There’s a certain amount of grumbling each holiday season as parents and grandparents search for toys, books and DVDs that they think will serve as positive influences on their children – and can’t find them. Instead, they’re facing seemingly endless rows of the bare-bellied Bratz and their imitators on everything from plastic dolls to bedspreads to videos.
This year, however, there are some alternatives. Two characters from generations past have been resurrected, updated and packaged as hip yet wholesome little girls.
They are Holly Hobbie, who in 1980 was the No.1 licensed character in the United States, and Eloise, the girl who turned Manhattan’s luxurious Plaza Hotel into her personal playground in a series of books that thrived from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Actress Lynn Redgrave, who provides the voice of Nanny, caregiver to that precocious hotel guest, in the new DVD “Eloise: Little Miss Christmas,” says that she was eager to work on something her grandchildren will enjoy. She has fond memories of her children and their Eloise moments when they lived in New York in the 1970s.
“We had the book, we did the Plaza,” Redgrave says. “They’d go in and say, ‘Where is Eloise?”‘
Country music star LeAnn Rimes voices Holly Hobbie in her new animated DVDs, including “Christmas Wishes.” “Holly Hobbie was before my time, but some of my friends in their mid-30s knew who she was and clued me in,” says Rimes, 24.
Rimes sees a bit of herself in Holly: They both have a pretty clean public image and are considered role models. Plus, each is sort of tomboyish.
“I don’t have children of my own yet, but I feel like I’m laying the groundwork so I’ll have positive messages to send my kids,” Rimes says.
Moms – or, in Rimes’ case, would-be moms – do seem to be the key to these old characters getting a new life.
Some 90 percent of mothers believe there are not enough wholesome role models, celebrities, characters and brands for young girls to emulate, according to a survey of 1,010 moms with daughters 4 to 9 years old. It was conducted by market researcher Synovate on behalf of American Greetings.
It also helps that today’s moms were the girls hoarding Holly Hobbie paraphernalia 25 years ago.
A potential problem surfaced with Holly Hobbie, however: With her patchwork clothes and her blue bonnet, she looked dated.
“We needed to create a Holly Hobbie that resonates with today’s girls,” Knepfer says, “so we gave birth to the great-granddaughter. We re- created Holly Hobbie as a new character. She looks totally different but has a lot of the same attributes – caring, sharing and friendship. But instead of a blue bonnet she wears a newsboy cap.”
Regina McMenomy, a Washington State University graduate student researcher specializing in female pop icons, notes that both Holly and Eloise embrace their girlishness while being strong, independent thinkers. So many of the newer girl characters focus on power and gender equality that they’ve lost their femininity, she says.
Holly is “supremely feminine” and is “tomboyish without being tough,” while Eloise is a playful trickster, McMen-
omy says. These are all qualities that seem to have been purposely excluded from the next generation of girl icons.
“Maybe we’re coming into a place where it’s OK to be girls and not to be so much one way or another,” she says.
