I’m An Adult And I’m Playing With American Girl Dolls Again — And You Can Too

Mary and Allison came onstage to our applause — best friends, the perfect counterparts, and both self-proclaimed “Mollys.” They admired the Samanthas and Felicitys and “Just Like Yous” in the crowd, and they asked this question: Why, exactly, was it weird or wrong for an adult woman — everyone I saw in the audience presented as female — to play with a doll? 

I pondered this. Hadn’t I been ashamed, just an hour before, to be carrying Samantha in a canvas bag on the commuter rail?

Allison pointed out (at the risk of being binary about it all) that pastimes like collectible action figures, sci-fi fandom, and video games have gone mainstream for adults as a part of “nerd culture” — a culture that, while affirming and accepting to many with those interests, continues to be a predominantly male space. Meanwhile, there is no equivalent, socially acceptable culture for adults with an interest in “girl toys.” In fact, if you were 37, as I was, and still played with a doll, you would be deemed less of a “nerd” and more of a weirdo — even creepy.

At the time I attended this book talk, my husband had been spending his evenings playing an online game that involved crashing a lineup of cartoon animals into an internet stranger’s lineup of cartoon animals. Did I ever ask him, “Why the heck are you playing that juvenile, waste-of-time game?” No. I didn’t find that fun, but I knew it was fun for him.

I left that book talk with a sense of purpose that felt visionary. I knew exactly what I needed to do: I needed to buy a doll.

As a child, I owned four American Girl dolls — a luxury my parents had been able to afford due to an extended family member who got us a discount. (Fun fact: The $82 a doll cost in 1993 is the equivalent of about $172 today.)

In my imagination, my four girls were sisters, and I was “Mom.” The girls went to school (a space I’d cleared by shoving aside clothes hanging in my closet) with tiny satchels and tin lunch pails; they confided in me while I braided their hair; they bickered with each other, made up, and then put on nightgowns and climbed under patchwork quilts to sleep. 

I had an uncomplicated view of the dolls’ racial mix: Samantha, a white Victorian; Addy, a Black American who ushers in the end of the Civil War; Josefina, who lives on an 1824 rancho in what would later become New Mexico; and an East Asian “Just Like You” who, noticeably, did not look like me.

Although American Girl has expanded its racial representation over the years, it still doesn’t ask, or answer, some of the more complex questions about the racial dynamics and meanings that accompany any given doll. For example, what does it mean for a white child to “own” an Addy doll, as I did? Or to play with replicas of authentic Indigenous dress like Kaya’s?

I didn’t think about any of that when I was 7. In true white ’90s fashion, I’d viewed my little doll family as an aspirational model of racial harmony. I felt a reverence toward them and the eras they represented. Once, I lifted Samantha’s skirt to show a friend how she had bloomers underneath — and that friend laughed. I hadn’t meant to be funny. I’d thought the bloomers were remarkable: See, she has everything.

Sadly, my love of dolls was crushed by the time I reached my teen years. I had held on longer than most and, up to age 12, could still find one or two friends who would secretly, shamefully, play American Girls with me in the basement. Eventually, though, I stopped taking them off the shelf, and they sat in whatever historically accurate outfit I had last dressed them in, collecting dust in their synthetic hair. 

Twenty-five years later, though, Dolls of Our Lives had unexpectedly rekindled my interest. My first thought was to go online and purchase a new doll from the American Girl website — maybe a “Just Like You” that actually did resemble me. But then I started thinking about other dolls: 2001 “Girl of the Year” Lindsey Bergman, for example, who had been released once I was past acquiring new dolls myself, but whose curls, freckles, and red-beaded hair clip I had gazed at longingly whenever the two neighbor girls I babysat brought her out to play.

Then I discovered eBay. 

This was an entirely new notion to me: that all the dolls of my childhood — the ones about which my parents had once said, “I think you have enough” — were now available abundantly and affordably, and here I was, an adult with disposable income. Not only that, but the online photographs revealed dolls who needed me. They were, in a word, sad. Wild haircuts, stuck eyelids, naked limbs splayed at odd angles. They appealed to every anthropomorphizing instinct I had once tried so hard to squelch. I was hooked.

“Lindsey, Loose Legs,” one of the eBay listings read. The photo showed a mussy-haired Lindsey, missing one set of eyelashes, doing an impossible split. 

“That’s the one,” I told my husband, who at the time was the one with an eBay account. We clicked “Buy It Now” — and waited.

I had forgotten what this part was like: the anticipation of that tall, narrow box that served as a vessel for an 18-inch companion. Rushing to the door for every postal delivery. Slouching back inside empty-handed when she hadn’t arrived yet. Imagining what it would be like to hold her, to look into her “sleepy eyes” that open and close, and to see her looking back. The waiting made me feel like a child again, bursting with eagerness and impatience.

While I waited, I discovered an online community of American Girl doll enthusiasts that I had never known existed. These were people who not only collected dolls but also named, attired, and imagined entire personalities and backstories for them. I watched “unboxing” videos where YouTubers shared their first impressions of a new edition doll. I watched “My Collection” videos, where people literally held each of their dolls up to the camera and talked about them. (I found these inexplicably riveting.) But my favorites were the restoration videos, which took seemingly hopeless cases who had tangled hair, scratched vinyl, and permanent marker tattoos and gave these old dolls new life. 

When Lindsey Loose-Legs arrived, I lifted her reverently from the box and hugged her. A new doll! Granted, her face was smudged with grime and her legs swung back and forth like a marionette’s — but she was mine. 

“Whoa,” my husband said when I let him hold her. “This feels good.”

He meant the weight of her, the cloth body, the real-seeming heft. 

I agreed.

One year later, I am a proud, fully realized American Girl doll fan. In addition to my own collection, now proudly on display, I purchase other people’s American Girl castoffs online, restore them, and sell them again for someone new — child or adult — to enjoy. I’ve learned how to tighten limbs, pop out and replace eyeballs, unstuff and restuff a cloth body, and lovingly wash and restyle frizzed-out doll hair.