{"id":213744,"date":"2025-06-05T14:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T18:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/?p=213744"},"modified":"2025-06-09T13:45:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T17:45:20","slug":"the-lasting-allure-of-american-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/articles\/the-lasting-allure-of-american-girl","title":{"rendered":"The Lasting Allure of American Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>When I was five years old, my family took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg. While exploring a blacksmith\u2019s shop and the once-governor\u2019s palace might not entice most kindergarteners, for me, the place might as well have been Disney World. Clad in a tricorn hat, I bounded through the cobblestone streets as if I lived there, just a girl in a petticoat on the edge of the Revolution. I was no longer Caroline but, instead, Felicity Merriman, the copper-headed, horse-loving American Girl whose books my mother would read to me at bedtime.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1100\" height=\"731\" src=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Scan_20250603-5-1100x731.jpg\" alt=\"A girl and a doll in bed\" class=\"wp-image-213749\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Scan_20250603-5-1100x731.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Scan_20250603-5-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Scan_20250603-5-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Scan_20250603-5.jpg 1184w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The author shares a pillow with her Felicity Merriman doll.<\/figcaption><figcaption class=\"image-credit\" style=\"text-align:right;\">photo: Beth Sanders<\/figcaption><div class=\"caption\">The author shares a pillow with her Felicity Merriman doll.<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As a nineties-born Millennial, I dabbled in other doll brands\u2014Polly Pocket, Barbie, Groovy Girls, Betty Spaghetty\u2014but American Girl and its heartfelt, daring, and lesson-laden stories were my white whale. Created by Pleasant Company in 1986 (and sold to Mattel in 1998), American Girl produced dolls, books, magazines, and other pre-adolescent girl paraphernalia, all of which my friends and I consumed religiously. My best friend and I staged the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Actions-Speak-Louder-Samantha-Script\/dp\/B001HC4CEK\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Actions Speak Louder Than Words<\/a>\u201d play about Samantha, a wealthy girl learning about labor laws in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York, on repeat in her basement. I recently found a home video of another friend and me doing an interpretive dance to the book on tape about Josefina, a girl growing up in Colonial New Mexico in the 1820s. I dragged my family to the American Girl Place in Chicago on our summer vacation and themed my eighth birthday party around all things AG.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1100\" height=\"735\" src=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-cake-1100x735.jpg\" alt=\"A birthday cake\" class=\"wp-image-213747\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-cake-1100x735.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-cake-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-cake-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-cake.jpg 1182w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The author\u2019s American Girl Doll\u2013themed eighth birthday cake.<\/figcaption><figcaption class=\"image-credit\" style=\"text-align:right;\">photo: Beth Sanders<\/figcaption><div class=\"caption\">The author\u2019s American Girl\u2013themed eighth birthday cake.<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1100\" height=\"750\" src=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-party-1100x750.jpg\" alt=\"Little girls and dolls at tables\" class=\"wp-image-213748\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-party-1100x750.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-party-300x204.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-party-768x523.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/8th-birthday-party.jpg 1159w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Friends and dolls gather for the party.<\/figcaption><figcaption class=\"image-credit\" style=\"text-align:right;\">photo: Beth Sanders<\/figcaption><div class=\"caption\">Friends and dolls gather for the party.<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I was hardly alone in my obsession. In the late nineties, sales of the eighteen-inch plastic dolls raked in around $300 million a year (half a billion in today\u2019s money). And today the brand is in the midst of a resurgence. Doll-themed social media accounts have popped up in the last few years, posting tongue-in-cheek memes about the characters in modern society. Podcasts like <em>Dolls of Our Lives<\/em> and <em>American Girl Women <\/em>dissect the books and the brand. A bevy of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/18\/style\/american-girl-cafe-harry-hill-serena-kerrigan.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">influencers<\/a> reignited childhood memories from their brunch tables at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americangirl.com\/pages\/retail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">American Girl cafes<\/a> across the country.&nbsp;<\/p><div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3918608\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad mobile inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-9138363\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad tablet inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-6604123\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad desktop inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"733\" height=\"1100\" src=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image-733x1100.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-213746\" style=\"width:287px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image-733x1100.jpg 733w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image-800x1200.jpg 800w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cover-image.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 733px) 100vw, 733px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe saw an uptick right around the pandemic, with people going back to their family homes and finding their American Girl dolls in their closets,\u201d says KC Hysmith, a North Carolina food writer who, with her colleague Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, edited a recently released book of essays, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upress.state.ms.us\/Books\/A\/An-American-Girl-Anthology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe<\/em><\/a><em> <\/em>(University Press of Mississippi). \u201cYou also have a lot of millennials entering parenthood, and they\u2019re passing these kinds of things onto their kids. Or maybe they don\u2019t have kids, but they now have disposable income and are spending it on things that bring them joy\u2014maybe things they didn\u2019t get to have as a child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the duo put out a call for papers\u2014through an Instagram meme, naturally\u2014\u201cthe enthusiasm was genuinely palpable,\u201d Orlovsky-Schnitzler says. They fielded academic and pop culture essays on topics such as diversity (or lack thereof) in the historical lineup, identity (who really gets to call themselves an American Girl?), the inherent capitalism packed into every dog-eared catalogue, food history evident in the stories and cookbooks (<a href=\"https:\/\/dandridgehousedolls.com\/2018\/07\/30\/samanthas-lemon-ice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lemon ice, anyone<\/a>?), and how perhaps the most important aspect of the brand was what happened when a child made the stories their own.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1100\" height=\"730\" src=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP100214117135-copy-1100x730.jpg\" alt=\"Girls look at American Girl dolls\" class=\"wp-image-213852\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP100214117135-copy-1100x730.jpg 1100w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP100214117135-copy-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP100214117135-copy-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gardenandgun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/AP100214117135-copy-1600x1062.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Having a look at the dolls.<\/figcaption><figcaption class=\"image-credit\" style=\"text-align:right;\">photo: Krista Kennell\/Sipa Press<\/figcaption><div class=\"caption\">Having a look at the dolls.<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhether it\u2019s someone taking their identity and grafting it onto the doll\u2014regardless of the original story\u2014or saying, <em>I\u2019m going to create a completely new character that speaks to my experiences<\/em>, it was heartening to see that we\u2019re not alone in this,\u201d Orlovsky-Schnitzler says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As much as it holds the brand up to the light to examine its imperfections, the book also celebrates why a generation of now-adults like me still harbors such a vibrant enthusiasm. \u201cThe anthology justifies long-held\u2014or new-held\u2014obsessions with American Girl,\u201d Hysmith says. \u201cIt\u2019s the reason so many of us love the things we started loving as a child. American Girl is at that base.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upress.state.ms.us\/Books\/A\/An-American-Girl-Anthology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong><em>An American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe<\/em><\/strong><\/a><em> <\/em>is available now from the University Press of Mississippi.<\/p><div id=\"div-gpt-ad-2101563\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad mobile inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-9779357\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad tablet inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-4617065\" class=\"ad-container in-line-ad desktop inContent\" data-ad-size-mapping=\"inContent\" data-ad-path=\"\/68000349\/in-between-modules\" data-ad-sizes=\"[ [336, 280], [300, 250], [300, 50] ]\" data-ad-channel=\"\" data-ad-type=\"In-between Modules\" data-page-terms=\"\"><\/div>\n\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With nostalgia, humor, and scrutiny, a new book celebrates and critiques the iconic doll brand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":213745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-06-05T18:01:12Z","apple_news_api_id":"7e0e7fb8-f0ba-48be-8a56-81a9066ff810","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-06-05T18:01:19Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Afg5_uPC6SL6KVoGpBm_4EA","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784,2399],"tags":[74,29991,30280],"authors":[17840],"issue":[],"recipe-type":[],"class_list":["post-213744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-books","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-whats-new","authors-caroline-sanders-clements"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Lasting Allure of American Girl &#8211; 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