American Girl: Tokenistic?

[osprey_archer]

My professor for the American Girl paper is Australian, and had never heard of the American Girl dolls before I told her about them; and, when I burbled about "patriotic dolls that teach life lessons and history and stuff," asked, "So they're all white, are they?"

(Apparently this is what "patriotic dolls" says to people.)

"No!" quoth I; they're not all white, but as I thought about it more, I became rather concerned. No, they're not all white, but on the other hand, might the dolls of color seem rather tokenistic? How do they stack up against US Census data?

...Lo! I have no life, and therefore did a comparison. The first number is US Census percentage by race, 2010; the second is doll percentage. (There are thirteen main character dolls, making each 7%.)

White: 63.4%
Dolls: 69%

Black: 13%
Dolls: 15%

Hispanic: 16%
Dolls: 7%

Asian: 5%
Dolls: 0 (there is a best friend doll who is Asian, though)

Native American: 1.2%
Dolls: 7%

The white and Hispanic numbers are complicated because half of the Hispanic population also identified as white on the 2010 census. If you count them for both, that makes the US population 72% white - in which case white American Girls are actually (very slightly) underrepresented, although given that we're moving in 7% increments, not really.

I think these numbers stack up pretty well, actually! Clearly it would be nice to have an Asian American Girl who is a heroine in her own right, though. (Ivy-the-best-friend does have one book of her own - it won awards! - but that's not quite the same.)

sineala and I think it would be cool to have, say, a Bangladeshi-American girl, both to acknowledge the fact that Asia is a big place that includes a lot of different peoples, and because, well, a Muslim American Girl. Wouldn't that be amazing?

And her dazzling, gold-embroidered holiday sari could not help but be a big hit with the eight-year-old set. (Here's a photo of an American Girl doll dressed in a homemade sari. Isn't she pretty?) THINK OF THE MONEY, AMERICAN GIRL.

What historical era would work for Muna Rahman? Maybe it's time for a girl of the 1980s...?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ooh, she does look beautiful in that sari.

It's funny, because your other-day entry about American Girl dolls got posted exactly when the American Girl catalogue arrived at our house, and this prompted me and the ninja girl to pore over it--and we noticed the distinct absence of an Asian American doll. There should be one for San Francisco in the late nineteenth century, a Chinese one (instead of that best-friend doll in the 1970s).

I was going to ask you about those new (to me) dolls from New Orleans in the 1850s. In the blurb on the website, it doesn't even mention slavery at all but... slavery was still a Thing in the 1850s. It's cool if Cecile and Marie-Grace are going to be friends, but... do they *mention* in any of the stories that there are enslaved blacks? And I think color-based racism was probably a pretty big thing, too, so.... I don't know, I was surprised to read these story plots that were all, Oh, these two girls become friends and this and that happens, and I"m thinking, but one is very dark and one is pale... this isn't a problem?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the 1850s books yet, so I don't know. I think the idea is that things were Different in New Orleans, which they were, though I'm not sure if they were different enough that it would be really plausible for a black girl (free though she is) and a white girl to become close friends...

I mean, maybe they'll deal with that? They've done unlikely friendships in other books: Felicity and her loyalist friend Elizabeth, Kirsten and Singing Bird (they don't even speak the same language! They communicate by pictogram!), Samantha and her servant friend Nellie...

Gosh, I hadn't realized this was such an American Girl theme. Anyway, in those books they do deal with the fact that the friendship would have been difficult (Singing Bird's tribe is forced out of the area, for instance), so presumably they do that in the Cecile and Marie-Grace books, too. And I would be awfully surprised if slavery doesn't come up in the books at all.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(I do like the adjectives on the website, though:

Daring Kaya, brave Caroline, hopeful Josefina, courageous Addy, lively Rebecca, resourceful Kit and Ruthie, patriotic Molly and Emily, and optimistic Julie and Ivy. No adjective for Cecile and Marie-Grace, though: they're just described as newfound friends)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh! And I had another thought about Cecile & Marie-Grace: in New Orleans in 1853, there was a massive yellow fever epidemic. We just read about it in one of my classes: it had a blurring effect on racial boundaries. Maybe it was enough to throw them into unusual proximity to form their unlikely friendship?

Also, I think American Girl is probably running out of synonyms for brave - hence Cecile & Marie-Grace's lack of an adjective. I suppose they could have gone with compassionate, if they're helping sick people? I'll have to read the books and see...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I gathered they're going to nurse the sick, and I think it's definitely possible that the epidemic did have that effect. OTOH, I get the feeling that for all that there were free blacks in New Orleans and environs, the sense of racial hierarchy was really strong. Admittedly, I get that sense mainly from novels--but not entirely from novels. I was reading about research on education and schools conducted there in the early 1900s, and people were *very* into making distinctions. But that's the early 1900s. Maybe things were better in the 1850s.

--Honestly, I don't know at all. I will be interested to hear what you find out!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It actually wouldn't surprise me at all to learn things were better in the 1850s - America seems to have spent the latter half of the nineteenth century getting steadily more racist.

I mean, "better" in this instance just means "not quite as racist," not "not racist at all." But American Girl put enough effort into their other books that I would be surprised to find they'd thrown historical accuracy to the wind in this instance.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and to be clear, it's not that I think they would throw accuracy to the winds, it's just that I found it strange that they didn't mention the issue at all in the blurb. But if the 1850s were comparatively better in terms of race issues, then it could be that that's what they're trying to emphasize.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Part of it is, I think, a function of where they started in US history--when I was into American Girl, Molly was the most recent, and they were all white. Then they introduced Addy and Josefina, and started broadening their historical coverage.

Certainly when they introduced the modern ones (I know, outside the scope of your paper), a big selling point was that you could get a doll that looks like YOU, and they came in a pretty wide range of racial and ethnic appearances. I would also bet money that at some point they have sold a gold-embroidered holiday sari and tiny plastic Indian food set based on some fan's holiday story (if they haven't, they will).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting company trajectory, isn't it? I wonder how much of it is based on personal preference and how much of it is based on a general rising interest in multiculturalism in the 90s.

They probably will get around to a sari sometime if they haven't already, but there's a difference between just selling the accessories and having a set of books with a whole backstory, you know?

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely! Who knows, it could happen.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

You are TOO MUCH! But fabulous.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's for a school project! I'm not getting all statistical for nothing, here!