Fascination of the Week: An American Girl Place

 

Saturday, I went to the Grove in Los Angeles -- something I rarely do anymore, and even more rarely on a weekend -- expecting the usual droves of tourists, Valley-ites (LA's 'bridge and tunnel' equivalents), pseudo hipsters, families, etc. And there I encountered something unexpected: a marked shift downward from the usual demographics, towards not just the tween set, but to kindergarteners. And almost all of these micro-shoppers (accompanied by adults, of course) were girls.


Mesmerized, I followed a veritable sea of pink to the newest flagship store at the Grove: An American Girl Place. There are so many things I could write about this experience and how odd it was; how conflicted I felt about the early indoctrination to the world of consumption these tots were receiving; at my delight at observing a girl check her 'doll' into the 'hospital' to get its 'injured eye'...'healed'. This made me lament the old days, when if Ollie the gel-filled octopus got punctured, into the bin he went. This 'hospital' was surely a win-win situation for all involved. I'm sure the parent was happy she didn't have to invest the $90 it would have cost to get a new doll rather than the $20 or so for the 'hospital' visit; her offspring was happy to have Molly back to normal, rather than having to either rename her Helen Keller, or having to resort to an eye-patch solution (while American Girl offers historically themed dolls, they don't offer pirates (yet) as a category). But I also worried about what might come next. Health insurance for dolls?


I also started adding up dollars on boxes, counting the number of dolls offered, the sets of books associated with each doll, the price for the child and doll photos that seemed to be a must-have souvenier, and the cost of getting a dolls hair braided at the 'beauty salon'. to name a few. Oh, and let's not forget the brunches, lunches or afternoon teas at the cafe, with parent, child and doll, for $16.95 a pop (doll's meals are happily free).


For merely $270, an adult and child can spend a full day at the store-cum-theme park, and for merely $60 a head, a child can host a birthday party to remember, lasting a whopping 90 minutes. The sheer amount of money that can be spent at this store is astounding. While most of the parents seemed to delight in their kids' reverie, I could see sweat forming on the brows of others, probably wondering how they would pay their mortage and buy the "Addy" Civil War era escaped-slave doll (and the twelve outfits, including the cotton -- I mean "flower picking" one below -- that she'll need to safely traverse the dangerous underground railroad). Forget about college savings. How about American Girl funds? And to fit all that crap in the house, a McMansion (with matching McDollhouse) will need to be built.Personally, I felt relieved -- another reason not to dabble in parenting, my hubby and I agreed. Or at least a reason to pray for that Y chromosome, since apparently market research has shown no need for the creation of 'An American Boy' store (though my husband, a former boy himself, pointed out that there are plenty of other items to capture a boy's imagination and their parents' wallets...video game consoles, for instance).


In any case, while I decided that I must write about American Girl, two days later I am still not really sure what I want to say or how to say it. And I am too lazy and tired to really think it through on this Sunday (now Monday) afternoon. Fortunately, I am not the only person fascinated with American Girl. And I am certainly not the best writer. Lucky for all of us, Pulitzer Prize winning Dan Neil, of the LA Times, has articulated his thoughts in a much more convincing and provocative manner (not to mention concise...) than I ever could (or will). And so timely, too.


In keeping with my laziness, I direct you to his column from Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine (curiosly, now called 'West') on the very topic I had planned to ponder...and sort of already have. Because you might have to register for the LA Times in order to read it, I have reprinted it here in full. Please let me know if this causes any format issues with the blog.


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800 WORDS
Thank Heaven
Dan Neil
May 14, 2006


If you have daughters of a certain age, you've probably heard of American Girl—a lot. American Girl is, first of all, a brand: The Mattel-owned direct-marketing company sells dolls, little doll outfits, charming novelettes about the dolls in Nancy Drew-like adventures, and an array of doll accessories so vast as to founder the cargo ships upon which it all arrives from China.


American Girl is also a place, an "experiential" retail environment (read mind-numbing monster store), the latest of which recently opened in the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles. With its own sugarplum café, theater, photo studio, doll hospital and doll hair salon, American Girl Place is to doll-obsessed preteens what bars near the airport are to alcoholics, a place to indulge their addictions to bathyspheric depths.


My plan at the grand opening was simply to stand outside and observe the families coming and going, to watch the little girls and—well, you see the problem. Such is the beleaguered state of innocence that no man's motives can be taken for granted, and it wasn't long before, under the sidelong glare of suspicious parents, I began to feel distinctly like a creep.


I introduced myself to a group of 10 parents and children gathered outside, knee-deep in the store's carnation-red bags. To celebrate Paige Mathias' ninth birthday, her friends from school and her Brownie troop made the trip from Corona in two minivans. "We had our reservation for the café in January," says Paige's mother, plainly an enthusiast. Paige was wearing an old-fashioned lavender party dress—an American Girl design, of course—and white patent leather shoes, and she was holding, boneless and limp in the crook of her elbow, her new Samantha doll, part of a haul worth $250.


As a commercial phenomenon, American Girl is as charming as it is appalling. With annual sales growth of 15%, the company racked up $436 million in revenue last year, with an estimated $100 million profit. For all its retro rag-doll simplicity, American Girl is mega-commerce, exploiting children's most primal hoarding instincts—the sort of collect-them-all mania that has provided Barbie with an income comparable to the GNP of oil-producing nations. American Girl is yet another gateway drug to the addiction of mass consumerism.


So said my cynical self. But then at some point walking around the store, I fell in love.


There is much to commend in the American Girl universe. The company's mainline products are his-torically themed dolls, such as Molly, a little girl growing up during World War II; Kit, who endures the hardships of the Great Depression and eventually becomes a cub reporter (she's my favorite); Addy, an escaped slave who makes her way north on the Underground Railroad; and Kaya, a horse-loving little girl of the Nez Perce tribe growing up in 1764 (not a particularly auspicious time for Native Americans).


It's not simply that these dolls are educational, civics lessons in Cabbage Patch drag. It's that these dolls' personal narratives take place at some time other than the present—the oppressive and hyper-sexualized, relentlessly trendy, precociously cynical reality that most children and their toys have to contend with. Forget Barbie and her late-model Corvette. Have you ever seen Bratz dolls? I give you the Bratz Wicked Twiins Ciara and Diona, raccoon-eyed, gothy tweens in platform boots looking like—in the beautiful phrase from "Sex in the City"—baby prostitutes.


I think that children, especially girls, are railroaded into their sexual awakening, a kind of premature psychic menarche that robs them of some fraction of their childhood. As a result, even the most progressive-minded fathers can be driven by the princess-making impulse, the desire to keep their girls naïve, if only for another day. Such fathers would be only too grateful to pull out their platinum cards at the American Girl counter. Plenty of mothers would too.


"When you consider all the awful things that are out there, I don't have any worries about this," says Paige's mom, Ann Rita Mathias, gesturing to the collection of store bags, and the recreational shopping binges they imply. "At least this is wholesome."


The store's other big-selling items are the "Just Like You" dolls, which are a series of 23 figurines of varying ethnic phenotypes, from dark African-featured dolls to blue-eyed Swedes. And, like Paige, girls can purchase adorable outfits matching their dolls' clothes. Consequently, you see a lot of little girls clutching tiny, cloth-skinned versions of themselves.


This seems important. At some point, before or at adolescence, girls must become aware that they have a target on their backs. Perhaps the intuition comes even earlier. As I watched the little girls wandering among the Grove's crowd of bored hipsters in mirror shades and coeds in jailbait couture, I couldn't help thinking that these dolls might serve as some sort of talisman, ever wide-eyed and vigilant, accompanying them on their long and scary walk among strangers.