In a 2017 paper, researchers Boyd and Murnen presented an analysis of multiple popular toys where they looked for sex object or physical dominance features. They found that toys advertised as girls’ toys, the 8 sex object features they predetermined were largely present. This was usually combined with thinness. We decided to assess how these features appear in My Little Pony toys as well, with the next few steps of the tour supporting with visuals our findings. Just as the authors of the research paper combined multiple indicators to create their own framework, we have also adapted theirs to best fit the toys in question. As the ponies were typically depicted without clothes or shoes, and some of the originally coded features revolved around those, we took on only 4 out of the 8 features: bent knee, curved spine, head cant (tilted or bent), and sexually appealing facial expression.
The bent knee, according to its original coders, represents an obstacle to quick response (Mager & Helgeson, 2010). The head cant and curved spine both symbolize acceptance of a submissive role (Mager & Helgeson, 2010, Boyd & Murnen, 2017)). As for the sexually appealing facial expression, Boyd and Murnen adapted indicators first coded by Hatton and Trautner (2011), where the lips being slightly parted (and not in the act of smiling) indicated a somewhat sexually appealing expression.
Our edition’s main model, Pipp, is posed with a bent knee, has a curved spine, there is a slight head cant, but her lips are closed and her mouth is smiling. The curved spine feature should, however, be seen in the context of the natural shape of ponies’ bodies. It is nevertheless important to consider that each of the 5 generations of MLP have come with an array of different poses. We cannot cover them all here, but here are some links to the different poses over the generations: