Corage Dolls is a multicultural doll company that helps to elevate, educate, and encourage girls of color to be unstoppable. When I was in high school I watched the documentary “Girl Like Me” in which a “doll test” was conducted. A group of black children were given a black doll and a white doll and asked various questions about the doll's perceived attributes such as which one was smarter, prettier, uglier, etc. The majority of the children chose the white doll when it came to anything positive and when the children were asked which doll they associated most with they said the black doll. Now you must know that this same test was conducted more than 60 years earlier and garnered similar results. It was frustrating and disheartening to see how children as young as 5 could already have a negative perception of themselves and internalized racism. I didn’t know at the time what I wanted to do with this realization, but I knew I would always remember that moment. Numerous studies and child psychologists have shown that many children of color specifically girls undervalue themselves due to a lack of positive representation in images and the media. Especially, in the toy industry where toy shelves carry dismal levels of diversity, children derive meaningful lessons from their toys as they’re building their imagination and cognitive skills. As time went on I soon built this idea of wanting to fix the toy aisle with positive representation of dolls of color that weren’t fashion dolls. I wanted to celebrate black beauty through dolls that looked authentic and liked girls of today, educate children on rich career developmental stories that were inspired by girls today taking charge in the space of entrepreneurship, STEM, activism, and more and lastly, build a sense of sistership
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