Monday, July 14, 2014

Project: I Am Elemental



IAmElemental Action Figures for Girls were designed to be a positive and fierce re-interpretation of the traditional female action figure.  Their store is currently taking pre-orders.

As a kid, I had dozens, maybe hundreds of action figure, including practically every G.I. Joe and Star Wars figure ever released in the eighties.  Looking back, I'm surprised at just how few of those toys were female characters, and I imagine that, had I been girl, trips to the toy store might have been a good deal more frustrating.

Looking through my own collection (which of course, I am faaar too old to still display in my bedroom), I can't help but reflect that toy manufacturers are even worse at representing the female gender than comic publishers.  Not only are female characters under-represented, those that do make it to shelves are often highly over-sexualized.

New Yorkers Dawn Nadeau and Julie Kerwin set out to address this disparity with a line of super powered action figures specifically designed for young girls and funded through a recently successful Kickstarter campaign.




"We set out to design a series of figures with healthier breast, waist and hip ratios; fierce, strong females worthy of an active, save-the-world storyline that fosters creativity in kids," the pair stated on their Kickstarter page.

Unlike male superheroes, whose powers come from external sources such as spider bites, these female action figures find their powers through positive emotional qualities that include bravery, persistence, enthusiasm, and honesty. "IAmElemental action figures encourage girls to reinvent the superhero myth by creating their own empowering stories. In the traditional, male-dominated superhero universe, action figures are endowed with powers from without (via a spider bite, mutant DNA, or some sort of "accident"). In the IAmElemental universe, the girl herself is the superhero - and she has all the superpowers she will ever need already inside of her."

Unlike many of the female action figures on the market today, these brightly-colored action figures feature a more realistic body shapes and are designed so that they can move their bodies properly and sit down without splaying their legs.

Read more about the project at Time Magazine.



To read more about the project, check out these interview: Amanda Hess interviews both Kerwin and Nadeau for Slate: Finally, an Action Figure That Won't Make Girls Hate Themselves, Dawn Nadeau is interviewed for Refinery29, and Julie Kerwin talks to Womanthology.


Bravery


Energy


Enthusiasm


Fear


Honesty


Industry


Persistence




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