I just sent the following e-mail to American Girl and Mattel:

"One month ago, I purchased $200 worth of American Girl products, as a show of support for American Girl and

Girls Inc. in the face of the disgusting right-wing boycott. However, In light of your recent decision to end support of Girls Inc., I plan to return everything unopened for credit. Your craven action is a clear message that American Girl cares more about caving in to political pressure than it does about empowering girls. You should all be deeply ashamed. P.S.: I am part of a large e-mail network of influential feminists in California; they will all receive a copy of this message."

Now we know what American Girl is really all about: corporate greed and spinelessness.

Yep, my American Girl books are going back to the store as well. I will instead make a donation to Girls, Inc. in the amount I would have spent on the books. I will explain to the girl in my life that she will not be getting anymore AG books from me, because the company that makes them is a coward that gives in to bullies and therefore not worthy of my money or her respect. Thank goodness she is a smart little lady, who will likely spread the word to her friends. I'd love to see them all ditch the whole line.

Before we start the American Girl boycott from the left, I think we should consider that maybe American Girl really didn't end it's relationship with Girls Inc. because of right-wing pressure. Why would I advocate this measured approach? Mainly because I don't want to act like the right, by having a knee jerk reaction to something without pausing to find out all of the facts. As far as I can tell (I live in Madison, Wisconsin where American Girl was founded and most of production still takes place) American Girl did a pretty good job of standing up to the conservative Christians by ignoring the boycott. American Girl partners with a different nonprofit organization every year. The partner for 2005 was Girls Inc. Now that partnership is over, and American Girl will focus on donating proceeds to another (or many other) organizations. I would imagine that these decisions are made far in advance -- in fact, far before the right-wing boycott started this fall. American Girl has supported hundreds of charities and nonprofit organizations in its history -- I think American Girl should be commended for basically ignoring the boycott and just proceeding on with their business. We should support them even more now!

My anger is based in part on this quote from an article about all this on cbsnews.com: "Mattel, the maker of the doll has decided it will not renew its partnership with Girls Inc. which runs out this year." That suggests the relationship could have continued had Mattel wanted it to. And the new AG "Save Girlhood" campaign just reeks of fear of the right. I will be very interested to see what kind of organization AG links to in 2006. If it is conservative, I will stick to my judgement that AG let the hatemongers dictate their decisions. In the meantime, I'll keep making donations to worthy groups directly so I don't have to worry about the motives of any company.