Monsters Like Me: How Monster High Shaped My Childhood

I distinctly remember the first time I was introduced to Monster High. It was 2012, when was about 10 years old, taller and fatter than the rest of my peers, and my social life had been cut out from under me years ago because of my recovery from a surgery which required being left out of recess in favor of the library, and being left out of PE in favor of cup-stacking and long conversations with the coach. I was that one kid with basically no friends, and no real way to make them because my way of communicating and having fun was annoying and weird. Add on top of this that I was assigned female at birth, was never good at or happy with performing femininity, and wouldn’t discover that I was non-binary and genderfluid until I was in middle school. 

I did have one friend back in those days though. A girl we’ll call Sammy. She was about a month older than me, and lived just 2 doors down the cul-de-sac. She was training in gymnastics and had a love of Taylor Swift matched only by her passion for Tokyo Mew Mew. She had a massive, tree-filled backyard, where we would spend hours and hours every week playing and weaving stories of magic and adventure out of the anime, movies, and TV shows we both loved. 

And pretending to murder each other constantly, but such is the reality of these childhood roleplays that people tend to conveniently forget.

Regardless of how we felt about it, every gift-giving occasion, as middle-class girls, both of us were, without fail, inundated with dolls. Specifically Barbies. Neither of us HATED Barbies, don’t get me wrong. But… it just didn’t feel right. None of the clothes were the kind of things we or the people we liked wore, and neither of us really found her terribly interesting. We wanted to play in big stories with action and discovery and character development, and we needed something to build off of. But the whole point of Barbie was to just… do whatever you want, with no real guidance except the props she came with. We’d take plastic toothpick swords and play our Barbies as daring pirates, or try to mix and match the clothing, but… it was all in vain, and we’d eventually go play in that awesome backyard.

One early spring day around 2012, we were hanging out in Sammy’s yard when she suddenly ran inside to grab her mother’s laptop. 

“I just found out about this last week, and it reminds me SO MUCH of you,” she said with a beaming smile and started playing the first episode of the Monster High web series, wherein series protagonist Frankie Stein goes in for their* first day of class. They wear a plaid dress, have black and white streaks in their hair, wear gigantic platform boots, and HAVE A TIE. All of which was fascinating to my younger self, that one can wear masculine and feminine signifiers in one outfit. Their eyes are mismatched, their skin is green, they’re covered in stitches, skulls, and lightning bolts. 

To my tiny child mind, this was the single coolest thing I’d ever seen.

And it got better. 

Frankie has a hard time fitting in at school because, being only a few days old, they don’t know anybody there and don’t have any pretense for how to act. So they draw inward, feeling alone but not knowing how to fix it. I understood immediately why Sammy saw me in this character. 

But thankfully, Frankie makes friends, who I found EVEN COOLER: Clawdeen, a werewolf with thick, curly hair just like mine, scratches and rips all over her purple outfit and jacket, a NOSE RING, and eyes that reminded me of my cats. And Draculaura, a vampire with pink in her hair, hearts and bat print, safety pin earrings, tall, pink, platform boots. She’s so bubbly and friendly you can’t help but love her. 

Well, I certainly couldn’t. 

Watching this video with my friend was such a formative childhood experience for me. I no longer talk to that friend (Sammy, I love you and I hope you’re doing ok), but Monster High remains. After telling my mom about that video after I got home that fateful day, it became the new thing everyone bought me for presents, until high school when the line was canceled to my UTTER dismay. 

In fact, when interviewing for this writing gig, the first words out of Camila’s mouth after starting the Zoom call were to question the massive display of my 64-strong collection of Monster High dolls, clearly visible in my webcam, lovingly and meticulously posed and placed all around the official playset. 

My Gen 1 Torelei, Meowlody, and Purrsephone. (Image credit Quincy Craig)

And now, it’s returned. And on the whole, I couldn’t be happier. 

I love that every character has a different body shape now. The fact that Frankie has a prosthetic leg, that Draculaura is plus-sized, that every man-ster has a different type of muscle mass – it’s wonderful. And while I’m not an amputee myself, I also very much appreciate that every outfit of Frankie’s changes the design of their prosthetic slightly, implying that they, like real-life amputees, have different prosthetics for different events and purposes. On the whole, the representation of different body types and disabilities with the new run is staggering to me, in all the best ways! And it fills my heart with such joy that I get to share this massive part of my childhood with my 9-year-old cousin, who also loves the supernatural and weird stuff, and certainly loves Barbie more than Sammy and I ever did. 

Gen 3 Clawdeen, Frankie, and Draculaura having lunch! (Image credit Quincy Craig)

The only real complaint I have is with the fact that in the new story, they’ve put Deuce Gorgon (son of Medusa) and Clawdeen together, rather than Deuce and Cleo de Nile. This… irks me. For one thing, Clawdeen was always very strongly implied to be a lesbian, but never outright stated to be, despite the creator, Garett Sander, wanting very much to have LGBTQ+ representation in these characters (but it was the early 2010s and Mattel, what can you really do?). They did not confirm this aspect of Clawdeen in the modern era, where Frankie is non-binary and several other characters are confirmed to be some flavor of queer. 

And for another… Deuce and Cleo were one of the HEALTHIEST hetero-normative relationships I saw in the media growing up. They had rough patches and dealt with familial baggage, but communicated openly with each other, understood each other, and treated each other like equals. It added such a huge dimension to Cleo, seeing her be catty and Regina George-like with other people, but supportive and kind and loving toward her boyfriend, and over the course of time, learning to extend that warmth outside of that relationship, and Deuce being there to support her. They weren’t perfect, but they understood that, and were there for each other, both when it mattered, and when it didn’t.

And Deuce… Deuce is hands down my favorite character in the whole franchise. His powers are cool, sure, but his aesthetic, his charm, his bro-ish attitude that never gets toxic (unlike many of his fellow man-sters)... frankly, it’s no wonder he inspired so much of my current gender presentation. Once I started my transition, I took so much inspiration from him that I still have a bunch of blank red shirts I bought at Michael’s that I tore the sleeves off just so I could approximate his awesome cassette-and-skulls tank top, and my current battle vest is extremely reminiscent of his iconic striped vest (although mine is laden with paint, patches, pins, and pride flags, but I digress). And hey, even if I don’t like that the modern version of him is dating Clawdeen, I do LOVE his new style just as much as the old one. 

Gen 1 Cleo and Game Night Deuce in a loving embrace, the way the gods intended (Image Credit Quincy Craig)

It’s truly telling that my one problem with the new generation is one story beat and not the dolls themselves. They are BEAUTIFUL. 

My favorite of the dolls, rather than characters, has always been Toralei Stripe. I love her color scheme, her punky/emo aesthetic, the makeup design… all of it. I spent YEARS looking for the original run doll on second-hand sites just because I loved her so so much. 

And she’s even better in the new run! They’ve doubled down on her punky vibe, even making her a singer in a band called the Hissfits (which, as someone who grew up watching Jem and the Holograms with my mother, I thought was hysterical), and giving her even better makeup and props than before. She’s beautiful, and I love her. 

Gen 1 Coffee Shop Toralei and Gen 3 Toralei. You can very clearly see that they’re the same character, but one has clearly worked to ensure a distinct shillouette! (Image credit Quincy Craig)

But I love this more for the kids that are just like I was. These gorgeous dolls would’ve meant nothing if not for the story behind them. They’re all different, they all freely express themselves and the cultures their legendary parents come from. They wear so many styles and aesthetics and colors… and they’re all beautiful, while staying true to themselves. “Be yourself, be unique, be a monster” is, of course, a marketing phrase, but it appears to be the guiding philosophy behind the project. Showing kids that they CAN wear what makes them happy. That they can look cool and be cool and feel cool as themselves, in a world that tells them constantly that they have to dress and act in certain ways in order for the world to accept them… that’s powerful. 

“Be yourself” messaging is, perhaps justifiably, considered rather corny nowadays, especially as social media teaches us to present only what is marketable, either financially or socially, about ourselves. To be a child in that environment, let alone one of the many whose parents might be placing them online without their knowledge or consent… that’s a lot of pressure. 

My generation only really started having that environment around us when we were pre-teens and adolescents, rather than having that already be there before we were even born. It certainly wasn’t great for us at that time, but I can’t imagine the pressure to be What Everyone Wants that a child today might feel. In some ways, it seems downright cruel. 

But that’s WHY “be yourself” messaging is so important, why representation matters so much. That’s WHY Draculaura has wider hips, why Clawdeen wears glasses, why Frankie is an amputee, and why the last generation had Finnegan Wake, a merman in a wheelchair. Because real kids have those bodies. Real kids see those dolls and think, just like I did when I saw Clawdeen’s hair, or Frankie’s social struggles, that one important phrase that makes the world feel conquerable: 

“They’re just like me!” 

Being yourself means being visible, means accepting the parts of yourself that you or society don’t like. And if you see someone else, all lit up in sparkles and dressed like a rock star, who looks Just Like You, that becomes so much easier. 

Monster High meant, and still means, so much to me because of this. It made me love parts of myself I hated before. It made me confident enough to start wearing the clothes I wanted to. It gave me the tools to understand my queerness later in life. It gave me permission to love myself. And while I’m still working on that last part, it means the world to me that these weird dolls with flaming hair and detachable limbs understand how important that is to a child and to adults who’ve never heard it. 

My entire Monster High collection, proudly and lovingly displayed in the official Gen 1 playset (Image credit Quincy Craig)

*note: 3rd gen Monster High, the most recent iteration, has recast Frankie as non-binary using they/them/theirs pronouns. In their original iteration and for 2nd gen, they were a “ghoul” and used she/her/hers. I have chosen to stick with they/them/theirs throughout this article for the sake of consistency, and for my own happiness with the representation of my peeps.