Dolls

I just got an email from American Girl announcing the release of their new historical doll. Parents of children adopted from China have been requesting that AG come out with a Chinese doll for this series, perhaps telling the story of some of the early Chinese immigrants. The new doll is Julie, a caucasian girl of divorced parents living in 1970's San Francisco. However, I was really excited to see that they have also released another historical doll, Julie's best friend Ivy, who appears to be Chinese-American! She even has a Chinese New Year's dress available for purchase. I am looking forward to getting the new catalog and checking her out! She comes with a book as well, and I am interested in finding out what it is about. She is wearing her Chinese New Year's dress on the cover. They also have an Asian doll available in their Just Like You line, and Amelia seems to point that one out when we look through the catalog. As long as we are talking about AG, I should mention that the only baby doll that Amelia will play with is her Asian Bitty Baby doll. It is also the only doll she has that she has named - Isabel - which tells you how special this doll is to her.

For those of you who might be wondering why this is a big deal, I have always been a firm believer in providing my daughter with dolls to play with that look like she does. She does have caucasian dolls and African-American dolls as well, but they hardly get played with. She almost always chooses, on her own, to play with the dolls that look like her. In fact, she has a set of Ariel and Prince Eric dolls from the Little Mermaid where Ariel is wearing her wedding gown. They never got played with until last week when Amelia decided that one of her Mulan dolls was much better suited to marrying Eric, and Ariel was pushed aside. Mulan is currently wearing Ariel's wedding gown (and yes, it is a bit strange to see our brave hero Mulan in puffy sleeves and beaded brocade!). Amelia has a blonde Barbie, but also has a Yu Sai Wa Wa doll (Chinese Barbie-type dolls) and two Mulan dolls, and they are the dolls she plays with. (By the way, Amelia has no Asian Barbie-brand dolls because the company stopped making them. Boo Hiss!)

My point is that I have often really had to go out of my way to find a variety of Asian dolls for Amelia to play with (it isn't as easy as it sounds since there are very few companies who make affordable play dolls that come in an Asian version). Fisher-Price consistently comes out with Asian versions of their dolls, but they are difficult to find in the stores near us. I have had to order them directly from the Fisher-Price website. But it turns out that it does seem to be important to her to have these dolls to play with. Let's hope that more companies will recognize the importance of providing little girls with dolls that look like they do and will start to produce many multicultural versions of their dolls!