Culture » March 15, 2005

Operation Pocket Full of Wishes

Cultural intervention at American Girl Place

By Anne Elizabeth Moore

In early February, Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood was enraged. Marisol Luna had left the danger-ridden urban area, complaining of gangs and rampant poverty, for the squeaky-clean suburbs, and 95 percent of all preteen girls in the United States knew it.

Those girls idolize Marisol Luna: They want to be just like her. They want to dress like her, wear their hair like her, read about her life. They want to own her, but more importantly, they want to be her. Luckily for them, Mattel’s American Girl brand—to which Marisol Luna was recently added—has made this possible.

The brand’s allure is best encapsulated in American Girl Place, a three-floor testament to the lucrative youth market just off of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. The American Girl experience allows girls between the ages of 7 and 13 to have their fantasies play out before their eyes.

Here, their dolls’ stories are elaborated and corroborated. The dolls are given a history, told through boutique-style shopping areas, a theater showing plays based on the brand’s fictionalized historical novels, video monitors playing Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, and several glass-encased, museum-like tableaux. Girls can pick dolls whose eye and hair color match theirs, and whose historical and contemporary storylines—like Marisol’s—present a range of prepackaged appeals. They can even buy outfits that match, taking identification with a product to a new and disturbing level.

At American Girl Place, even shopping is re-envisioned: Shoppers grab small cards that sport full-color pictures, a brief description and, of course, the price of the desired doll or accessory.

These cards can be stowed in small maroon folders courtesy of American Girl Place, imprinted with the phrase “Pocket full of wishes.” It’s a brilliant scheme. These hopeful “wishes” can then be brought to the nearest cash register or, as the folders brightly suggest, carried home as souvenirs. When flipped over, the cards offer an 800-number for easy ordering.

All of this is engineered to shield the girls from the pettiness of cash. Despite the phenomenal investment (dolls start at $96, outfits around $30), American Girl products teach a wholesome version of history and attempt to instill an early sense of self-worth into young lives. At the same time the company capitalizes on one of the most lucrative markets in existence: kids. They influence more than $600 billion of household spending in the United States every year, and simple cultural observation tells us that girls, especially offspring of divorced, regretful fathers, inspire more than half of this spending.

Although Pilsen residents, Latina doll collectors and three generations of women who’ve grown up with American Girl dolls were shocked by Mattel’s blatant plug for placid suburban culture, it should come as no surprise. Mattel’s hope is to create a fantasy that will perpetuate—well, Mattel. Following the marketing strategies of the cola giants who have secured exclusive pouring rights deals with public schools and the viral marketing campaigns perpetrated by tobacco companies, Mattel is raising a nation of American Girl addicts. And like the purveyors of caffeine and nicotine, American Girl Place—and its books, films and toys that are helping shape American female culture—demands equal scrutiny.

—————————————

“Why not go there,”I thought, “and see if these young shoppers want more from their role models than an array of outfits?”

American Girl Project: Operation Pocket Full of Wishes consisted of eight cards that mimicked those shopping aides found in the store. These cards were emblazoned with the wishes of real girls that I had actually spoken to: equal pay for equal work; domestic partnership benefits; self-confidence; healthy body images; safe and effective birth control; ample career opportunities; safe, legal abortion access; and free tampons.

On the mock cards, I labeled these intangible but important “products” with the phrase “not pictured” and priced them at $0. On the back, the American Girl 800-number was listed with the suggestion to try ordering these things over the phone. I dropped these cards into the “Pocket full of wishes” sleeves and returned them to the slots at American Girl Place from whence they had originally come.

Unfortunately, they were discovered by a store clerk and not by an amused parent or delighted child. I was removed to the street and told, in the words of one Chicago police officer, to never again “commit your little freedom of speech thing” on the American Girl Place premises.

“So I just want to be clear,” I said. I knew I was provoking him, but—like Kaya, American Girl’s Nez Perce Indian girl doll (circa 1764) who can’t keep her mouth shut when there’s a point to be made—I was unable to stop myself: “American Girl Place does not support freedom of speech?”

It was confusing: I had committed neither crimes nor acts of civil disobedience. I had remained polite and compliant. And I was unable to locate a single Mattel employee who disagreed with the content of my messages. My offense seems to have been spreading noncommercial messages in a capitalist environment.

The cost of this crime? Intimidation, interrogation, a healthy frisking, two hours of detainment, a full background check and the undivided attention of several on-duty Chicago police officers, who were called upon to ensure that American girls were kept safely away from the dangerous notion that they should grow up to earn as much money as their male counterparts in whatever profession they chose.

Four members of the Chicago Police Department flanked me as I was released from the interrogation room, and formed a line in front of the small crowd of shoppers who were watching. This row of officers, covered in bulletproof attire and weaponry, seemed to frighten the watching girls. I smiled and waved so they wouldn’t be scared.

Compared to American Girl Place, Pilsen doesn’t seem so dangerous after all.

Find out more about Operation Pocket Full of Wishes at pocketfullofwishes.blogspot.com.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  Well if it weren’t so true it would be scary or at least a schock. Alison Foster

  Posted by Alison on Mar 15, 2005 at 6:37 PM

  The girls wish for:

  “equal pay for equal work” - isn’t this already true, when one takes into account years in the labor market, education, etc? (I grant that if one takes all women vs all men in all fields, men make 25% more than women, however.)

  “domestic partnership benefits” - Not going to happen anytime soon.

  “self-confidence” - already true for girls with good families.

  “healthy body images” - same as above.

  “safe and effective birth control” - between the pill and condoms i’d say this is a done deal. Getting people to use them is another story.

  “ample career opportunities” - already achieved.

  “safe, legal abortion access” - insomuch as abortion can ever be “safe” (one person always dies as a result, but they are just “cells”), this seems also to have been achieved.

  “free tampons” - why would this product be free? In any case, they are relatively affordable (and most parents probably provide them for free for their children, anyway).

  Just my thoughts on the wishes expressed. Seems like we are in pretty fine times, as far as the list goes. . .

  Posted by wishesComeTrue on Mar 15, 2005 at 8:03 PM

  I don’t support a business intimidating a person trying to make a point, but I do think time can better be spent on some more poignant issues facing girls the age of my daughter (almost 8) such as rising violence against women and girls, increasing sexism, and the reigning in of women’s rights.  I have been pleased with how much my daughter’s conviction that women are equal and that African Americans are equal has grown since her reading (devouring) the American Girls series of books.  Her identification with her doll, as well as friends’ identification with theirs, has allowed role playing and “fantasy” based on a more realistic world than the Barbies and such that are otherwise available.  The dolls are expensive, but so are Game Boys and Playstations.  We don’t have video systems in our home and our son (13) has only been allowed a Game Boy, and yet the pressure is intense for him to play these games…almost all of which show women and girls as absolute sex objects.  Gloria Steinem hadn’t seen anything in the 60’s and the 70’s compared to what the toy industry is teaching boys about objectifying girls.  Is American Girl really the toy you should spend your valuable time tearing into?  I’m thrilled that there is a toy that actually goes against the mainstream…tell me, would George W. approve of the values American Girl teaches?  You know, those values of life isn’t easy, racism is wrong, individuality is good, everyone is valuable, animals require responsibility, think, be responsible, and most importantly…GIRLS ROCK?  Let the girls have a toy already…we’ve been waiting a long time for a good toy.  Talk to Mattel about your concerns, but please let our American girls play.

  Posted by Patty Cunningham-Woolf on Mar 15, 2005 at 9:53 PM

  Your right to free speech does not mean that you have a right to an audience, or that anyone else is obligated to provide you with a platform. If you want to spread your message, do so on your own property or with the approval of the property’s owner. 

  This victim mentality is causing more problems for women and minorities than any other single issue - especially some stupid doll.  Once a person thinks she’s “owed” something, she quits working.

  Posted by Christine on Mar 16, 2005 at 4:30 PM

  “If you want to spread your message, do so on your own property or with the approval of the property’s owner.”

  Like here.  :)

  Posted by freeSpeech on Mar 16, 2005 at 4:46 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 13 posts.

Also featured Negroponte’s Dark Past
Trafficking in Politics
Plowing for Profits

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Anne Elizabeth Moore

• Embedded in Pink
  Code Pink has become a lightning rod for contemporary activism - from both the right and left.Posted on September 29, 2008
• In Condemnation of Opting In
  Our voices are being drowned out by our peers in the supposedly independent media, like Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, who calls Starbucks "the new record store," and music journalists like the Chicago Reader's Miles Raymer, who argued in a piece called "In Praise of Selling Out" that the music industry's decline can be "rescued by corporations that make everything but music"Posted on August 17, 2007
• Our Profit Margin Could Be Your Life
  Indie punk band HeWhoCorrupts maximizes profits by eliminating frills like melody or the standard chorus/verse/chorus structurePosted on May 1, 2007