From South Africa: A Whiter Shade of Black

Happy New Year, all!

Meet Alexa, an artist from Malaville. Alexa is my first Malaville doll. You have probably seen these dolls in blogger Male Doll World's post from last month or on their Instagram site. In 2015, doll designer Mala Bryan introduced the Malaville Collection with four characters: Maisha, Mala, Malina, and Mhina. Maisha and Mala made my Want List. Two years later, Alexa, Imani, Lola, and Viv joined the original four Malaville dolls. 

Malaville Alexa the Artist doll

Alexa is the first play scale albino fashion doll. Albinism is a rare condition where a person has a low rate of melanin production. The low melanin appears as white skin, white or very pale blond hair, and usually blue eyes. eyes that can be pink, blue, violet, hazel, or brown. Thanks, BlackKitty, for that catch! (Alexa's eyes look pale brown to me.) Unfortunately, albinos have experienced limb and life-threatening dangers stemming from superstitions about their condition. In an attempts to counter these false beliefs and to rally support for albinos, Mala Bryan added Alexa to her doll line.

Albinism appears in all races and in other animals as well as plants. You can see this range in current albino fashion models.  Toy vlogger ToysND shows an albino Mattel Barbie Fashionista doll for the 2018 line at 1:19 in a recent YouTube vlog.

I will compare Alexa with other fashion dolls in a future post. Please let me know if there are specific dolls you'd like to see with her. What do you think of Alexa?