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We've run articles on many a controversial subject here at Bitch, and readers have responded with appropriate ardor to such topics as fat suits, pro-porn theory, eating disorders, the "hasbian" phenomenon, and more. Yet some of the most impassioned letters we've gotten in the past year or so hinged on a short piece in issue #35 about the disturbing equine makeover of My Little Pony. (It's not archived on the site yet, unfortunately.) Responses to Jesse Rutherford's Love/Shove — which took a close look at the evolution of the 1980s toy-box staple and concluded that Hasbro's aesthetic tinkering has yielded an undeniably sexualized parade of ponies — ranged from assertions that it was "terrifically over the top" and "creepily overstated" to veiled accusations that Rutherford's interest in the redesign was "the kind of logic only someone who is unreasonably sexually obsessed with ponies would arrive at."

I was reminded of this the other day when I read a recent New York Times piece on the new makeover of Strawberry Shortcake, another classic of '80s playtime who continues to be a touchstone for girly nostalgia. It seems, according to the American Greetings company —Shortcake's sugar daddy — that today's girls weren't feeling the icon's Raggedy Anne styling, Calico-cat companion, and unhealthy preference for gumdrops over fresh fruit. (I was never a fan of the doll, so I can't verify personally whether I ever got the latter directive from Shortcake and her pals, but I will say that my childhood friend Pilar had the whole fruity family — Apple Dumplin', Huckleberry Pie, Orange Blossom — and the sickly, chemical scent of them emanated from her bedroom as a kind of pastel fog.)

When I think back on my own childhood, I find that my memories are sepia-toned, by which I do not mean that I am especially nostalgic, but, rather, that I grew up in the 1970s, and brown was hot. Yellow, too. Those two colors comprised the entire palette of the complete Little Tikes line and many other elements of my visual universe. Everything else was red, green, or blue. All little kids had pageboy haircuts, and boys and girls wore the same Garanimals and played with the same Legos.