I think I started off my last review with the disclaimer that Monster High has a special place in my heart so I have a certain amount of bias towards the original line.
Well, my favorite original line doll was Cleo. I love her looks, I love her personality, I got more Cleo dolls than any other character. So whatever high bar I have for Monster High, it's especially, ESPECIALLY HIGH for Cleo.
...Cleo is also my favorite new G3 doll! But I also have some serious issues with her body.
Ok, from left to right I've got a G1 Cleo, a G2 cleo with a G1 head because I really didn't like her G2 head, and also the G2 body is customized so that her wraps aren't weirdly flesh colored, G3 Cleo, and G1 Nefera. I included Nefera in there to show how the new Cleo skintone stacks up. I've heard people calling her Nefera-colored and while is is darker, she has a warmer skintone while Nefera has a cooler one. Her body is slightly shiny like Nefera's though, and I love that.
G3 Cleo doesn't look much like G1/G2 Cleo, but then none of the G3 dolls do. I hate her ears, but I like her face.
The body is kind of... odd. Lots of people were saying she has the same body as Draculaura, but taller. Oh god no. She does not. I understand that she looks similar with the super thick thighs, but here's what happens when you try to do a clothing swap:
....right! Let's examine that in more detail.
It's the side view that makes you realize why Drac's clothes are so much bigger: she doesn't just have width added, she has depth added. Cleo mostly has width added.
This is why side-to-side doll comparisons can be really deceptive. If you really want to see what's going on, you need numbers!
I haven't had a chance to sit down and take all the measurements of the new dolls yet but I did take a few. Cleo's waist measurement is 6 cm (all other dolls besides Draculaura have a 6.5cm waist, Draculaura has a 7 cm waist) and a 6.8cm thigh girth (all other dolls besides Draculaura have a 6cm thigh, Draculaura has a 7cm thigh). Cleos' thigh measurement is 113% of her waist measurement and that is insane.
I've been thinking a while about how to talk about this because everybody has been like "whee body diversity" and I am very, very happy to have dolls with different body types even though it makes my life harder just like I was with the new Barbie bodies but... ok... imagine when they came out with the new Barbie bodies, they introduced a doll that looked just like Jessica Rabbit and a doll that looked just like the most photoshopped photo Kim Kardashian has ever had and everyone was going "OH GOOD MORE HEALTHY BODY TYPES" and you just kind of feel like you're going insane and wondering if your alarm clock is going to go off soon.
I invite you to measure your waist and thigh measurements. No, you don't have to tell me. Your thigh measurement will be smaller. You can do 1000 squats a day and wear a waist cincher and it will be smaller. Thiccc thighs and tiny waists are currently a fad, just heroin chic was a fad, just like the hourglass figure was a fad, just like the no-bust flapper silhouette was a fad just like the S curve was a fad.
There are fads in body types and the extremes of those fads are never healthy. If you want to celebrate there being different body shapes and that being OK, do! That is a great thing to normalize, but what shouldn't be normalized is instead of having 1 super unhealthy extreme body type, replacing it with multiple super unhealthy extreme body types.
So this makes me sad. Like, deeply sad. I am hoping that as more dolls come out, there will be less extreme fad body types (Abbey, when you come out I hope you are cut and have actual biceps).
I really wish that if this body was done, it was done on a doll that had a reason for it. Like Lagoona. It would make sense for a mer-girl to have very muscular legs and leg fins. On Cleo it just comes across as she's a diva and this is what a diva should look like. Bleh.