Anyone familiar with my blog might have noticed I have a bit of a vampire “thing”. Indeed, for the last three years before Halloween, I’ve done a Vampire A to Z leading up to October 31 where I feature all things vampire.

And given I blog about life raising young girls, I have a dolly co-host for that A to Z who is none other than, Draculaura from Monster High.

According to Monster High lore, this dolly is Dracula’s daughter. So really, who better to help out with an annual vampire feature series on a mom blog?

As for my eldest? She loves dolls and these ones are no exception. I think the fact that she knows mom likes vampires probably had something to do with it as well.

Over the last few years she has amassed a small collection of dolls and other Monster High stuff.

But getting back to school, Monster High is a fashion doll franchise created by Mattel (which we met back at Letter B with Barbie!) that launched in 2010.

All the characters are the sons or daughters of movie monsters and other creatures. So you have characters like Frankie Stein (daughter of Frankenstein), Clawdeen Wolf (daughter of the Werewolf), Cleo de Nile (daughter of the Mummy Ramses de Nile and so almost 6000 years old – she’s also head of the “fearleading squad”), Ghoulia (daughter of a Zombie) and Lagoona Blue (daughter of the Creature from the Black Lagoon).

Generally speaking, body image discussion aside (they make Barbie look chunky – and I’ve already touched on my thoughts on dolls and body image in that post), I love the “be yourself and celebrate the differences of others” messages in Monster High.

A couple of years ago I found one wonderful example of a way that is playing out with girls. While looking for a video online featuring Draculaura for another post, I came across something even better.

This:

It is just one of the videos I found made by young people doing stop motion videos with their Monster High dolls.

This one stopped me cold with its anti-bullying message. I absolutely LOVE that people are doing stuff like this online.

And the author’s message at the end of the video, in part quoting Monster High in her voice, making it her own, made me want my daughters to have that sort of self-confidence when they get to that stage. As she said, remember to have the confidence to:

Remember, we are perfect in our own way.
Let’s celebrate our differences.
Just be yourself.
Be unique.
Be a monster.

For anyone interested, the doll featured in the video is Venus McFlytrap, daughter of the Plant Monster, from Little Shop of Horrors fame.

And with that? School’s out for the day. See you tomorrow.