Kthnxbi? It’s “internet speak” meant as a sarcastic goodbye to someone. It always makes me think of this old Saturday Night Live skit with Helen Hunt (that unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist in video online).

Today, however, I’m sending my completely sarcastic and uncaring “buh-bye” to the Bratz dolls. A California judge has ordered the company that makes them to stop doing so and to begin removing existing inventory from store shelves after the holiday shopping season. What not sooner?

Is there really anyone who will miss them other than the manufacturer that was raking in dough? Even those mothers that I know allowed their daughters to buy them seemed to not really like, but just generally tolerate them and their overt sexiness. Scholastic had stopped distributing their books due to parental pressure (or maybe not). They were a big part of the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (PDF), and a topic of discussion the world over. In Australia, they even came up with the term “corporate paedophilia” to describe this sort of sexualization of young girls (although Barbie Magazine bears more of the brunt in their report than Barbie’s rival Bratz).

Now, I totally agree that “the view our children have of the world and sex ultimately comes back to us,” but how much easier it would be for “us” to establish that view if we weren’t competing with so many external factors that don’t mesh with it.

Bratz are only one of many of those challenges we face as mothers trying to raise daughters. My girl doesn’t own a one, and yet while brushing her teeth one night she looks in the mirror and says “I’m fat.” That sort of body-image pressure won’t ease up if Bratz come off the shelf, but I’m still going to join many others who wish them a fond farewell:

• Mathman’s Ramblings: Barbie Kicks Slutz (oops, I mean Bratz) Dolls …
• Mysterious Creature: Goodbye Bratz!!!
• Bye Bye Skanky Bratz Dolls! « Welcome to Sarcazmo!
• things leaked out of my head - don’t [bleep] with barbie man