American Girl dolls were the center of my elementary school life. I remember owning two, both the ‘make your own’ dolls. I named them both after Francis Hogden Burnett’s characters: Emily, after the doll in “A Little Princess,” and Mary, after the main character in “The Secret Garden.” I remember being so emotionally tied to my dolls, reading every American Girl book, watching the associated movies and playing the online games. I was truly obsessed with American Girl. And then, as every girl does, I grew up. I donated one of my dolls to my younger cousin and stored the other in the garage.
This semester, however, the children and mass media class I’m taking reminded me of that emotional attachment. It made me wonder — and compelled me to research — why American Girl had such a hold on my 8-year-old psyche.
I found that I wasn’t alone. When I told my female friends I was conducting this research, they all had strong memories attached to their own dolls but even more so to the books and stories of the American Girl historical doll line. Multiple of my Asian American friends remembered Ivy, the only Asian historical doll released. Many of my other friends identified with the dolls that looked similar to them and fit their personalities — the most named being Rebecca and Kit. The dolls and the books reflected our 8- to 10-year-old lives, teaching us how to be girls through positive representations and empowering storylines. The dolls’ stories were mirrors of ourselves and windows into who we could be.
In doing my research, American Girl dolls consumed my life for three weeks. My grandma gave me the last of the American Girl doll books she had amassed for me as a child, and I took multiple trips to the Boston Public Library to pick up more. I showed my research to anyone who would look at my computer screen long enough. In my research process, my girlhood obsession was reignited. Yet, at the end of those three weeks, I had nowhere to put my American Girl doll energy. So I took to the internet.
Unsurprisingly, I found hours and hours worth of content on YouTube, of people deep diving into the history of the American Girl doll brand, exploring the historical doll plotlines and showing off their massive doll collections. While I was watching a five-hour-long video about the Kirsten doll, I got a text from one of my friends, linking to an Instagram account titled @modernamericangirldolls. Of course, I clicked.
The account markets itself as “Modern American Girl Dolls for the Modern Woman,” and it does just that. Using a meme format, the account shows American Girl dolls with modern outfits, accessories and adult problems. One of the most recent posts features a doll in a ‘going out’ fit, bow earrings, a vodka seltzer and the caption “This Modern American Girl Doll will be having her ‘tis the damn season moment this year.” This account truly goes above and beyond, having a post of the girls in The Handmaid’s Tale outfits after President-elect Donald Trump was elected, a Vice President Kamala Harris doll post and one about brat summer. Everything about this account should have been right up my alley. Instead, I got an ick. And I couldn’t think of why.
For days, I reflected on why American Girl dolls caught my attention in the first place. What was it about them that fascinated me? Why was I so set on researching them in the first place? Why were all of my female friends just as attached as me? I finally got my answer from the founder of American Girl herself: Pleasant Rowland.
Rowland started the company in 1986 because she had a problem with the doll market as it was. Girls were either playing with Barbies, who taught girls how to be grown up and to idolize ‘grown up’ bodies, or with Cabbage-Patch Kids, who taught girls how to be mothers. There were no dolls that taught girls how to be girls. American Girl dolls met that need, and girls overwhelmingly responded. We fell in love with the dolls, the books, the online games and the stories. Girls learned how to overcome grief from Josefina, how to stand up for others from Samantha, how to fight for themselves from Julie and how to be curious from Kit. My friends and I learned how to be good, responsible, strong girls through these dolls. They were formative in our development.
This Instagram account, I believe, is trying to fill the same void for female adults. As we grow up, life gets complicated. Relationships, school, jobs, taxes, loneliness, frustration, vices and more consume our lives, and we don’t have scripts that show us how to get through these things positively as we did throughout childhood. Putting our adult problems into the American Girl lexicon is cathartic in that way, as it allows us to believe that there are solutions out there to our problems. We can simplify our big girl problems, and make better sense of them. With that said, American Girl dolls may not be the best outlet to confront our problems. These American Girl dolls are built to look like 9-year-olds. Posting an edited photo of one captioned “This Modern American Girl Doll is edging on her peloton bike” is inappropriate, no matter its humorous intention.
This is why the Barbie movie worked though. Barbies, as Rowland saw back in the ’80s, are dolls with adult bodies and adult jobs that were marketed to kids, teaching them about the women they could grow up to be. But, of course, this is inaccurate at best. When it came to the 2023 movie “Barbie,” the overarching commentary of the movie was that the dolls taught a fantasy about womanhood. Women enthusiastically responded to this, especially Ferrera’s monologue. Being a woman is something girls go through without a blueprint, Margot Robbie’s character learns this the hard way. Showing that provided catharsis for women in a healthy, humorous way. Women made this movie a phenomenon precisely because it addressed the gap in their lives dolls like American Girls did when they were 9 years old.
As I am closing out my time with American Girl dolls, I have realized that the dolls and stories that influenced my life as a kid are still relevant. I still need reminders on how to stand up for myself. I need to see someone like me model grief in a healthy way. But I can’t get those things from dolls anymore. I get them from the women around me. I learn from my mom, my grandmothers, my professors, my bosses and especially from my friends. Girlhood may be something that can be taught from books and dolls. Womanhood is something that we learn from each other: the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.
