American Girl crazy!

Soon Rowland hit on the idea of combining her love of history with her drive to create an uplifting girl culture. She would accomplish her aim by marketing dolls that represented little girls from different periods in American history. Eventually there would be eight of them: Kaya, an "adventurous" Nez Perce girl; Felicity, a "spunky" colonial girl; Josefina, a "hopeful" girl living on a New Mexican rancho in 1824; Kirsten, "a pioneer girl of strength and spirit"; Addy, a "courageous" girl who escapes slavery; Samantha, "a bright, compassionate girl living with her wealthy grandmother in 1904"; Nellie, who is Irish and also "practical and hardworking," which is just as well, since she was "hired to be a servant in the house next door to Samantha"; Kit, a "clever resourceful girl growing up during America's Depression"; and Molly, "a lively, loveable schemer and dreamer growing up in 1944." The dolls would be exceptionally well made -- Rowland went all the way to Germany for doll eyes that met her exacting standards for realism -- and outfitted in costumes that could pass some sort of muster for historical accuracy without sacrificing any girl appeal. (Nellie, the servant girl, for instance, would not be clad in anything too practical or gray, nor would Addie, the slave, look too disheveled. Their boots, however, would have a lot of buttons.)

Each girl had a book and eventually a series of books that told her story, and each book was sprinkled with historical details: steamboats, breadlines, Victory Gardens. In a sense, all the girls are pretty much the same girl -- the historical backdrops change, but the same basic personality type cycles cheerfully through all of them. All American Girls are "plucky," "spunky," and mildly adventurous but not overtly rebellious, and they are never misfits. They often have a pesky boy in their lives: a brother or neighbor who annoys them to no end. They are inclined to help the less fortunate, useful to the household economy, talkative without being mouthy, and bright without being egg-headed. Because all the leading characters in the books have a second and more compelling life as dolls (though pleasant enough, the books are not great children's literature), they must be pretty. Some of the most memorable children's book heroines are not pretty -- though it is understood that they may grow up to be handsome or striking or even, to the discerning eye, beautiful -- which is one reason so many generations of awkward, intellectual girls have loved them. Jo in Little Women is famously plain and tomboyish; Meg in A Wrinkle in Time describes herself as "snaggle-toothed," "myopic," and "clumsy," a bespectacled frump in the shadow of her gorgeous mother; even dear Laura in the Little House books compares herself unfavorably to her golden-haired, lady-like sister Mary, who always remembers to save her complexion by wearing her hat. In a freestanding book, a homely or an unkempt heroine is fine. In a book that supplies back story for a doll, it won't do.

The girls of color -- Josefina, Addy, and Kaya -- came later, but neither late arrival nor cultural distinctness did anything to alter their essential personality or, in some respects, their appearance. All American Girl dolls are plump-cheeked and sturdy-legged (the dolls look younger -- and hence cuddlier -- than the girls illustrated in the books), with round eyes and small smiles that reveal precisely two teeth. The catalogs often show girls matched to dolls by race: Addy is snuggled by an African American girl, Josefina by a Hispanic one. But in real life, girls quickly exhibited a happy disregard for such conventions. Kaya, the native American doll, for instance, has entranced girls of various ethnic backgrounds. (She is, after all, a nine-year-old with ready access to fast horses, beaded dresses, and the wide-open plains.)

The concept was, almost from the beginning, a remarkable success. Pleasant Company did not advertise and made its wares available by catalog only, but between September and December of its first year, 1986, it sold $1.7 million worth of products. By 2003 it had sold seven million dolls and eighty-two million books, still without advertising. In 1998 it opened its first store -- American Girl Place -- in Chicago, which became, in its first year, the top-selling store on Chicago's prime shopping street. In 2003 it opened a second American Girl Place, on Fifth Avenue in New York. "Place" was a significant word, for both the Chicago and New York stores were meant to be more than stores: they were destinations for families, safe harbors for innocent girlishness and mother-daughter bonding. Each store featured a doll hospital; a hair salon, where, for fifteen dollars, doll tresses could be styled by an adult; a theater with a live, Broadway-meets-Bransonstyle stage show, in which young actresses playing the American Girls belted out original tunes; and a classy black-and-white-and-fuchsia tearoom, where mothers could eat smoked salmonand-cucumber sandwiches with orange fennel butter and daughters could eat grape jelly flag sandwiches, and dolls got "treat seats" of their own. In 1998, Rowland sold the brand that was essentially the anti-Barbie to Mattel, the Barbie maker, for $700 million. And since then, American Girl has done the amazing: it has nearly displaced the venerable, vacant Barbie as the best-selling doll in America.

Ours, it's clear, is a moment in consumer history when middle-class American parents will spend, pretty much happily, a great deal of money on what they perceive as quality goods for their children, particularly if those goods can be seen as in any way educational. A Samantha starter kit, which includes the doll, a slim paperback book, and a few teensy accessories, sells for $98. Samantha's cunning little wooden school desk, with its historically accurate wrought-iron legs, costs $68. Her trunk, with its oval mirror and three wee hangers, costs $175. Josefina's carved wooden chest, in tasteful Santa Fe style, goes for $155. And so on. For many American girls, these are, of course, unimaginable luxuries. At an economically and racially diverse private school where a friend's daughter goes, American Girl dolls are a dividing line -- and an early introduction to class in America -- for a group of third-graders. Two of the girls are from families who cannot afford the dolls, let alone the fripperies that go with them. And, lately, these two girls have been getting left out of play dates and playground games, which often center on American Girl fantasies. Ironic, in a way, since these particular girls are from newly arrived immigrant families of modest means, whose life stories are, therefore, classic American Girl. The "Barbie as Halle Berry in Catwoman" doll may come swathed in stereotypes, but at least it has the virtue of being available at your local Target for $14.99.

Next Page: The other reason the American Girl brand succeeds is that it aims to please both mothers and daughters

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