Letters to the Editor
-
Perfect Dolls
Maybe the problem with the American girl dolls is that they're halfway between toys and collector's items. When I was about eight, I saved my allowance and birthday money to buy the Kirsten doll. And as much as I wanted to take her hair down and brush through it, I didn't because I knew I could never get it back into those two perfect, looped braids. In some sense even my Barbies seemed more real, less perfect because they weren't a hundred dollar investment. I cut their hair, or dragged them around by it. I could turn a Barbie dress into a shirt and skirt if I liked because the clothes were plentiful and cheap.
My sisters and I would have tea with our AG dolls, or reenact some scene from one of the books. But with less valuable toys, we usually made up our own stories to act out. When the arm of one Barbie got ripped off, we didn't cry, we made a new game: Barbie car accident! It's not the doll, it's how you play with it, and how you feel you should play with it. And how much should we let children's toys dictate how they play.