Page 63 - Lauren Lolo Spencer Issue

ness and inclusion too. That’s the first thing. The sec- ond thing is to acknowledge that Mattel is a big compa- ny that has worldwide distribution is amazing! This is huge and I hope they can come out with additional Bar- bie dolls with Down syndrome of different races, hair color, shapes and sizes.
OTHER BABY DOLLS WITH DOWN SYNDROME: Miniland-Asian-Syndrome Miniland-Baby-CAUCASIAN-Syndrome Down-syndrome-reborn-doll-noah Baby-boy-asian-with-down-syndrome
Cooper: The fashion show, I think I’ve attended a cou- ple of them, how is that progressing, moving forward? Do you see any results from any of that of some of the people involved getting modeling gigs or acting gigs? Is there any connection to that? Once it’s done, does everybody go home and is happy about it?
Whitten: We have a lot of diversity within our models. Choosing the models is very difficult because on the one hand, people are auditioning based on their ability to walk the runway. On the other hand, we do want to be mindful of gender parity, age diversity, ethnic and racial diversity and we are part of a larger disability community so how is that reflected? There’s a lot that goes into choosing the models.
What we’re having more and more of are people who are already starting to be models or actors or wanting to
be famous social media influencers auditioning. Tradi- tionally our models would have just been any wonder- ful kid or adult who was attracted to this opportunity, not necessarily somebody who wants to be or is already a professional model.
Now we have this interesting mix of people who look at this as career building to put this on their resume, and others who just want the experience and as a result we hear their confidence improves tremendously.
Cooper: Nice. Anything else you’d like to add? You haven’t said much. (laughs)
Whitten: (laughs) When you’ve been over 10 years, come on! It’s been a long time!
Cooper: It’s a very impressive amount of work. Whitten: Thank you.
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