy industry had given us dolls that looked a lot like us, this would not be an issue,” says Eubanks. “But that didn’t happen. It has only started to happen, and I’m being generous, in the last seven or eight years. That’s also true in this country for Asian and Hispanic dolls.”
It is with this in mind that Eubanks developed her product line of dolls. “Children of America Dolls…come much closer than any other doll line to the diversity of different children in America,” she says. “In America, there are certainly other groups, but I chose the largest groups first.” Children of America Dolls have four dolls to choose from: Brianna, who is African-American; Andrea, who is Hispanic-American; Mia, who is Asian-American; and Ashley, who is Caucasian-American.
The simple fact that even four different ethnicities of dolls stands out above the crowd says a lot about the lack of diversity that little girls had been subjected to for decades. “It’s important for children to see themselves or someone who represents them in their early formative years. It helps to nurture them and build self-esteem,” says Eubanks. For Children of America Dolls’ target audience, little girls ages 3-8, seeing a symbol of beauty that they can identify with can do wonders to fight long-lasting self-esteem and self-image issues that so many girls and women struggle with.
Eubanks plans to continue with the current line of four dolls for the rest of this year, but she does plan on expanding her line in the future. “The opportunity is unlimited,” she says. Indeed, with the melting pot that America is, the opportunities are unlimited. We all look different, every individual is unique. With Eubanks and Children of America Dolls, the future for all little girls seems brighter than ever.
To learn more about how to obtain a Children of America doll, visit: http://www.coadolls.com.