The other day while I was stopped at a light in Beverly Hills, a strange thing happened. As I was staring mindlessly across the way at the American Girl store, Tom Petty’s second ever single dedicated to the lonesome chick “raised on promises” came on the radio. While not as tongue-dropping of a coincidence as say, questioning a random girl on a Paris metro at midnight only to find out you went to the same middle school and made out with her brother in eighth grade, the perfect alignment of sight and sound in this particular moment was enough to give me pause. I hummed along, swept away by bittersweet feelings of what it meant – what it means – to be an American Girl.
American Girl the company was born in 1986. I, also an American girl, was born in 1985. As products of the 80s, so close in age, the two of us naturally hit it off like Ghostbusters (nee 1984). I can’t remember now which I fell in love with first, the stories of the four Original Girls or the dolls themselves, but regardless, I was immediately hooked. My single digit self ate up the lives of Felicity, Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly like Frosted Flakes and Spaghetti O-s, and they easily became my four best time-traveling companions. They were as real to me as Mikie and Miranda and Amanda, my flesh and blood friends, and in some ways had even more to offer, introducing me to the joys of history, reading, and most importantly, imagination.
It’s incredible our capacity for make-believe as children. I remember moments with the girls as if they actually happened. My life on the plantation with Felicity, as Felicity – we were one and the same, she another version of me, centuries before. I didn’t need to understand mirror neurons to experience their transformative power, just jumping into the words of the books and daydreaming of the Old South produced the connection to the world. Kirsten’s pre-Civil War memories became mine, Sam’s Edwardian era New York my playground. I was a sponge dropped into an ocean, absorbing stories as effortlessly as language. It’s one of the things I regret most about growing up: in gaining a more solid sense of self and the material world, I’ve lost a good deal of the porousness of possibility. (Or, in other words, I have to work that much harder to learn French.)
While I loved all of the AGs and their spirited personalities, Molly McIntire was far and away my favorite. Maybe it was because she was the closest generationally to me, or possessed more of the characteristics I would use to describe myself (fanciful, dreamer, chatterbox, feisty), but she captured my heart. She was my first doll, and I cherished her the way only little girls can. Whereas I kept Kirsten- my second and only other doll- in immaculate condition, Molly sported the wears and tears of a child’s adoration. Her once glossy twin braids grew frizzy with continuously evolving hairstyles, and her skin acquired marks and scuffs, badges of Adventures in Playland. Every birthday and Christmas present I shared with her, asking my parents and grandparents only for new doll clothes and accessories. For a time, she was my everything.
Over the years, I spent less and less time with Molly and the girls, gradually shifting my attention to other interests- gymnastics, acting, boys. Like My Little Ponies and Cabbage Patch Kids that came before them, they ended up on shelves and in boxes, unused but not forgotten.* One Christmas season I even got asked to participate in an American Girl fashion show. I was Felicity, in beautiful blue flowing taffeta and red cape flowing, my childhood fantasies realized, if only in exquisite wardrobe. It was the first and last show of my runway career, but it was magical, and the perfect transition into the next incarnation of me, from child to teenager.
Just as I experienced changes in my life- some thrilling, some painful- so too did American Girl evolve. A fifth girl, the African American Addy, had joined the ranks of the AGs in 1993, during the peak of my interest in the dolls. As with the other four, I fell in love with her immediately. But over the next couple of years, as the company expanded into an empire, I gradually drifted away. More and more girls were added, and while positive in its diverse conception of what it means to be American, this somehow gave my adolescent self the feeling of over saturation and commercialism. The opening of stores with multiple levels and expensive tea times, the ability to design a doll in your own likeness- I rejected these changes, seeing them as a commodification of a brand, a cheapening of my five historical friends. In retrospect, this progression was only natural, and more reflective of my own expanding and contracting perceptions of the world than of the corruption of American Girl. Companies thrive on continuously turning out new products. In our fast-paced, technologically advanced culture, novelty sells. And anyway, who was I to judge as I fully embraced Abercrombie and MTV and Boy Bands. Things change. People change. American girls change. It’s not good or bad, it just is.
The light finally turned green and I continued on my way to my Soul Cycle class. I wondered where my dolls were now. I knew my mother had saved them, but I had no idea of their precise location. In my heart. I smiled at my sentimentality. In actuality, Molly and Kirsten were probably in my grandmother’s storage unit, waiting for their opportunity to befriend another American girl. My future American girl. The thought of one day sharing my childhood passion with a daughter of my own made my heart flutter and imagination take off. I knew I would never pass an American Girl store in the same way again.
*Perhaps this is one of the reasons I still cry like a baby watching Jessie’s song “When She Loved Me” in Toy Story 2. Or maybe it’s just because I’m super emotional. Probably the latter.
An Actress Muses 