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conuly
Here's the article
But first - definitely check out the slideshow. Go carefully through those pictures, remember that this is NYC, and ask yourself - "What is wrong with these photographs?"
A Girl’s Life
By A. O. SCOTT
TO paraphrase Henry James: It’s a complex fate, being an American girl.
You grow up being told that you can do anything — run for president, win a Nascar race, fly into space or become a four-star general — but in the meantime everything you do is subject to intense and often contradictory scrutiny from the grown-up world. You are exposed to a barrage of mixed signals from parents, friends, teachers, television advertisements, even the stuff you play with, and your response to those signals becomes grist for expert hand wringing and opinion mongering.
Who are you supposed to be, or to avoid becoming? A nerd? A ditz? A flirt? A tomboy? What kind of role models are those make-believe princesses, those Bratz and Barbies, to say nothing of the real-life Britneys, Lindsays and Mileys? Mean Girls, Gossip Girls, Girls Gone Wild, Girl Power, You go, girl! What’s a girl to do?
The short-term answer is likely to be: Go to the movies. In particular, to “Kit Kittredge,” the first American Girl movie to be released theatrically. (Three precursors are available on DVD.) It opens this Friday across the country, following an early debut on June 20 in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Alpharetta, Ga. And not a moment too soon. Like their aunts, mothers and older sisters, young girls find themselves assiduously pursued by television networks but relatively neglected by the Hollywood studios. Periodic exceptions — last year’s “Enchanted,” say, or even “Juno” — have a way of proving that, especially in the world of franchised, big-budget, big-screen entertainment, boys rule.
In the 1940s and ’50s the Walt Disney brand of wholesome, universally appealing animated features was built on the grace and pluck of fairy-tale heroines, but Pixar, the heir to Disney’s tradition, has yet to make a movie with a female protagonist. And while everyone loves Hermione Granger and Princess Fiona, they are permanent sidekicks in serial sagas owned by Harry Potter and Shrek.
Move into the PG-13 world of comic-book action, and the gender disparity is even more extreme. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Hellboy, Iron Man. Notice a pattern? (Yes, I know, some of the X-Men are women. But they aren’t called the X-People, are they? And let’s not even talk about “Catwoman.”)
It would be silly to expect Abigail Breslin — or Kit Kittredge, the indomitable character she plays in the movie — to redress this imbalance all by herself. “Nancy Drew,” with Emma Roberts as the title character, tried last year, and was lost in the pop-cultural shuffle. But if the early, limited-release numbers are any kind of omen, a lot of American girls will be going to see “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” over the Fourth of July holiday. Last weekend, showing at five theaters with tickets costing $20, the film earned more than $220,000, or nearly $45,000 per screen. (No other movie in the Top 50 last weekend cracked $10,000 per screen.)
If “Kit Kittredge” turns out to be a hit, there will be the usual expressions of surprise from some movie industry analysts and cultural commentators. This is always the reaction when a previously underserved segment of the population turns out in large numbers for a movie, whether it’s African-Americans lining up for the latest Tyler Perry film, evangelical Christians flocking to “The Passion of the Christ,” or, just last month, women of various ages and backgrounds embracing “Sex and the City.” (It is worth noting that not one of those movies was distributed by a major Hollywood studio, and that both “Kit Kittredge” and “Sex and the City” were released by divisions of Warner Brothers that the parent company has decided to shut down.)
In each of these cases, of course, the audience was already there. There was a flourishing market in Christian popular culture before Mel Gibson started writing in Aramaic. In the years before Mr. Perry turned to filmmaking, he and his cross-dressed alter ego, Madea, had built a loyal fan base on the traveling theater circuit. “Sex and the City” showed staying power even after its six-season run on HBO was over, with a second life on DVD and in basic-cable syndication. And Kit Kittredge is, for goodness’ sake, an American Girl, the apple-cheeked face of a vast and mighty consumer empire.
Since 1986, when Pleasant T. Rowland started selling them by mail order, 14 million American Girl dolls have been purchased, along with (according to the official Web site, AmericanGirl.com) 123 million copies of books about their various adventures. Kit Kittredge, an aspiring reporter growing up in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, is part of a diverse trans-historical sisterhood stretching from the colonial era to the present. Her fellow citizens of the American Girl republic include Addy, an African-American growing up during the Civil War; Josefina, who lives in 1820s New Mexico; and Julia, from the 1970s. Since 2001 these old-fashioned young ladies have been joined by modern “girls of the year,” the newest of whom is named Mia.
All of them seemed to be present when I went to see “Kit Kittredge” on the first night of its run at the Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan. I was part of a (very) small contingent of fathers in a crowd that seemed largely composed of mothers, daughters, sisters and girlfriends. While males are hardly banished from the American Girl universe, they tend, fittingly enough, to play supporting roles. Many of the dads in “Kit Kittredge,” including Kit’s, have gone away to look for work, and none of the boys in Kit’s circle of friends would think to challenge her natural benevolent leadership.
In the Ziegfeld audience, meanwhile, the scattering of live men and boys was greatly outnumbered by the 18-inch-tall inanimate members of the audience, who sat stiff and unblinking as their companions squirmed, giggled and whispered. In addition to my daughter and two of her friends, I arrived with Felicity, Emily and Jess, and we soon lost count of the Samanthas, Addys and Mollys — and, of course, the Kits — who surrounded us.
This kind of companionship is hardly new. The idea of the doll as surrogate child and perfect friend is one that real-life Felicitys and Samanthas would surely recognize (and quite a few of the American Girl dolls have dolls of their own). The genius of American Girl is that it at once evokes this tradition and updates it. The dolls themselves are of a size and shape that recalls their Victorian porcelain ancestors. Their costliness — nearly $100 apiece — and the fact that you can’t find them at your neighborhood toy store give them an aura of specialness.
And the “experiential retail” stores that have become tourist destinations in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles (with new branches in Dallas and the Atlanta suburbs) are wreathed in nostalgia for an older, more luxuriant form of shopping. They are like miniature, idealized versions of the urban department stores of yesteryear, where you can buy a new outfit for your doll (or a pair of snowshoes or sunglasses or crutches, or a collar for her dog) and then take a break for tea, finger sandwiches and even a show.
The company’s stated goal is “to create girls of strong character,” a mission as unimpeachable as it is vague. And the American Girl cosmos can be, to an outsider, a fascinatingly contradictory place. Its starchy traditionalism is balanced by a savvy, up-to-the-minute multiculturalism. The commodity fetishism on display in the stores coexists with a fastidious concern for historical accuracy and, in the books, a clear educational intention.
Look at one of the dolls, and you see a kind of anti-Barbie, a sturdy, nonsexualized body whose proportions are more or less those of a real girl. (Since 1998 American Girl has been part of Mattel, which is also Barbie’s corporate home.) Her clothes are both practical and authentic, and her activities are a healthy mix of chores, games and career preparations.
While some of the historical adventure books acknowledge that opportunities for girls — especially poor and nonwhite girls — were limited in earlier times, they emphasize optimism, good will and self-reliance as the ever-available antidotes to injustice or deprivation. This is certainly the lesson of “Kit Kittredge,” which does not shy away from showing some of the hard realities of the Depression, including homelessness, unemployment and the scapegoating of the poor.
It celebrates, in the midst of hard times, an appealingly ordinary brand of heroism. Kit is brave, smart, determined and kind, but never off-puttingly full of herself or intimidatingly superior. You would want her for a friend. You could easily imagine yourself in her place.
Which may be at least some of what girls want, and what they get from American Girl. As the son and husband of feminists, I can’t entirely suppress a tremor of unease. Is the brand reflecting tastes, or enforcing norms of behavior? Is it teaching girls to be independent spirits or devoted shoppers?
Probably all of those things, and more. I have spent a lot of time, over the years, with Felicity and some others of her kind, and I still haven’t figured her out. She doesn’t say much, and even though her expression is always fixed in a pleasant smile, she seems to change according to the moods and interests of her playmates. She is an athlete, a musician, a clothes horse, a bookworm, a pet owner, a loner and a confidant. A typical American girl, as far as I can tell.
So, yes, the fact that the slideshow shows only white people (and I *am* white! and I still think it's weird and creepy and disturbing!) prompted me to track down this entry on racism in the American Girl world by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittikattie.
In fact, I'm so creeped out that I'm going to go ahead and re-quote Ms. Clueless from that article on the disabled dolls:
“In early research into race stereotypes, in which black children were asked to choose from three dolls - one black, one brown and one white - and say which doll they would be most like, almost all chose the white doll,” Smith says. “This research is old and things may be different now, but it suggests that children want to identify with themselves as a positive, generally accepted image, ie, non-disabled, except in a short-term disability.”
There was another strange quote in that article, some woman who was horrified at the idea that a "piece of plastic" could represent her son with Down's. I guess it's only okay for plastic to represent normal children? It was such a strange way of saying what she felt.
But first - definitely check out the slideshow. Go carefully through those pictures, remember that this is NYC, and ask yourself - "What is wrong with these photographs?"
A Girl’s Life
By A. O. SCOTT
TO paraphrase Henry James: It’s a complex fate, being an American girl.
You grow up being told that you can do anything — run for president, win a Nascar race, fly into space or become a four-star general — but in the meantime everything you do is subject to intense and often contradictory scrutiny from the grown-up world. You are exposed to a barrage of mixed signals from parents, friends, teachers, television advertisements, even the stuff you play with, and your response to those signals becomes grist for expert hand wringing and opinion mongering.
Who are you supposed to be, or to avoid becoming? A nerd? A ditz? A flirt? A tomboy? What kind of role models are those make-believe princesses, those Bratz and Barbies, to say nothing of the real-life Britneys, Lindsays and Mileys? Mean Girls, Gossip Girls, Girls Gone Wild, Girl Power, You go, girl! What’s a girl to do?
The short-term answer is likely to be: Go to the movies. In particular, to “Kit Kittredge,” the first American Girl movie to be released theatrically. (Three precursors are available on DVD.) It opens this Friday across the country, following an early debut on June 20 in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Alpharetta, Ga. And not a moment too soon. Like their aunts, mothers and older sisters, young girls find themselves assiduously pursued by television networks but relatively neglected by the Hollywood studios. Periodic exceptions — last year’s “Enchanted,” say, or even “Juno” — have a way of proving that, especially in the world of franchised, big-budget, big-screen entertainment, boys rule.
In the 1940s and ’50s the Walt Disney brand of wholesome, universally appealing animated features was built on the grace and pluck of fairy-tale heroines, but Pixar, the heir to Disney’s tradition, has yet to make a movie with a female protagonist. And while everyone loves Hermione Granger and Princess Fiona, they are permanent sidekicks in serial sagas owned by Harry Potter and Shrek.
Move into the PG-13 world of comic-book action, and the gender disparity is even more extreme. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Hellboy, Iron Man. Notice a pattern? (Yes, I know, some of the X-Men are women. But they aren’t called the X-People, are they? And let’s not even talk about “Catwoman.”)
It would be silly to expect Abigail Breslin — or Kit Kittredge, the indomitable character she plays in the movie — to redress this imbalance all by herself. “Nancy Drew,” with Emma Roberts as the title character, tried last year, and was lost in the pop-cultural shuffle. But if the early, limited-release numbers are any kind of omen, a lot of American girls will be going to see “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl” over the Fourth of July holiday. Last weekend, showing at five theaters with tickets costing $20, the film earned more than $220,000, or nearly $45,000 per screen. (No other movie in the Top 50 last weekend cracked $10,000 per screen.)
If “Kit Kittredge” turns out to be a hit, there will be the usual expressions of surprise from some movie industry analysts and cultural commentators. This is always the reaction when a previously underserved segment of the population turns out in large numbers for a movie, whether it’s African-Americans lining up for the latest Tyler Perry film, evangelical Christians flocking to “The Passion of the Christ,” or, just last month, women of various ages and backgrounds embracing “Sex and the City.” (It is worth noting that not one of those movies was distributed by a major Hollywood studio, and that both “Kit Kittredge” and “Sex and the City” were released by divisions of Warner Brothers that the parent company has decided to shut down.)
In each of these cases, of course, the audience was already there. There was a flourishing market in Christian popular culture before Mel Gibson started writing in Aramaic. In the years before Mr. Perry turned to filmmaking, he and his cross-dressed alter ego, Madea, had built a loyal fan base on the traveling theater circuit. “Sex and the City” showed staying power even after its six-season run on HBO was over, with a second life on DVD and in basic-cable syndication. And Kit Kittredge is, for goodness’ sake, an American Girl, the apple-cheeked face of a vast and mighty consumer empire.
Since 1986, when Pleasant T. Rowland started selling them by mail order, 14 million American Girl dolls have been purchased, along with (according to the official Web site, AmericanGirl.com) 123 million copies of books about their various adventures. Kit Kittredge, an aspiring reporter growing up in Cincinnati during the Great Depression, is part of a diverse trans-historical sisterhood stretching from the colonial era to the present. Her fellow citizens of the American Girl republic include Addy, an African-American growing up during the Civil War; Josefina, who lives in 1820s New Mexico; and Julia, from the 1970s. Since 2001 these old-fashioned young ladies have been joined by modern “girls of the year,” the newest of whom is named Mia.
All of them seemed to be present when I went to see “Kit Kittredge” on the first night of its run at the Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan. I was part of a (very) small contingent of fathers in a crowd that seemed largely composed of mothers, daughters, sisters and girlfriends. While males are hardly banished from the American Girl universe, they tend, fittingly enough, to play supporting roles. Many of the dads in “Kit Kittredge,” including Kit’s, have gone away to look for work, and none of the boys in Kit’s circle of friends would think to challenge her natural benevolent leadership.
In the Ziegfeld audience, meanwhile, the scattering of live men and boys was greatly outnumbered by the 18-inch-tall inanimate members of the audience, who sat stiff and unblinking as their companions squirmed, giggled and whispered. In addition to my daughter and two of her friends, I arrived with Felicity, Emily and Jess, and we soon lost count of the Samanthas, Addys and Mollys — and, of course, the Kits — who surrounded us.
This kind of companionship is hardly new. The idea of the doll as surrogate child and perfect friend is one that real-life Felicitys and Samanthas would surely recognize (and quite a few of the American Girl dolls have dolls of their own). The genius of American Girl is that it at once evokes this tradition and updates it. The dolls themselves are of a size and shape that recalls their Victorian porcelain ancestors. Their costliness — nearly $100 apiece — and the fact that you can’t find them at your neighborhood toy store give them an aura of specialness.
And the “experiential retail” stores that have become tourist destinations in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles (with new branches in Dallas and the Atlanta suburbs) are wreathed in nostalgia for an older, more luxuriant form of shopping. They are like miniature, idealized versions of the urban department stores of yesteryear, where you can buy a new outfit for your doll (or a pair of snowshoes or sunglasses or crutches, or a collar for her dog) and then take a break for tea, finger sandwiches and even a show.
The company’s stated goal is “to create girls of strong character,” a mission as unimpeachable as it is vague. And the American Girl cosmos can be, to an outsider, a fascinatingly contradictory place. Its starchy traditionalism is balanced by a savvy, up-to-the-minute multiculturalism. The commodity fetishism on display in the stores coexists with a fastidious concern for historical accuracy and, in the books, a clear educational intention.
Look at one of the dolls, and you see a kind of anti-Barbie, a sturdy, nonsexualized body whose proportions are more or less those of a real girl. (Since 1998 American Girl has been part of Mattel, which is also Barbie’s corporate home.) Her clothes are both practical and authentic, and her activities are a healthy mix of chores, games and career preparations.
While some of the historical adventure books acknowledge that opportunities for girls — especially poor and nonwhite girls — were limited in earlier times, they emphasize optimism, good will and self-reliance as the ever-available antidotes to injustice or deprivation. This is certainly the lesson of “Kit Kittredge,” which does not shy away from showing some of the hard realities of the Depression, including homelessness, unemployment and the scapegoating of the poor.
It celebrates, in the midst of hard times, an appealingly ordinary brand of heroism. Kit is brave, smart, determined and kind, but never off-puttingly full of herself or intimidatingly superior. You would want her for a friend. You could easily imagine yourself in her place.
Which may be at least some of what girls want, and what they get from American Girl. As the son and husband of feminists, I can’t entirely suppress a tremor of unease. Is the brand reflecting tastes, or enforcing norms of behavior? Is it teaching girls to be independent spirits or devoted shoppers?
Probably all of those things, and more. I have spent a lot of time, over the years, with Felicity and some others of her kind, and I still haven’t figured her out. She doesn’t say much, and even though her expression is always fixed in a pleasant smile, she seems to change according to the moods and interests of her playmates. She is an athlete, a musician, a clothes horse, a bookworm, a pet owner, a loner and a confidant. A typical American girl, as far as I can tell.
So, yes, the fact that the slideshow shows only white people (and I *am* white! and I still think it's weird and creepy and disturbing!) prompted me to track down this entry on racism in the American Girl world by
kittikattie.In fact, I'm so creeped out that I'm going to go ahead and re-quote Ms. Clueless from that article on the disabled dolls:
“In early research into race stereotypes, in which black children were asked to choose from three dolls - one black, one brown and one white - and say which doll they would be most like, almost all chose the white doll,” Smith says. “This research is old and things may be different now, but it suggests that children want to identify with themselves as a positive, generally accepted image, ie, non-disabled, except in a short-term disability.”
There was another strange quote in that article, some woman who was horrified at the idea that a "piece of plastic" could represent her son with Down's. I guess it's only okay for plastic to represent normal children? It was such a strange way of saying what she felt.
