As a girl, I always wanted Felicity. She had red hair and green eyes like me, and I loved that her time period was the longest-ago. I obsessed, for years, over every scrap of worn catalogs. I owned all her books but we could never afford the doll-- I grew up neglected in an alcoholic household. Decades later, when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I looked Felicity up on eBay. I almost spent hundreds of dollars on various Felicitys, but ultimately didn’t want to foist my longings on my daughter. Last year, I recounted this story to my dearest friend, and for my 40th birthday last week, she gifted me a Felicity in her original dress. I don’t think I’ve stopped crying since! And the best part is that both my daughter and my son are absolutely enchanted with Felicity and with the idea of a gift like this. There is so much inner child healing for me, watching my children play with the doll, and also being loved on by a fellow mama when I never really got that love myself as a child. And now this interview is here in my substack feed. 💕
What a great interview! I have a love/hate relationship with American Girl. I loved the books (that I’d borrow from the library) and once got the catalog. Let’s just say my heart dropped at the price tags. I was only 8 or 9 but I knew there was no way no how we could afford that. I never even asked my parents because it felt so shameful to even ask. I’ve carried that with me into adulthood and have never and never will go into an American Girl store. I can afford it now for my own kid but I absolutely refuse it. Take that, AG 🖕
I too grew up in the era of the OG AGs - I don't even know how I got on the mailing list for the catalogs, but I devoured those as I did any book. My family didn't have the money for a doll - I don't ever recall asking for one because I knew it wouldn't happen - but I checked all those books out from the library multiple times. Kirsten was the one I always wanted. To this day, any time I see a piece of amber jewelry, I think of her necklace. :-)
A few years ago, my aunt gave me one of my cousins' dolls she wasn't playing with any more (to be clear, my cousin could be my child, age-wise). It was one of the modern dolls, no idea which one, and my aunt had sent her to the AG hospital for refurbishing, as well as adding a hearing aid like the one that I wear. I was so touched to be thought of in that manner, but never actually played with her because 1) we missed that boat by about 3 decades and 2) no kids to play with. She has sat in a box for 3 years and just this week, I got a contact for our local school for hearing-impaired kids and I'm going to donate her there so the kids can see themselves reflected in a doll. I can't think of a better place for her to go and be played with than there.
As a Wells College alumna (Pleasant’s alma mater), I lived in dorms refurbished with her donations. The curtains, throw pillows, chairs and couches... all of it reflected the ‘lifestyle’ she was marketing. The entire town of Aurora, NY has been remodeled, polished and shined into Pleasantville.
It’s been years since I’ve been back, but the tension between locals and Pleasant was very real. It was like she was trying to take a town and parts of an institution and turn it into something idyllic and of another time.
I am a former projects kid who, thank God, had a wonderful career in opinion writing. But I’ve never forgotten where I came from, even as I had a seat on The NY Times editorial board. Thus, I have had a perennial chip on my shoulder with certain topics - among them the elevation of the Ivy League (what’s wrong with going to state colleges?) and the need to buy certain cars or wear certain brands. So when the American Girl Dolls came around, my daughter was seven and I could afford to buy one. And I have ALWAYS been a history nerd, and I was attracted by Molly since my mother was in the Women’s Army Corps as a corporal during WWII; that era had great attraction and meaning to me. But I could not STAND the truly exorbitant price tag! I couldn’t get past the barrier it represented to me - that I would spend upwards of $75-80 to give Anna a doll - as well as its history - but at a ridiculous cost. Couldn’t do it. For the record, I wasn’t a huge fan of Barbie, but my mother-in-law was and had that covered. (I counted, in one of her closets, no fewer than 89 Barbie’s in their original packages!! When she died, Anna
was still young, but at the time she said to me that the Barbies really made her grandmother happy, and she could take ‘em or leave ‘em. Now Anna is 35, and has two girls, still young, and just this week we began discussing the American girl doll. She, too, has mixed feelings because at its essence it IS A DOLL. I look forward to more conversations. Thank you for this interesting Q & A!
As a Xennial, I was just slightly too old for AG as my toy of choice. I also didn't really play with dolls (at the time by brother was a toddler so I had a living doll at home already). But the kids I babysat were VERY into them. And let me tell you how deeply disconcerting it was, as a Black person named Addie from the South, to be confronted with a black doll named Addy also from the south. My lineage is of enslaved peoples and Addie is a 4th generation family name that goes back to the mid-1850s. So... I'm not so much an AD stan. Hits a little too close.
I was already 100% a Samantha when my parents told my sister and me (ages 8 and 10) that we were moving to Minnesota, which my mother helpfully paired with the boxed set of Kirsten books. Not a great introduction to the state tbh! Her best friend dies, they basically freeze, she burns their house down... Mom really should have read the books first. Happily, the most Kirsten thing I experienced was a high school friend who was Saint Lucia for their church one year, and like all of the other non-Swedes, American Girl was the only reason I knew what was happening.
Our local library offers American Girl dolls for checkout. We couldn’t afford one when I was small and I couldn’t buy one for my kids now. Intensely yearning at the catalog was my main association with AG, where my kids main association is exuberantly rotating through all of them in joyful abundance.
What timing. Yesterday, I handed my Kit doll along with all of her furniture and accessories down to a friend's four year old girl who loves dolls and everything pink and girly right now.
American girl Doll was a cornerstone for me growing up. We lived about an hour outside of Chicago and for every one of my sister and girl cousins 6th birthdays we got to take the train into the city, go to the American Girl Doll store, get our doll, have lunch in the cafe, etc. In a normally thrifty family, it was a big deal and those dolls were treasured. I remember reading all the books, pouring over every new edition of the magazine, being deep into that world.
I'm so interested in this podcast and book! Can't wait to start listening/reading
This was so fun to read and I like how they addressed the fact that yes, these were expensive dolls, but they were also great sources of meaning. My mom was an American Girl Doll woman - she bought me one before I knew to want one, because she worked in childhood education and fell in love with the books, clothes, and stories. They were expensive, but my mom wanted me to have a Kirstin because it represented something to her. I loved that doll, and she's still in great condition. I'm going to give her to my daughter when she's a little bit older.
However, the most meaningful doll that came into our house was actually a gift for my mom. My grandmother (her mother-in-law) knew how much my mom liked AG dolls, and she knew how much my mom missed living in New Mexico. For her birthday, my grandmother bought my mom Josefina. It was an insane present - a wildly expensive doll, purchased by my not-very-wealthy grandmother, for an adult women with four kids - but my mom STILL HAS JOSEFINA on her dresser. Even after my dad left my mom for his secretary, my mom kept that doll and kept in touch with my grandmother. They shared something really special, a certain kind of old school femininity and care, that transcended circumstances and family drama. The AG dolls appealed to both of them because they were so lovingly made and built to last. I think they also shared a sort of quiet, reserved feminism that was built on mutual aid and community-oriented action. The AG stories often spoke of that kind of care. Though they were imperfect, especially by todays standards, the books did celebrate girls giving back to their communities.
Sorry this comment go so damn long, but thank you for this piece. It made me happy.
I'm the mom of a daughter, now 22, who was introduced to AG by a friend and neighbor. She gave my daughter a Christmas catalog, and it was a work of art (I'm hoping I saved it in the box of AG stuff in the garage; they don't make them like that anymore!) Oversized, thick, glossy paper, beautifully photographed, my daughter leafed through it for years.
She chose Molly, I'm not sure why. We went to the AG store in Chicago while visiting my parents, and my mother bought her for her. Then when Rebecca came out, well, to have a Jewish AG doll was something special. We bought her on a trip to LA when we visited the store there. For years her birthday and Hanukkah gifts were clothing and accessories, sometimes the 'official' clothes, sometimes 'belonging' to other AG dolls (Julie's bed instead of Molly's or Rebecca's). My daughter even had a matching t shirt to wear with her doll, and one special time we went to lunch at the Chicago cafe with a friend and her mother. At craft fairs you would often find women who created clothes to fit AG dolls, and I'm sure we have some of those as well.
Not mentioned in this conversation, but hopefully in the book, are the actual AG books about the dolls' lives. They usually followed a format, each series had the same titles/themes, but the stories were individual. There were shelves of them at our library, and my daughter did read a few. I am vaguely remembering a mini sized book series as well that she liked much more, but can't remember that story selection.
When my niece was born, my mother hinted for a while that I should pass down at least least one doll and some clothing, but I said no. We did have two 'Barbie' sized dolls that I did give her, along with tubs of Barbies, Polly Pocket, Littlest Pet Shop and Breyer horses. I didn't keep much of my kids' toys/books, but the AG stuff is in my garage, along with binders of Pokemon cards.
Incredible timing! I bought the book when I first heard about it and am about halfway through.
I am too old for AG to have been the doll of my childhood. I was in high school when they first came out. I only discovered them a decade or so later, when I started to wonder why all the big pattern companies were producing sewing patterns in an 18" doll size. I'm fascinated by the people on YouTube who have entire channels devoted to AG--collecting, storing, showcasing, unboxing, restoring, dressing, etc. (It's not only women!). Periodically there is a lot of controversy over something Mattel does. Another white GOTY, or not enough advertisement of the black historical girls, or discontinuing a favorite. There can also be serious Feelings among adults about whether the dolls should all be interpreted as cis-het repositories of "traditional" American values or whether it's ok to have your doll be trans, gay, muslim, etc. iow, normal internet stuff.
All of which is to say while AG is not a part of *my* childhood, I am fascinated by this entire topic because dolls mean *SO* much more than we assume. My own history with dolls is complicated and something that keeps coming up in my life over and over. I relate to the authors in that I cannot count the number of times when I was in grad school I confessed interest in dolls and got downright disdain from "serious" scholars. I could write reams on this. Kudos to the authors for investigating their childhood loves with a critical eye. And for bringing the entire issue of dolldom to the fore.
So much goodness in this week’s newsletter including the reading recs. Thank you for reminding me how much I love Days of Heaven and that I should tell my 23 yr old daughter to watch it.
I read this with interest but a little from the outside as I was a tiny bit too old to have American Girls be a thing with my peers. And thank goodness, because I can tell you how that would have played out: I would have yearned for one and my parents would have refused and because I would have known they could afford one it would have been a source of ongoing resentment.
Today I learned that there is American Girl character sorting. I was born on the Gen X/Millennial cusp, and I haven't thought about AG in probably 30 years. But I was a big Felicity fan! What does it mean to be a Felicity? I googled and the internet says "You like horses," which is definitely not me. Is there more to it?
I never had the dolls. I remember looking at the catalog and my mom saying, "That's the kind of thing your rich grandmother gives you." I knew my grandmother wasn't rich and I wasn't getting one. But my mom did buy me the books (I remember impatiently waiting for each Felicity book to be published) and she help me sew a Felicity costume for Halloween one year.
As a girl, I always wanted Felicity. She had red hair and green eyes like me, and I loved that her time period was the longest-ago. I obsessed, for years, over every scrap of worn catalogs. I owned all her books but we could never afford the doll-- I grew up neglected in an alcoholic household. Decades later, when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I looked Felicity up on eBay. I almost spent hundreds of dollars on various Felicitys, but ultimately didn’t want to foist my longings on my daughter. Last year, I recounted this story to my dearest friend, and for my 40th birthday last week, she gifted me a Felicity in her original dress. I don’t think I’ve stopped crying since! And the best part is that both my daughter and my son are absolutely enchanted with Felicity and with the idea of a gift like this. There is so much inner child healing for me, watching my children play with the doll, and also being loved on by a fellow mama when I never really got that love myself as a child. And now this interview is here in my substack feed. 💕
What a great interview! I have a love/hate relationship with American Girl. I loved the books (that I’d borrow from the library) and once got the catalog. Let’s just say my heart dropped at the price tags. I was only 8 or 9 but I knew there was no way no how we could afford that. I never even asked my parents because it felt so shameful to even ask. I’ve carried that with me into adulthood and have never and never will go into an American Girl store. I can afford it now for my own kid but I absolutely refuse it. Take that, AG 🖕
I too grew up in the era of the OG AGs - I don't even know how I got on the mailing list for the catalogs, but I devoured those as I did any book. My family didn't have the money for a doll - I don't ever recall asking for one because I knew it wouldn't happen - but I checked all those books out from the library multiple times. Kirsten was the one I always wanted. To this day, any time I see a piece of amber jewelry, I think of her necklace. :-)
A few years ago, my aunt gave me one of my cousins' dolls she wasn't playing with any more (to be clear, my cousin could be my child, age-wise). It was one of the modern dolls, no idea which one, and my aunt had sent her to the AG hospital for refurbishing, as well as adding a hearing aid like the one that I wear. I was so touched to be thought of in that manner, but never actually played with her because 1) we missed that boat by about 3 decades and 2) no kids to play with. She has sat in a box for 3 years and just this week, I got a contact for our local school for hearing-impaired kids and I'm going to donate her there so the kids can see themselves reflected in a doll. I can't think of a better place for her to go and be played with than there.
As a Wells College alumna (Pleasant’s alma mater), I lived in dorms refurbished with her donations. The curtains, throw pillows, chairs and couches... all of it reflected the ‘lifestyle’ she was marketing. The entire town of Aurora, NY has been remodeled, polished and shined into Pleasantville.
It’s been years since I’ve been back, but the tension between locals and Pleasant was very real. It was like she was trying to take a town and parts of an institution and turn it into something idyllic and of another time.
I am a former projects kid who, thank God, had a wonderful career in opinion writing. But I’ve never forgotten where I came from, even as I had a seat on The NY Times editorial board. Thus, I have had a perennial chip on my shoulder with certain topics - among them the elevation of the Ivy League (what’s wrong with going to state colleges?) and the need to buy certain cars or wear certain brands. So when the American Girl Dolls came around, my daughter was seven and I could afford to buy one. And I have ALWAYS been a history nerd, and I was attracted by Molly since my mother was in the Women’s Army Corps as a corporal during WWII; that era had great attraction and meaning to me. But I could not STAND the truly exorbitant price tag! I couldn’t get past the barrier it represented to me - that I would spend upwards of $75-80 to give Anna a doll - as well as its history - but at a ridiculous cost. Couldn’t do it. For the record, I wasn’t a huge fan of Barbie, but my mother-in-law was and had that covered. (I counted, in one of her closets, no fewer than 89 Barbie’s in their original packages!! When she died, Anna
was still young, but at the time she said to me that the Barbies really made her grandmother happy, and she could take ‘em or leave ‘em. Now Anna is 35, and has two girls, still young, and just this week we began discussing the American girl doll. She, too, has mixed feelings because at its essence it IS A DOLL. I look forward to more conversations. Thank you for this interesting Q & A!
As a Xennial, I was just slightly too old for AG as my toy of choice. I also didn't really play with dolls (at the time by brother was a toddler so I had a living doll at home already). But the kids I babysat were VERY into them. And let me tell you how deeply disconcerting it was, as a Black person named Addie from the South, to be confronted with a black doll named Addy also from the south. My lineage is of enslaved peoples and Addie is a 4th generation family name that goes back to the mid-1850s. So... I'm not so much an AD stan. Hits a little too close.
I was already 100% a Samantha when my parents told my sister and me (ages 8 and 10) that we were moving to Minnesota, which my mother helpfully paired with the boxed set of Kirsten books. Not a great introduction to the state tbh! Her best friend dies, they basically freeze, she burns their house down... Mom really should have read the books first. Happily, the most Kirsten thing I experienced was a high school friend who was Saint Lucia for their church one year, and like all of the other non-Swedes, American Girl was the only reason I knew what was happening.
Our local library offers American Girl dolls for checkout. We couldn’t afford one when I was small and I couldn’t buy one for my kids now. Intensely yearning at the catalog was my main association with AG, where my kids main association is exuberantly rotating through all of them in joyful abundance.
What timing. Yesterday, I handed my Kit doll along with all of her furniture and accessories down to a friend's four year old girl who loves dolls and everything pink and girly right now.
American girl Doll was a cornerstone for me growing up. We lived about an hour outside of Chicago and for every one of my sister and girl cousins 6th birthdays we got to take the train into the city, go to the American Girl Doll store, get our doll, have lunch in the cafe, etc. In a normally thrifty family, it was a big deal and those dolls were treasured. I remember reading all the books, pouring over every new edition of the magazine, being deep into that world.
I'm so interested in this podcast and book! Can't wait to start listening/reading
This was so fun to read and I like how they addressed the fact that yes, these were expensive dolls, but they were also great sources of meaning. My mom was an American Girl Doll woman - she bought me one before I knew to want one, because she worked in childhood education and fell in love with the books, clothes, and stories. They were expensive, but my mom wanted me to have a Kirstin because it represented something to her. I loved that doll, and she's still in great condition. I'm going to give her to my daughter when she's a little bit older.
However, the most meaningful doll that came into our house was actually a gift for my mom. My grandmother (her mother-in-law) knew how much my mom liked AG dolls, and she knew how much my mom missed living in New Mexico. For her birthday, my grandmother bought my mom Josefina. It was an insane present - a wildly expensive doll, purchased by my not-very-wealthy grandmother, for an adult women with four kids - but my mom STILL HAS JOSEFINA on her dresser. Even after my dad left my mom for his secretary, my mom kept that doll and kept in touch with my grandmother. They shared something really special, a certain kind of old school femininity and care, that transcended circumstances and family drama. The AG dolls appealed to both of them because they were so lovingly made and built to last. I think they also shared a sort of quiet, reserved feminism that was built on mutual aid and community-oriented action. The AG stories often spoke of that kind of care. Though they were imperfect, especially by todays standards, the books did celebrate girls giving back to their communities.
Sorry this comment go so damn long, but thank you for this piece. It made me happy.
I'm the mom of a daughter, now 22, who was introduced to AG by a friend and neighbor. She gave my daughter a Christmas catalog, and it was a work of art (I'm hoping I saved it in the box of AG stuff in the garage; they don't make them like that anymore!) Oversized, thick, glossy paper, beautifully photographed, my daughter leafed through it for years.
She chose Molly, I'm not sure why. We went to the AG store in Chicago while visiting my parents, and my mother bought her for her. Then when Rebecca came out, well, to have a Jewish AG doll was something special. We bought her on a trip to LA when we visited the store there. For years her birthday and Hanukkah gifts were clothing and accessories, sometimes the 'official' clothes, sometimes 'belonging' to other AG dolls (Julie's bed instead of Molly's or Rebecca's). My daughter even had a matching t shirt to wear with her doll, and one special time we went to lunch at the Chicago cafe with a friend and her mother. At craft fairs you would often find women who created clothes to fit AG dolls, and I'm sure we have some of those as well.
Not mentioned in this conversation, but hopefully in the book, are the actual AG books about the dolls' lives. They usually followed a format, each series had the same titles/themes, but the stories were individual. There were shelves of them at our library, and my daughter did read a few. I am vaguely remembering a mini sized book series as well that she liked much more, but can't remember that story selection.
When my niece was born, my mother hinted for a while that I should pass down at least least one doll and some clothing, but I said no. We did have two 'Barbie' sized dolls that I did give her, along with tubs of Barbies, Polly Pocket, Littlest Pet Shop and Breyer horses. I didn't keep much of my kids' toys/books, but the AG stuff is in my garage, along with binders of Pokemon cards.
Incredible timing! I bought the book when I first heard about it and am about halfway through.
I am too old for AG to have been the doll of my childhood. I was in high school when they first came out. I only discovered them a decade or so later, when I started to wonder why all the big pattern companies were producing sewing patterns in an 18" doll size. I'm fascinated by the people on YouTube who have entire channels devoted to AG--collecting, storing, showcasing, unboxing, restoring, dressing, etc. (It's not only women!). Periodically there is a lot of controversy over something Mattel does. Another white GOTY, or not enough advertisement of the black historical girls, or discontinuing a favorite. There can also be serious Feelings among adults about whether the dolls should all be interpreted as cis-het repositories of "traditional" American values or whether it's ok to have your doll be trans, gay, muslim, etc. iow, normal internet stuff.
All of which is to say while AG is not a part of *my* childhood, I am fascinated by this entire topic because dolls mean *SO* much more than we assume. My own history with dolls is complicated and something that keeps coming up in my life over and over. I relate to the authors in that I cannot count the number of times when I was in grad school I confessed interest in dolls and got downright disdain from "serious" scholars. I could write reams on this. Kudos to the authors for investigating their childhood loves with a critical eye. And for bringing the entire issue of dolldom to the fore.
So much goodness in this week’s newsletter including the reading recs. Thank you for reminding me how much I love Days of Heaven and that I should tell my 23 yr old daughter to watch it.
I read this with interest but a little from the outside as I was a tiny bit too old to have American Girls be a thing with my peers. And thank goodness, because I can tell you how that would have played out: I would have yearned for one and my parents would have refused and because I would have known they could afford one it would have been a source of ongoing resentment.
Today I learned that there is American Girl character sorting. I was born on the Gen X/Millennial cusp, and I haven't thought about AG in probably 30 years. But I was a big Felicity fan! What does it mean to be a Felicity? I googled and the internet says "You like horses," which is definitely not me. Is there more to it?
I never had the dolls. I remember looking at the catalog and my mom saying, "That's the kind of thing your rich grandmother gives you." I knew my grandmother wasn't rich and I wasn't getting one. But my mom did buy me the books (I remember impatiently waiting for each Felicity book to be published) and she help me sew a Felicity costume for Halloween one year.
Saw the title and was like ooooohhhh yay!🤩
Now going back to read!