Say goodbye to Bollywood

No wait, that's Hollywood.  My bad.  Lyric-butchering aside, Girl of the Year 2023 is in the building!  Kavi Sharma (name pronounced kuh-VEE, short for Kavika) is kinda old news already since she first leaked around Christmastime, but since she's available for sale now it's safe to share images without jeopardizing the wellbeing of my blog.  Here she is with her accessories...

...and without, because the hat changes her look quite a bit.

I'm getting strong Marisol vibes with this new girl, though I'm not really sure why.  Granted, Marisol and Kavi are both girls of color in brightly colored outfits with pants instead of skirts or dresses, but that's about where the similarities end.  Well, that and they both have big performance trunks with a ton of stuff in them.  That said, Kavi is Indian-American with dark hair, skin that is NOT WHITE, and the Marie-Grace mold.  I've heard some folks gripe that she looks "too white," but I'm not going to get into that too deeply, especially since the Indian people come in many shades, just like the rest of us do.  Kavi focuses heavily on Bollywood, meaning that I need to go digging around on beastbelle's blog again, because one of her dolls was a Bollywood fan.  Bollywood is a reference to the Indian film industry, but other than that I couldn't tell you much about it...meaning that Kavi could serve as a potential learning tool.  A couple of my friends on FailBook are up in arms about Kavi being yet another dancer, but Indian dance is about as different from the western styles of dance as night is from day so I'm not going to harp.  Kavi even has a dancing costume...a Bollywood dancing costume.  I freaking love this.

Back when Marisol was a thing she focused on ballet folklorico, which is a ballet type that I had never heard of.  I was thus sorely disappointed that Marisol's collection did not include a ballet folklorico costume.  American Girl didn't make this same mistake with Kavi, though it does open the door for ignant eejits like myself to mispronounce names and put pieces in the wrong place, like I often do with my dolls who wear kimono.  But then again, American Girl was nice enuff to include the names of the various pieces, and a clear picture of where everything is supposed to go.  The Bollywood dance costume comes with stick-on earrings, a stick-on bindi, and stick-on nail polish, none of which fills me with enthusiasm since stickers lose their tack after awhile, but permanently attached items also would've bugged me so I'll just let that matter drop.  I'm also glad that the outfit isn't ALL red.  Often when I see Indian or Chinese national dress on a doll, the outfit is rendered entirely in red.  While red is considered a color of good luck for the Chinese, the Indians, and indeed many Eastern countries, the people don't wear red 100% of the time!  With doll clothes it's kinda hard to find an Eastern costume that ISN'T red!  American Girl's first Chinese New Year outfit was red (and for a boy doll, LOL).

Ivy Ling's Chinese New Year dress is red (Julie wore a blue one in the books).

This one is from Carpatina.  It's my old friend the furisode, and it's red...right down to the shoes.

American Girl's more recent Chinese New Year dress is also red, but thank goodness, it's styled for a girl.

Then there's Carpatina's cheongsam...

...and their sari.  Both of them are dominantly red.  That sari would look smashing on Kavi, though.

Not ALL of Carpatina's international offerings are red, mind y'all.  This lovely furisode is a cream color with pastel embroidery, and I've always coveted it.  Pity that I don't have a Japanese American Girl, LOL (Z is Korean-American and Silver Bird is Vietnamese-American).  I think that if I were to complain about any aspect of Kavi, it would be that a fair amount of her street clothes are pink or some variant thereof.  Pink looks good on Kavi, but...well, y'all know my opinions on pink.  It's a nice color and I like it in moderation, but too much is...well, too much!  Kavi strikes a pretty good balance, though.  Oh, and she's got a yoga set!  I hope that her yoga mat is better than the piddling little piece of foam that my Luciana has to use.

Remember that?  Luciana managed just fine, but the danged mat doesn't look even remotely believable.  Hopefully Kavi has something more substantial.  If not I'll say a few words that would normally be censored with ampersands and asterisks, and then I'll hop in Etsy where there are decent yoga mats to be found.

As y'all can probably tell, I like what I see so far.  Now granted, I liked Corinne at first too, but my enthusiasm cooled after awhile and I never considered getting her after that.  Right now my opinions on Kavi are very high, but I'm gonna wait a month or two and see if I still like her.  If I do, well...y'all know what will happen.  At the very least I know I want her performance outfit, because who doesn't love goofy, fluffy jackets?  If I elect not to buy Kavi then Gabby can wear it; some of Kavi's street clothes look like something my Gabby would like.  At the moment my main reservations against adding Kavi to my crew are that she outwardly favors both Luciana and Rita Cheryl (JLY #49) a bit.  Both Astro-Luci and Rita Cheryl are medium skinned with dark hair, just like Kavi is...

...but as with my blonde, blue-eyed trio (Kirsten, Courtney, and Doremi), there are ample ways to tell Luciana, Kavi, and Rita Cheryl apart.  In the case of the brunette trio, Luciana has shorter hair with heavy bangs (Kavi has long hair with no bangs), Rita Cheryl has blue eyes (Kavi's eyes are brown), and all three dolls have different heads (Luciana has a Josefina head, Rita Cheryl is a classic, and Kavi has a Marie-Grace head).  So if I do add Kavi to my collection it won't be a huge problem telling her apart from my other girls.  At worst it'll just make one more brown-eyed brunette; I've got quite a few of those.

As a last little aside, dig the extras in this advertisement.

Two of the newer JLY girls!  Looks like #110 and #122 to me.  Indeed, American Girl's website lists them as Kavi's friends Pari (#110) and Sophie (#122).  I wonder if Kavi's story talks about the stripes in Pari's hair?  I reckon we'll all find out before too long.

Happy New Year,
RagingMoon1987