So we have an American Girl Doll catalog floating around the office today (addressed, somewhat questionably, to a 50-something male coworker), and I finally got the chance to check out the full spread on Rebecca Rubin, the new 1914 Jewish New Yorker who launched so that the flaxen pioneer Kirsten Larson might be forever retired to the “archives,” the big fjords in the sky. Now, only 1940s Molly McIntire (the doll Jewish girls used to get, because she had brown hair and wire glasses and unpopular interests like throwing fake luaus and rationing butter) remains from the original trio—Samantha (the forbotten, clearly WASPy and prim Victorian) has also gone to the great brass and lace bed in the sky, forever to watch over a generation of adoring girls who must now tend towards both good fashion and emotional pietism.
I’m actually glad Rebecca did not exist when I was hankering for (and totally scored) an AG fix during my eighth Hannukah; I’m not sure what I would have done if I had grown up with a role model who read “Motion Picture Magazine” (yes she has miniature copies…Rachel Profiling at its finest), wore sparkly flapper outfits just because, brought bagels, pickles, and rugelach to lunch (the lack of herring and cream is noted), and wore minks and leather spats and paisley shawls. Oh sure, we all kind of became her later,demons in mink, but without the few years spent imagining that in some alternate and struggling universe Molly and I had to buck up for the Red Cross Victory fundraiser and stop eating so much goddamn butter, goddamnit, perhaps I would have thought the world was all velveteen hats and phonographs. Not so much like the present day. But I guess that’s why they have introduced Gwen, the homeless American Girl. She lives in a car and comes with a “headband that doubles as a belt.” Samantha is cackling somewhere.
Also, Rebecca Rubin seems to share a name with a wanted eco-terrorist. American Girl HQ has not seemed to regroup and reassess after the last mistake, which involved releasing Chinese doll Ivy Ling by pairing her with a teeny tiny golden gong.
I did some digging around to see what the youth are saying about AG these days and found this charming story from the Lincoln, CA News Messenger about a recent 30-girl tea party to fete the dolls:
The girls enjoyed brownies, cookies and grapes during the tea-and-cookies portion of the tea, as well as “tea”, which was actually lemonade.
