Valley of the dolls

I may have borne witness to the dissolution of American womanhood. It was in a screening room on Sixth Avenue, with critics and a scattering of teenage girls in the seats and Bratz the Movie on the screen.

We sat through the "first live action movie" to be based on the infamous, Barbie-doll whacking, mini-skirted, navel-flaunting, multi-ethnic, fashion-obsessed Bratz dolls that have conquered the toy-shop universe.

But the issue at hand is this: given the charges that the boxed plastic versions of Yasmin, Jade, Sasha and Cloe have "sexualised" pre-pubescent girls and turned their gaze from feminism to shopping and boys, what is going to happen when this movie hits the multiplexes on August 3?

When Bratz first challenged