Ok, I admit it. I love dolls. I have always loved dolls as far back as I can remember. The earliest pictures of me as a child always show me holding some type of doll in my hand. I played with Barbies and paper dolls long after I should have given them away to some unsuspecting cousin. I still have my first Barbie, even though she’s a little worse for the wear after my daughters wrought their special brand of havoc on her. I have a doll collection that is small but suits me nicely. No explaining it, so don’t ask…
Therefore, it makes sense that I will attempt a website explaining and detailing the effect that American Girl Dolls have on the telling of history. These dolls are larger play/collectible dolls that portray different periods of American history. I am somewhat familiar with these dolls because I bought a "Molly" doll (who is a WWII-era doll) for my daughter, Molly. She, of course, still has her Molly, and I will try to get it away from her long enough to let you see one up close and personal. However, Molly is liable to tell me that Molly is living at my house in a box, and if that's the case, I have no idea where Molly (the doll) is. Molly the daughter is in Columbus, and that's another story. Now she plays with dogs and her husband instead of dolls. I wonder if I have a picture of Molly with Molly?
At lunch today I started squirreling around on the Internet to see what I can come up with. There is an amazing amount of stuff out there about these American Girl dolls. There are also some scholarly articles about them, but I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. I might end up hunting down Dr. K and Librarian Kathleen for help with the hard-core scholarly stuff, but I think I'm on the trail!
I can tell already that the story lines and the books about the American Girls are rather "Buffalo Bill-esque". I think I will find that they portray history in a pretty white American way, even though one American Girl is Indian, one is African American (a slave), one is Hispanic, and there are settlers and immigrants as well. Oh, I forgot the Jewish New Yorker. No stereotyping here...
I hope I don’t live to regret doing this research. I love Molly’s Molly, and I really hesitate to think that I bought into the whole “his-story” rather than history. I guess I can feel better by telling myself that I bought this really expensive doll because she had the same name as my Molly. History had nothing to do with it, and that’s probably the truth. However, it will be interesting to see how the American Girls’ stories and history match up – if at all.
Lou--this is a great idea! I think the American Girl dolls are fascinating.
ReplyDeleteYou might consider, though, how your website and research intersects with one or more of our course readings. One goal of the assignment is to get more familiar with a reading (or cluster of readings) from the course. I think you could do that, using Turner and Limerick and possibly the article about Buffalo Bill. But if your favorite doll (Molly) is a WWII doll, then I wonder if you might seek other connections--maybe to Gatsby (1920s, a bit earlier than WWII) or something else.
Also, you can let your scholarship guide these connections to some extent. And yes, I can help you (and so can our Cowgirl Librarian) with the scholarly research.
I think I was leaning more towards showing how the American Girl dolls are related to Buffalo Bill in that the history that is presented to young children (mostly girls in this instance) is skewed to show American history in a favorable and pristine light. I had not really considered Gatsby and the American Girl dolls, but I am quite certain there is one that might fit in there as well.
ReplyDeleteLou, I think that this would be a very interesting website topic for you to do. I myself have never had an American Girl, but every where I look I seem to see an advertisement for it. I would be very interested to see the stories behind these dolls and how they indeed relate to history as we know it. Even out side of the doll, you always hear girls being called 'American Girls'. Since I have never looked into the dolls, I think it would be interesting to see if these dolls do reflect the idea of the 'American Girl'. I would also like to know what makes one an 'American Girl'; and if these dolls have any of the characteristics that distinguished them as an 'American Girl'.
ReplyDeleteI can also see how you feel about being nervous about what you find. Once you really like something and find out that the history behind it isn't so nice, it definitely changes your whole attitude about it. I also think that you finding a picture of 'Molly with Molly' would be a unique idea for your website and would give it a lot of personality.
Hi Lou, I think that your idea of using dolls to aid you in you website project is a great way to sort of cushion the hard boiled truth of a distorted history. I find it particularly interesting that you purchased a “Molly” doll for your daughter that was manufactured during World War ll. I hope that your website will give the audience fine details of how the presence of dolls were able to manipulate the history of the American culture. Which will totally rearrange the way we view dolls as just meaningless toys for both children and adults. I also find it interesting that you were able to expose the view of the American Girls, which was portrayed to be a an all white presence, but in actuality was mixed with multiple different races of girls and their status. It seems to me that there was large majority of misrepresentation that was practiced in the past that is now being displayed so often that one is able to see the extremely high levels of dishonesty that took place in the history of America.
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