 |
|
|
|
Photograph by Chad Pilster
Allyson Cook, 8, (left) and Lauren Gamel, 9, watch a cooking demonstration at an American Girls Club meeting.
Anti-Barbies
A cross-marketing scheme and learning experience linking little girls' love for dolls and stories pushes female-focused history
By Sandy Sims
Sunnyvale resident Becky Cotton gets to do yard duty at her children's school. It is a perk of being a successful, stay-at-home doll-costume designer. Designing everything from diminutive Brownie outfits to miniature versions of local private school uniforms, Cotton--her real name--has carved herself a profitable niche by clothing American Girls, the tremendously popular line of dolls.
"It's afforded me to stay home with the kids and match the career that I had at Xerox," Cotton says during a stint on the playground, speaking about the 12 years she spent working as a service manager for the company's Palo Alto plant.
The secret to her success, Cotton says, was listening to her customers when she took up sewing as a way to work and stay at home.
"The response was very overwhelming," she says.
The popularity of the American Girls line of dolls, introduced in 1986 by the Wisconsin-based Pleasant Company, is evident on a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon when 25 girls and their mothers gather at a Barnes and Noble bookstore on Stevens Creek Boulevard. The 6- to 12-year-olds come from all around the South Bay. All have the dolls cradled in their arms.
This gathering of girls and dolls is part of a phenomenon that has been revealing itself at bookstores and in homes all across the nation.
The heart of this movement is a series of books--"American Girl" books--which focus on fictional girls from different periods in American history. Each character is embodied in an 18-inch doll that costs $82.
Bookstores have capitalized on the phenomenon. By hosting American Girl clubs, bookstores bring in a monthly crowd. The girls get a chance to meet the authors, learn history and play with the toys and tools from their dolls' eras.
The Barnes and Noble American Girls club has been meeting monthly for four years. "We average 25 to 30 regulars during the school year," says Lorraine D. Antonucci. "The smallest group we've had was 15 and the largest 54."
Other Bay Area stores, including the Borders in Los Gatos, are jumping on the American Girl bandwagon. Borders' American Girls club met for the first time in February.
"When we were planning this club meeting, we were amazed at the response," John Hartinger, of the local Borders, recalls.
At the Los Gatos meeting, the girls were divided into three groups, so activities could be spread around the store.
In the cafe, girls assembled cardboard lanterns. Upstairs, another group sat on the floor and watched a woman in a long gingham skirt take a ball of raw sheep's wool and spin it into long strings. She passed around balls of wool for the girls to touch and smell, suggesting that they feel the oil residue that the wool leaves on the hands. Not too far away, another group sat on the floor enchanted as a woman read to them.
Stephanie Spanos of the Pleasant Company isn't surprised by the concept's success. "There are not many books out there for this age group," she says. "Many girls this age love dolls and they love to read. Some of us well remember the hours we spent devouring books like Nancy Drew and Little Women.
"The books and the dolls are conceived together with research, careful writing and quality production," Spanos says.
Dolls and stories make a winning combination. Add some female-focused history, and moms get interested. In fact, the elements of the American Girl product touch women of all ages because they offer girls and women a kind of "herstory" that spreads over time, ethnicity and race.
Mothers promote the books because of the educational value.
"I'm very impressed," says Dorothy Wang, whose daughter Annie is a fan of the American Girls dolls and books. "Through the characters, they get to experience the different time-periods and lifestyles.
The American Girl idea originated with Pleasant Roland, a former teacher and textbook author (and a reporter and anchor for KGO-TV news in San Francisco for a short time during the late 1960s). In 1984 she made the brilliant connection between a market for quality dolls, history and girls' love for stories about girls their own age.
In 1986, the Pleasant Co. introduced three American Girl dolls and their stories--Kirsten, a pioneer girl living in 1784; Samantha, whose story takes place during the turn of the century, and Molly, who is growing up during World War II.
Since then, the Pleasant Co. has spawned a business that includes books and dolls for six historical characters. They've sold 5 million dolls, 54 million books, and other merchandise that includes furniture and clothing for the dolls, matching outfits for the girls, and 700,000 subscriptions to the American Girl magazine.
It's local popularity can be seen at the Villa Montalvo arts center, which raffles an American Girl doll, a bed and a slew of clothes around the holidays. Saratoga mom Pat Pilarinos explains, "Four Montalvo women actually spend all year researching and sewing historically correct clothes for the doll. They even learn special detailed sewing stitches." Pilarinos' daughter, Cessa, won Felicity, the colonial doll, this year. "We almost have to add on a closet just to hold the gazillions of clothes."
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Becky Cotton, who worked as a service manager for 12 years, now works from her Sunnyvale home, making costumes for the popular American Girls line of dolls.
Becky Cotton is thrilled that moms all over the country feel pressure to build similar closets. She says she is equally pleased that the American Girl theme is beneficial to girls' educations.
Cessa really wanted this doll, Pilarino says, because she'd become fascinated with the colonial days through activities at Foothill School.
"It's so wholesome," says Rebecca Robinson, who organized the American Girl get-togethers at Borders bookstore.
The word "wholesome" always slips into the conversation when others talk about these dolls. Mattel Inc., the creator of the just-turned-40-year-old Barbie, has just bought Pleasant Co. "I hope they can keep the same quality," Robinson says.
The theme of the Borders meeting was "Celebrating Josefina." The Josefina doll is Latina, and the most recent addition to the American Girl dolls. She debuted in 1997.
Maritza Nelson has come to Borders with her Josefina doll. Maritza is Latina, too, and looks exactly like her doll. She was born in Chile and adopted by her Saratoga parents, Moe and Duke Nelson, when she was a newborn. All of which is why Maritza saved half of the $82 to buy Josefina. Her parents gave her the other half. "When Maritza plays with Josefina, she's calm and peaceful," Nelson says. "The doll gives her a sense of pride in her Hispanic heritage."
Maritza's best friend, Graciela Kincaid, feels a personal connection to her own Josefina doll. Her parents are from Puerto Rico and Cuba, and her grandmother's name is Josefina.
In the package with each new doll comes a meet-the-character book. Meet Josefina tells the story of a 9-year-old girl living on a ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., in 1824. The reader learns how people living on ranches had to spin their own wool and raise their own food.
The book also points out that men and women had distinct roles in life.
"That little girl [Josefina] worked from 5 a.m. till 6 p.m., baking, sweeping and cleaning," says Robinson, the mom who organized the meeting at Borders. "Little girls today don't have a sense of what little girls used to do."
Another popular character is Addy, a 9-year-old slave girl, who lives in the South during the Civil War. Addy's job in the tobacco fields is to take fat green worms off the tobacco leaves and squish them in her hands or with her feet. When her father and brother are sold off the tobacco plantation, Addy and her mother run away. They wear someone else's clothes, hoping the dogs won't be able to follow their scent, and they travel the underground railroad to a "free house."
Photographs by George Sakkestad
Felicity, Josefina, Kirsten, Addy, Molly and Samantha--the "American Girls" line of dolls--each represent an era of history.
Each of the girls at the Borders meeting owns a doll, many of which were chosen for reasons relating to family roots. Melinda Robinson brings Kirsten, a blond, blue-eyed Scandinavian doll that looks just like Melinda. Katie Nast's doll is Samantha, a character who lives during the turn of the century with a rich grandmother. "Samantha lived when my great-grandmother was a girl," Katie explains. Katie's mother, Liz, says that Katie is hoping for the WWII doll, Molly, whose character lives during the time Katie's grandmother was a little girl.
Grandmothers, in fact, are often an integral part of their granddaughters' American Girl experience; it's frequently Grandma who gives an American Girl doll as a gift. Adele Ratcliff bought dolls for her granddaughters, Peyton and Taylor Ratcliff.
Sometimes the dolls create links between generations, even bringing to life some traditional women's skills. Alexis Williams, who recently moved to Scotts Valley from Monte Sereno with her parents, Sarah and Shawn Williams, is the only girl at Borders dressed in an outfit that matches her doll's. Her grandmother made both outfits. Alexis' mom is pleased because Grandma is teaching Alexis how to sew. Patterns for the American Girl dolls are available in fabric stores and in the American Girl catalogue, and American Girl doll outfits show up in boutiques everywhere.
In a marketing move that seems almost over the top, Pleasant Co. has opened the American Girl Place, a 35,000-square-foot, three-story building in Chicago that houses a cafe overlooking a water tower, a theater where the girls can watch The American Girls Revue, facsimiles of their six historical characters' homes, and of course, all the Pleasant Co. merchandise.
The initial idea has grown beyond expectations. Pleasant Co. has even joined living history museums around the country to set up programs around the American Girl characters. For instance, there's Samantha at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., which includes a suffragette rally; and there's Molly at Strawberry Banke Museum in Portsmouth, N.H., where girls can actually hunt for scrap metal, practice an air-raid drill and shop with ration coupons in a real 1940s grocery store. And there's Felicity in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., where girls can learn stitchery, dancing and the proper way to serve tea.
The American Girls club meets at 3 p.m. at Barnes and Noble, 3600 Stevens Creek Blvd., on the third Saturday of every month. Sam Scott contributed to this story.
|
|
|
|
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
