"Barbie, Braids, and Clothes: Black Mother Creates ""My Natural Doll'  With Kinky Hair For Black Girls blogged  by: @avah taylor  @balleralert Black Mother Creates 'My Natural Doll' With Kinky Hair For Black Girls - blogged by @avah_taylor - ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ When she couldn't find any dark-skinned dolls with kinky hair that resembled her daughters, Congolese, Atlanta-based hairstylist MushiyaTshikuka created her own. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ In an Instagram post, Mushiya explained her frustration with searching for a black doll on the market that was a reflection of her two daughters, Kasai, 7, and Keleshe, 5. ""I refused for my gorgeous black girls to have white dolls because I was not in the mood to confuse their confidence. I had worked so hard on it,"" she wrote. ""But every black doll I saw had yarn, straight hair, long synthetic whitish curls or were just BALD."" ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ When friends and family bought them white barbies, Mushiya would return them or throw them away. The ""Cutting It in the ATL"" reality star, 36, said she even went to America's biggest doll store — American Girl — and the black doll they sold ""was dressed in slave clothes,"" but she refused to buy her little girls a doll that ""didn't look like them or celebrate their greatness & beauty."" ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ She told PEOPLE, ""I understand the psychology behind the toys that children play with — they want to become like what the dolls look like, and my daughters are black with kinky hair. I didn't want them to say, 'I want to be a white girl with straight hair.' "" ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ After her daughters and older son suggested they make their own doll instead, Mushiya created My Natural Doll. The first doll in the line is named Keleshe and costs $195. She wears an African-print babydoll dress, has dark skin and 100% Virgin Afro Kinky hair from the Runway Curls hair line that can be twisted, braided, and washed. The doll also comes with a song that features empowering lyrics about self-love. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ""It is important that our little girls are constantly exposed to a reflection of themselves — beautiful dark skin and kinky hair like that which grows out of their own head,"" says Mushiya. blackgirlsrock buyblack blackgirlmagic melanin"
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