Lisa Nakamura's text on avatars and visual Culture echoed my experience with Unicef's doll-making workshops in classrooms in France. Terri Kapsalis' quote, "The catalog encourages girls to pick dolls that look like them" (p. 141) reminded me of Catherine, pictured above. She chose the hair color of the doll to be blond and had the outfit sewn but still needed sharpies for the facial features. She asked one of the adult volunteers for help to draw the doll's eyes. The woman yanked the doll out of her hands and told the Vietnamese-French girl: "Why don't we give her beautiful almond-shaped eyes like yours???" and proceeded to draw them without letting Catherine explain that she wanted her doll to have big round blue eyes, as she'd told me.On the other hand, some of the other children had no problem creating dolls -- off of a given "base" (brown, black, white or orange) -- that did not completely resemble their own bodies:
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