What I Learned from American Girl Dolls
When I was a kid, my single mother couldn’t afford to buy me an American Girl doll. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. My first doll was a miniature version of the doll Elizabeth. They sold those mini dolls at Barnes and Noble for a fraction of the price of a regular one. I still have that doll, 16 years later. The only difference is that now, as an adult, I collect American Girl dolls and get to treasure them the way I never got the chance to do as a child.
I recently decided to re-read some of my old favorites in the book series: stories about Kit, a girl growing up in The Great Depression; Felicity, a tomboyish pioneer girl who loved horses; and Samantha, a feminist in the making who helped out a friend and spoke out against child labor.
While reading those books again for the first time in years, it struck me how much they influenced the kind of person I am today, all these years later. The lessons in the books are just as relevant today, if not more so.
Kit taught me to embrace a lifestyle of repairing objects instead of throwing them away, and to not be ashamed at doing what you need to do to survive. As someone in between the Millennial and Gen Z generations, that’s an important lesson to learn. I always loved sewing, trying to make something out of old fabric instead of throwing it away, and now I remember why. There was something magical about Aunt Millie’s lessons about ripping a worn sheet in half and sewing it together inside out so it was like new, or even buying day-old bread for a fraction of the cost, screw what your neighbors at the store thought.
Felicity taught me to stand up for what I believe is right, and to embrace all parts of myself, both “masculine” and “feminine”. I wanted to climb to the roof of my house like her, and ride horses bareback, and curtsey like a lady. When I was growing up, media portrayed tomboyish girls (and being “not like the other girls”, aka, not feminine) to be ideal. So it was interesting to see that while Felicity initially rejected lessons on how to be a lady, and while those lessons were a sort of sexist requirement of her time, it was a good lesson for her to accept enjoying parts of both stereotypically feminine and masculine behaviors. But of course, the more important and relevant part of her story was living through the founding of the USA. Her and her best friend Elizabeth experienced difficulty as their communities clashed over newfound freedom or being loyal to the king. But Felicity and Elizabeth chose each other, since much was out of their control.
Upon re-reading Samantha’s books, I realized I hadn’t known anything about feminism as a child, but seeing her aunt take part in the rallies and seeing Samantha stand up against child labor made me realize how these good lessons influenced me to speak out for what I believe in. Samantha is sometimes dismissed a privileged brat, and while it does make me a little uncomfy to consider someone with that much privilege to be the center of a story about child labor, Samantha herself was an innocent, clean slate through which children could learn to think of others.
These aren’t the only lessons American Girl books and dolls taught me as a child, but they were some that stuck out to me upon re-reading the books as an adult. There’s a reason they continue to live on for years. Viewing children as adults in the making and trusting that they can handle serious subjects is an important part of influencing a child’s development and helping them shape who they are going to be.
