American Girl Dolls Offer an Alternative to Barbie
CHICAGO — Across the city, it's easy to pick out the American Girls. They tote a doll in one hand and a mom in the other, young pilgrims on their way to the Mecca of doll adoration--the American Girl Place.
On her second visit to the holy site along Chicago's Magnificent Mile, Shannon O'Donald filled a red shopping bag with a hairstyling kit and a summer outfit for her doll Alexis. She also posed for a souvenir cover of American Girl magazine.
"This is first-class heaven to me," said Shannon, 10, wearing a purple satin pantsuit to match Alexis' karaoke outfit. "This is all about girls."
These highbrow dolls are everything Barbie is not. At $84 each, American Girl dolls carry the cachet of cost and have an educational bent--six books go with each doll.
"It's the anti-Barbie doll," said Helen Schwartzman, an anthropologist who studies play at Northwestern University. "It's books, not bikinis."
"We try to show smart, strong, resourceful girls," said Julie Parks, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin-based Pleasant Co., the force behind the American Girl empire. "Kids see themselves and the possibilities in these dolls."
It works for Shannon.
"The books show girls can do anything they want," she said proudly.
The Pleasant Co. sells $300 million a year in dolls, books and accessories, mostly through an annual mailing of 50 million catalogs.
The company describes itself as a "mission-driven" corporation that aims to "celebrate girlhood" and convince young girls that life is theirs for the taking.
"We don't aspire to get girls to act older or hipper or cooler than they are," Parks said. "We want them to act like girls."
The company began in 1986 after founder Pleasant Rowland went shopping for her young nieces and was dismayed by the lack of "educational and fun" products that reflect growing up in America. Rowland, a former teacher and curriculum writer with a passion for history, decided something had to be done, Parks said.
Rowland's first dolls included Kirsten, a 9-year-old set on the frontier in 1854, and Molly, a 9-year-old living during World War II. That historical line has expanded to six dolls, including a Civil War-era slave and a 19th century Latina "dreamer."
Six "historically accurate" books and accessories galore, such as Colonial undergarments or an adobe oven and bread set, go with each doll.
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