Positively Perfect Dolls Promote Self-Love in Little Black Girls

Positively Perfect Dolls Spread Black Girl Magic

Black dolls, brown dolls, mixed and blended dolls - with real-life African features and curly and coily textured hair types - NOT white or European dolls with skins painted darker.

These are products from Positively Perfect dolls (PPD) launched in 2009 by a college professor with zero toy making experience, Dr Lisa Williams — who set out to create a multicultural doll line to reflect the planet’s true ethnic diversity after feeling horrified upon seeing a television documentary from the 1950s of a little Black girl who stated that she herself and a doll with “nasty” brown skin wasn't pretty.

A Hit Amongst Socially-Aware Parents

The dolls have since become very popular among people looking to nourish the minds and souls of their children. Monique Lawson, a non-black mother, explains why she chose to purchase the dolls for her daughters.

"The message that I want to send to my girls by having all different colour dolls and all different hair texture dolls is that everybody is beautiful. There is not one race or culture that is beautiful and by them seeing these dolls and playing with them everyday when they go to school and they go outside in the world, they'll know that, hey, everybody is the same. I don't really want them to see colour. I want them to see the beauty in everyone."

Banking with Purpose

In light of the unprecedented global Black Lives Matter movement, racial diversity is trending and PPD is reaping the financial benefits and rewards for what started out as a much more profound social cause. "Yes, we have seen an uptick in sales. Our sales have gone like 250% because people are one, having a recognition, that, well they've already known that they've wanted the dolls. The issue before is, did they exist? And if so, where did they exist? And so, having the opportunity to share with people like yes, we are here, and we have a doll for every age of your child from the crib to all the way to when they are no longer interested in playing with dolls, we have a doll for you. We have a doll, regardless of your skin tone, or your hair type or hair texture or gender, boys and girls, we have a doll for you. So now that people are not only looking but they're finding us, yes, sales are skyrocketing."

Continued Growth and Further Diversity

Dr Lisa not only created the PPD for younger children but also Fresh Dolls for older children — which she launched in 2017. What started out with only two black dolls now has 65 dolls - and the successful, socially-aware entrepreneur is not stopping there as she is working on an Asian line of dolls next.