girlies all the historical ag books but felicity are banned in florida lmao

HEY GUYS IDK IF YOU KNOW THIS BUT AMERICAN GIRL JUST CONFIRMED CINEMATIC* UNIVERSE

*technically literary but omg

You look so cold. 2023 b&w 35mm K.E.A Lux Hill

Re-living my childhood and working on doing a fashion history spam of the American Girl dolls!

Oh my god I can’t begin to tell you what a huge part of my childhood those dolls were. Before I go on, let me clarify my family’s financial circumstance growing up: I was a pretty solidly middle-class only child. I definitely wasn’t rich, but my mom was willing to spend a lot of money on buying me a shitload of American Girl stuff because A.) she thought they were cool, and B.) they provided a much smarter alternative to Barbies. And when I grew up and got too old for them, I was able to give my stuff over to my younger cousins.

Looking at what the brand has to offer now, it’s pretty clear that the brand has changed over time and that the emphasis has gone from the historical dolls to the modern ones. Honestly, that’s not a 100% terrible thing. I fully embrace change as a part of the universe, and if it’s a part of the survival of the brand, so be it. As long as the historical dolls remain in tact and the brand integrity is respected. And for the most part, until very recent years, it looks like it has been.

Mattel bought the American Girl brand in 1998, and from then on, you can see the brand shifting away from the original five dolls. I’m going to get waaay more into this with the spam, but really, the historical dolls until very recently have actually remained pretty great. If there’s one really broad critique I could give, it’s that the overall color palette skews towards the modern, with a lot of very bright colors and a heavy emphasis on pink, but when taken individually, the pieces remain very accurate.

HERE’S THE THING! In 2016, a new historical girl was released: Maryellen, repping the 1950s. She’s blonde and has blue eyes, following shortly on Julie, who repped the 1970s and also had blonde hair and blue eyes. You can kind of see a theme developing here. The girls from the 30s, 50, 70s, 80s, and 90s are all blonde with blue eyes. You’d think that girls in the 20th century were only blondes. But anyway I’m getting away from the point. Maryellen was released with only TWO books! The fuck?! Maryellen’s collection remained the same very immersive collection that I love about the brand, but clearly, shit’s changing.

The next historical dolls, Nenea (repping Hawaii after Pearl Harbor), Melody (repping Black girls, Motown, and civil rights in the 60s), Courtney (repping blonde hair blue eyed girls with 80s nostalgia and very little historical engagement), Claudie, (Black girl in the 1920s Harlem Renaissance) and Isabelle and Nicki (again blonde girls repping 90s nostalgia with little historical engagement) all only have two books. The brand has LITERALLY been diminished. The books were an equally important part of the playset, not only providing context for the garments and objects you were playing with, providing REAL, often complex lessons about history, making history feel real and relatable, but they fleshed out the girls, their lives, and the worlds they lived in. They made what you were playing with more than just a playset, more than just a dollhouse or Barbie accessories, they were a whole universe for girls to explore.

Like I said at the beginning, I didn’t grow up rich. I definitely had more privilege than others out there, but I still wasn’t the rich kid villain from a 90s kids movie. I had a lot of American Girl shit because my mom saw the value in the brand and was willing to spend a lot of money on it in a way that she wouldn’t be willing to spend a lot of money on Barbies.

Honestly, I don’t know the toy industry, I don’t know what little girls today want out of their dolls. I know that times change, and that what’s beloved in one generation isn’t necessarily going to be carry over to the next. But I find it hard to believe that little girls straight up no longer are interested in history, and that moms no longer want to give their daughters toys that will actually teach them things. I’ve read a lot of articles about how the brand is struggling, and I don’t think it’s a generational divide. Mattel has fucked up the brand, and I am not just saying that out of Boomer toxic nostalgia that says that everything from the past is GOOD, everything today is BAD, and that anything that changes is inherently not only bad but a personal insult. The stuff that made these expensive dolls worth buying just isn’t there.

Kirsten and Sari 🩷🩷🩷

August 15: Happy Birthday Kaya'aton'my (American Girl)!!!!

She was born in 1755, which would make her 268 years old today!

So...I may have impulse-purchased my first American Girl doll since 2011 (when I was 7)...

AGblr, meet Rebecca Rubin!

I've been obsessed with American Girl ever since I was 5 and checked out allllll the historical girls' books I could from the library, and my obsession had a resurgence in March of 2022 when my family visited Chicago and, for nostalgia's sake, popped into the American Girl store for like five seconds. Since then, I've been lurking on AGIG and AGblr, admiring everyone's beautiful dolls and collections and wishing I had the money to buy one myself.

Now that I'm working a few jobs and have some money saved, I impulse-bought Rebecca a few days ago as a "congratulations on getting through the semester" present to myself! I've loved her books since I was young (I think she was the newest historical doll when I was into AG—I wasn't following the company closely anymore by the time Marie-Grace and Cecile were released). And back in March 2022 when we visited the Chicago store, I was reading Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, a book about a girl from a Russian-Jewish immigrant family growing up as one of several siblings in a tenement on the Lower East Side of NYC...hmm, sound familiar?! (The book is really good, by the way—I'd 100% recommend it!)

I saw the Mercari listing for this girl and immediately fell in love with her sweet face—and the fact that she still had her mostly-complete pre-Beforever meet outfit, with that beautiful drop-waist! (One of my friends kept saying she wished she had that outfit herself. Honestly, same.)

Her hair's a little dry, and I think it's been cut a bit—said friend had to trim an errant long strand that had been missed. Some of her fingernails have been painted (subtly—you can't really tell unless you look closely), and her limbs are slightly loose. I don't have nearly the expertise or equipment to fix any of these things, and honestly, I'm not sure I want to. Maybe when I have some more experience and don’t have to be afraid of damaging her. But for now, I think these things give her charm—they show she's been well-loved in her previous life!

And as a bonus—I didn't plan this, but I ended up getting her on the first night of Hanukkah! Diversity win—and the best Hanukkah present I could have asked for 💖

Bonus: Rebecca meets Nina Zenik, my handmade plushie of the character from Six of Crows! (See the others here!) As two girls of Russian (or, in Nina's case, fantasy-Russian) heritage with a talent for acting, a flair for the dramatic, and red-and-gold outfits, I think they'd get along very well together :)

Now that I'm a wage-earner and I've proven to myself that if I want a doll I can just...go online...and buy a doll...I'm currently talking myself out of buying every single doll I see online for a decent price (Josefina and Luciana and Kaya and Kit and, and, and, and...). Maybe—and this is a big maybe—I'll get another one in a few months as a "congratulations on getting through the NEXT semester" present, but for now I think my American Girl collection is going to stay at one, or two counting my Molly back at home. But Rebecca won't be lonely—she'll have plenty of friends in my other plushies and Funko Pops, and my (human) friends serve as her loving "friendparents". And, of course, she'll have lots of love from me. 💖

USA

"we need an american girl doll who" memes but it's inspired by dark shadows

bonus:

Leah Belle Faser

Taylor Swift and Selena Gómez at Independence Day Party (2023)

iykyk

is it odd, that me, a grown woman of 27 years, has decided to buy all the american girl story collections that existed in her childhood (meaning none of the new girls that came after 2007 or so) ?

if it is, it doesn’t matter because I’m doing it anyways.

go cheifs!

I’ve talked to soooooooo many Millennial girls who all study history now who all say the same thing: it started with my American Girls.

I’ve been running OMGTD since 2010. When I first started looking at historical fashion collections online, I didn’t know a ton but I actually had a pretty solid baseline knowledge of hoops, petticoats, corsets, and how they worked because of AG. That provided me with everything I needed to reach the level of knowledge that I have now. Seriously not only did I learn soooo much from AG, it get me interested in history and gave me the understanding I needed to really be passionate about it.

Going on long extended rants about AG isn’t just about nostalgia (again I would never be doing this shit about Barbies!).  Seeing the brand diminished is upsetting because I know personally how much I loved and benefited from the brand. It’s something that deserves to be upheld.

Who needs Summer Time Sadness

When you have Winter Time Amusements