i emailed the website as was interested in seing if they had any boy dolls.i said id heard about the website on mn.he replied saying they used to have a boy doll(ds would love one)and that he heard about our 'debate' he sent me a copy of the email hed sent to the op and said maybe other posters may like to see it.personally i think he sounds like a very nice person and not racist what so ever!!
heres the message .
I was still wondering what might come of your inquiry when earlier this evening I noticed that our server was inundated with visits.
"Mimi", it turns out, is now a "celebrity cloth doll" and the subject of much debate, some of it considered and thoughtful and some it rather flippantly judgmental as a great deal of internet chat can be.
We have invested a great deal of our personal life in what we make and in our mom-and-pop enterprise and it I must acknowledge that it is awkward to see it the subject of such consideration. Perhaps I should have given that little doll another name, and not that of the young woman we all missed so much when we left that home, never to return.
Yes, the work we do is very personal. Mimi is my history and I will not forget her. Period. And as for the girl who makes the dolls, Penelope, I still remember her walking alone down the centre of the High Street in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape holding a single wreath and wearing her academic gown. She was walking alone because the law in South Africa at the time held that if another joined her it would be considered a "riotous assembly". It made her especially vulnerable and on either side of the street were people were shouting and swearing at her. Some spat. She kept on walking and looked straight ahead. She was giving her contribution to a vigil to mark the passing of Steven Biko, the Black Consciousness leader who had died in detention a week before. She was something else, Penelope. Never suffered fools and never looked the other way. I was lucky enough that she allowed me to move in with her a week later and we have been together ever since, more or less 30 years. But I would not have the courage to ask her to stop making her dolls.
I am reminded of the remarkable speech that the US Presidential candidate, Barack Obama, gave earlier today in Philadelphia. He was addressing the very issue that has exercised your chat group this evening: race. Here is a salient quote:
"In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well."
I am content that I do not feel I need to further prove Rosablue's anti-apartheid credentials to you or anyone else. I am secure because I know that those days are over. Thankfully that enemy has to some respect been slain.
Funny thing is, I am not sure that we have actually sold any Mimi dolls from our website. They only one I have ever sold personally was in our little shop and the customer was black. And by the way, the "Luca" doll was only discontinued because it was just too boring. Shucks!
Best wishes
Luca (@ Rosablue)