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. 💕
I love this story very much. (I hope you have as much fun combing her hair as I still do when I play with my dolls that have been gifted to one of my good friend's daughters)
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.
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 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!
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.
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 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.
OMG, yes to Saint Lucia! I did a presentation on Saint Lucia day in 3rd grade to my class and I learned about it from AG. Saint Lucia day is also my birthday, so there's the extra tie-in there, but never would have known about it otherwise.
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
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.
Same. While reading this piece it occurred to me that maybe the actual thing that distinguishes GenX from millennial women is whether you / your friends / people your age had American Girl dolls.
I was slightly too old for them by the time they came out, and they were definitely too expensive to be in any way a normal purchase for my family. It was a HUGE deal when my younger sisters received theirs for Christmas from our grandmother -- a gift we could never have afforded.
And even though I was too old for them at that point, I can still viscerally remember the longing. I spent many hours paging through that catalog (remember the big two-page spreads of a doll with all her fancy clothes?). To this day, that longing for something so close and yet so far is the primary emotion I associate with American Girl.
I grew up with limited financial means. Dad was a teacher + had a second overnight job, five kids, stay at home mom. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of our tight finances. We always had our basic needs met (warm home, food, transportation, school activities) but it was so clear to me that my family didn’t have any extra and my parents never ever spent any money on themselves. I never had name brand anything and I was very embarrassed by this in my suburban, affluent school.
But I remember the Christmas that my best cousin and I both received American Girl dolls from Santa and it was like, wow wow wow. Reality was suspended. I got Samantha who had the prettiest clothes by far and my cousin got Kirstin (meh, but my cousin was into it). The level of coordination from my mother and her sisters to give us everything we could have possssibly wanted that year, I still don’t get it. Santa (Mom, duh) brought the doll, the book, I think an extra outfit, and a knockoff brass bed. And later that day my aunts all gave me additional outfits. I think by the end of the day I had almost the entire catalogue of Samantha clothes. It’s the first and still maybe only time in my life I’ve ever had a complete set of anything that a brand intended. The obvious coordination between my mom and my aunts didn’t have me questioning the realness of Santa even though I was at an age where questioning Santa was well within reach, but instead cast my aunts in a magical light, as if they must have had secret communication with Santa, or maybe they could just read his mind.
Reflecting on this now brings up so many questions for my mom which I’ll absolutely ask her about this Christmas. It makes me sad that Santa got all the credit for the magic at the time and I want to make sure my mom knows how much safety and comfort this brought to me.
I’m apparently still unpacking the emotional impact the Samantha Christmas had on me so I can’t even get into the rich text of it yet lol. I look forward to that step!
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. 💕
I love this story very much. (I hope you have as much fun combing her hair as I still do when I play with my dolls that have been gifted to one of my good friend's daughters)
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.
Jessica, this story is wonderful on so many levels, thank you for sharing it here
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 can't imagine how uncanny that would be!
https://www.vogue.com/article/aurora-new-york-finger-lakes-american-girl
Here’s an article from Vogue about Pleasant and Aurora.
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 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!
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.
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 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.
OMG, yes to Saint Lucia! I did a presentation on Saint Lucia day in 3rd grade to my class and I learned about it from AG. Saint Lucia day is also my birthday, so there's the extra tie-in there, but never would have known about it otherwise.
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
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.
Oh you KNOW the books are all over the book! RICH TEXTS!!
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.
Oh that makes me mad that you were met with disdain for having interest in dolls ugh, but of COURSE
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.
Same. While reading this piece it occurred to me that maybe the actual thing that distinguishes GenX from millennial women is whether you / your friends / people your age had American Girl dolls.
I was slightly too old for them by the time they came out, and they were definitely too expensive to be in any way a normal purchase for my family. It was a HUGE deal when my younger sisters received theirs for Christmas from our grandmother -- a gift we could never have afforded.
And even though I was too old for them at that point, I can still viscerally remember the longing. I spent many hours paging through that catalog (remember the big two-page spreads of a doll with all her fancy clothes?). To this day, that longing for something so close and yet so far is the primary emotion I associate with American Girl.
I grew up with limited financial means. Dad was a teacher + had a second overnight job, five kids, stay at home mom. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of our tight finances. We always had our basic needs met (warm home, food, transportation, school activities) but it was so clear to me that my family didn’t have any extra and my parents never ever spent any money on themselves. I never had name brand anything and I was very embarrassed by this in my suburban, affluent school.
But I remember the Christmas that my best cousin and I both received American Girl dolls from Santa and it was like, wow wow wow. Reality was suspended. I got Samantha who had the prettiest clothes by far and my cousin got Kirstin (meh, but my cousin was into it). The level of coordination from my mother and her sisters to give us everything we could have possssibly wanted that year, I still don’t get it. Santa (Mom, duh) brought the doll, the book, I think an extra outfit, and a knockoff brass bed. And later that day my aunts all gave me additional outfits. I think by the end of the day I had almost the entire catalogue of Samantha clothes. It’s the first and still maybe only time in my life I’ve ever had a complete set of anything that a brand intended. The obvious coordination between my mom and my aunts didn’t have me questioning the realness of Santa even though I was at an age where questioning Santa was well within reach, but instead cast my aunts in a magical light, as if they must have had secret communication with Santa, or maybe they could just read his mind.
Reflecting on this now brings up so many questions for my mom which I’ll absolutely ask her about this Christmas. It makes me sad that Santa got all the credit for the magic at the time and I want to make sure my mom knows how much safety and comfort this brought to me.
I’m apparently still unpacking the emotional impact the Samantha Christmas had on me so I can’t even get into the rich text of it yet lol. I look forward to that step!
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.
There are a number of online quizes -- I googled "which AG doll are you quiz" and got lots, including one from bookriot: https://bookriot.com/which-american-girl-are-you-quiz/