Let's let Dora explore her new look

There has been an amazing amount of mom backlash ever since Mattel and Nickelodeon announced that a tween Dora the Explorer would make her debut this fall.

In addition to the announcement, the companies didn't help themselves when they released a silhouette image of the middle-school Dora that looked a little ... uh, how shall I say this ... suggestive. There was what looked to be a tiny, tiny skirt barely covering long girly legs. It was just a black shadow, so no one could make out what she would actually look like.

Moms were beyond incensed, calling her everything from "trampy" to the next Lindsay or Britney. I even read one story that morphed poor little Dora into a preggo preteen.

This made me step back and wonder if some moms had gone a little overboard. I mean, the companies said they wanted to create an older version of the doll for girls who had outgrown pint-sized Dora. Seems like an understandable, though potentially fraught, brand extension.

After all of the outrage, Nickelodeon and Mattel released the real image of what tween Dora will look like. I wrote about this in greater length at L.A. Moms Blog. Hope you'll check it out.