American Girl Dolls

In response to: Have you ever felt embarrassed about the things you used to like?
I used to spend hours on my bedroom floor with my best friend Ella playing with American girl dolls. I was obsessed. Ella and I would spend part of the morning setting up our dolls’ houses–half of my bedroom floor for Ella’s dolls and half for mine. We would set up beds, clothes, and other parts of our houses. Then we would sit on the floor the rest of the day with our American Girl dolls playing all sorts of elaborate made-up games with them. We would pretend that they could talk and make them go on adventures such as a trip to the local bakery.

If we were not playing games with our American Girl dolls, we often spent our time looking through the American Girl doll catalogs and planning what outfit or accessory we would get next when we had saved up enough money or what we were going to ask our parents to get us. Every time a new catalog came in the mail, it made my day. I was always so excited to browse through it and see what kind of new items there were.

If my family ever went to Chicago, we had to go and see the American Girl doll store. I usually never actually bought anything there because all American Girl things were extremely overpriced, but I thought that the store was the coolest place ever. It had multiple levels, huge display cases, and even some sort of doll salon (which I always wanted to take my dolls to but my parents would never let me). I could have spent the entire day there, however, not everyone in my family was as interested in American Girl dolls, and to my dismay, I was not able to stay there for the whole day.

The worst part of my obsession with American Girl dolls was that at one point I even had a matching outfit with one of my American Girls Dolls. It was pink—and I mean very pink—skirt and sweater with lots of ruffles and sparkles. Looking back, I cringe when I think about this outfit, but at the time I loved it. I even wore it to a violin recital because I thought it was so cool and fancy.

My obsession with American Girl dolls was not healthy. I remember one time after looking at the American Girl doll magazine I decided that I really, really wanted Coconut, who was the American Girl doll dog. I literally wanted nothing more than to have this fake dog. I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted this dog. I recall talking about Coconut non-stop to my parents and also to Ella who already had Coconut (I was always jealous that she had more American Girl stuff than me). Now, I feel pretty bad that my parents had to listen to me talk on and on about Coconut and lots of other American Girl doll related subjects. It was definitely not an interesting subject and I talked about it 24/7. Sometimes, I would even beg them to play with my dolls with me. Now I understand why they refused so often.

The fact that I was able to spend an entire day sitting on my floor playing with dolls is kind of sad. Over the summer I could have been playing outside, but instead I was inside obsessing over how to dress my American Girl Doll. I wasted a lot of time playing imaginary games with my American Girl Dolls. When I look back at my obsession with my American Girl dolls, I think that it is kind of funny, but mostly just embarrassing, how much I played with them and thought about them and talked about them.