Nickleodeon has had such success over the past 10 years with its Dora the Explorer character that they are considering expanding her to an older group of kids.

Dora is the little girl who finds things and cares for the environment with the help of her talking backpack, talking map, talking boots, and a lot of Spanish lessons.  She’s extremely popular with the under-6 crowd, along with her boy counterpart Diego, who works in a zoo.  But some of those under-6′s have grown up to be 9-12′s, way too old for Dora, but not too old to be a viable nostalgia market.

So, to Nickleodeon’s way of thinking, why not cash in on that?  An older, more mature Dora has been proposed to appeal to the tween crowd.  Now, I think she looks exactly like little Dora would look six or seven years in her future, and now she not only finds lost items, she solves mysteries, in keeping with her increased analytical thinking skills. 

Apparently, though, some parents think new Tween Dora is too sexy.  Seriously.   An article from Entertainment Weekly reports that with her long dark hair and short skirt, some parents think Dora is an inappropriate role model for tween girls. 

I guess you can make up your own mind.  Here’s the little sexpot herself:

Now, look.  I have two girls, ages 11 and 13.  Few parents are as into modesty and as against the sexualization of youth as my husband and I are.  But this new Dora is a cute girl wearing cute clothes–that’s not a short skirt, it’s a long top.  Sure, she shows some ankle, but what is this, 1910?  There’s nothing wrong with this image.  She’s precious.  She looks like half the little girls in our neighborhood, my middle child included. 

If I were Nickleodeon, I’d be far less worried about whether New Dora is too sexy than I would be about whether tweens are really a viable market for a new cartoon that isn’t accompanied by a video game counterpart.

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