American Girl Place Gives Me The Creeps

So we were down in LA at the grandparents' yesterday, and we went for my mom's customary morning coffee at the old Farmer's Market at 3rd and Fairfax before heading back to Bakersfield. My mom had been talking about how the new American Girl Place store had opened up last week in the humungous space previously occupied by F.A.O. Schwartz in the Grove, the outdoor mall/faux streetscape next to the Farmer's Market. Apparently, lines had been out the door for days and management moved employee parking to a building miles away (connected by shuttle) to open up the employee parking floor for the anticipated hordes of chaufferred doll aficionados coming for their "Afternoon Tea" with their dolls. Well, the store opens at 9:30 in the morning, before most other mall stores (guess it's never too early to buy matching pajamas so you can dress like your doll), so we strolled over to check it out after coffee.

I thought the F.A.O. Schwartz that was in the space before was creepy, what with the animatronics and the non-stop music. But this takes it to a whole other level. First of all, let me say that I'm not the most receptive audience for this. The whole girl-empowerment thing is great, but combining it with crass mass commercialism ["Buy matching clothes for you and your doll! And don't forget the accessories!"], not so much—and then add in my favorite problematizers, race and class, and, well.... Let's just say that The Pumpkin won't be taking her doppleganger doll to high tea there any time soon.

Everything is some shade of pink. All the saleswomen, smiling and quick with a greeting, seem creepily...doll-like. And everything, every object, every experience, is for sale. A giant display of dolls "Just Like You" advertises your little girl's ability to find a doll-ppleganger with the appropriate combination of hair color, hair texture (no naturals for you African American girls, though, only pressed or curls, sorry!), eye color, skin color, nose shape (couldn't tell if there were different eye shapes, but noses seemed limited to "regular" and "a little flatter")... Teeth, however, seem to be universally buck-. And don't forget the accessories, and the real-girl-sized clothes to match! And right next to that display is the...wait for it...hair salon. Yes, hair salon, where a row of miniaturized salon chairs sits on a counter, behind which stand the "stylists" waiting for their inanimate clients. Upstairs, you've got a cafe where you can eat three meals a day, book a birthday party, you can watch something (don't know if it's video or live, wasn't paying attention) in the theater, get your photo taken with your doll, buy a baby doll (and accessories! two-pack twins and a matching two-seater stroller!), buy doll-specific books, and check out/buy from the company's vaunted Historical Collection.

This 10-doll collection of characters from American historical periods from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, complete with novels, has been lauded for its sort of "girl power" version of fictionalized social history. In the last few years, they've added an African American (runaway slave), a Latina (New Mexican), and Native American (eighteenth century Plains)to the collection. Just out of curiosity, I checked the on-line store to see what matching clothes you could get to dress like your historical dolls—"Dress like a run-away slave!"—but, alas, it's mostly nightgowns. Except there's nothing for Nez Perce warrior girl Kaya—and I was so looking forward to buying The Pumpkin some faux buckskin jammies.

Angry Asian Man wrote last month about this Sacramento Bee article about Asian American girls and their parents who have started a campaign to get American Girl to add an Asian American character and story to the historical line. While I always applaud young activists and work on the issue of pop-cultural representation and diversity, I gotta say, I don't know what I'd think about, say, a 1940s-era Emi doll complete with a family i.d. number tag around her neck and a matching suitcase in which to put only what she could carry. Heh. Already I'm sorta uncomfortable with the "diversity" of the historical collection—I know they have to start somewhere, but in a collection of 10 dolls, in which the white dolls range from servant to elite and from colonial times to WWII, the non-white dolls are one black doll who's a runaway slave, one Native American doll who wants to be a warrior woman, and one Latina doll who's on a New Mexican ranch. It just seems a little too pat, a little too easy. And of course, I'm viewing this with the back-drop of last year's uproar over one of their contemporary dolls, Marisol, who, after the historical Josefina, was the company's second Latina doll. The Mexican-American character's backstory included her family's moving from Chicago's historically Latino Pilsen neighborhood to the suburbs because the old barrio was too dangerous and had no place for her to play. That, obvioulsy, didn't sit too well with proud residents of the ethnic enclave.

This year's "Girl of the Year" doll/character happens to be Jess, a biracial white/Asian 10-year-old, whose accompanying story/novel focuses on her family's vacaction in Central America. I have no idea if her racial/ethnic background comes into play in her story at all. But, surrounded by a whole lot of Jess dolls and Jess books at the store, I have to say... Sorry, American Girl, she may have a bridgeless nose, but she looks like a white girl with buckteeth. (As I mentioned earlier, apparently all the dolls have the same teeth.) It's interesting to note that the hapa girl in the article linked above, who wants an AsAm historical doll (and even plans to study history in college because of American Girl), said of Jess, "She looks almost Native American or Hispanic." When told she was AsAm, she said, "That's crazy." Um, sweetie, I know we all look different, but have you really not been asked if you speak Spanish yet? Or, with that interest in history, haven't you read about the settlement of the Americas by people from, um, Asia? But either way, that doll doesn't look hapa to me, though the illustrations for the book do.

At any rate, I'm not buying The Pumpkin an American Girl doll any time soon, regardless of how racially ambiguous I could make it look. [At a year-and-a-half, my babygirl's years too young anyway—and barely taller than the dolls. She was uninterested in the baby dolls aimed at toddlers and younger girls, only wanting to push the doll-sized stroller out of the showroom, sans doll.] And that store gives me the creeps. Too many clothing items that eight-year-olds (their target audience) should not be wearing—the Jess collection has her signature halter top, and I swear I saw something on the rack that looked like a tube top and hot pants or something. Nuh-uh. (Don't we have enought problems with the Pussycat Dolls joining the Bratz on the toystore shelves?) And the resemblance of the employees to their smiling, cheerful products, at 9:30 on a Monday morning, yeah, no thanks. No tea-with-your-doll for me.

Not that they're losing business from me. Apparently, the afternoon tea service is booked for months.

Jolie in Training

For lil' Sunshine's first Christmas, Mrs. SoulSnax ordered one of those rare Asian dolls, because she wanted Sunshine's first doll to be Asian.

"Too late," I told her, because lil' Sunshine already had a doll, and it's a pretty little black doll in a pink dress.

"Aww... well that's cool, at least she's got some variety in there," Mrs. SoulSnax replied. "All my dolls were blonde and had blue eyes. And I grew up in the Philippines."

"Yeah, well a few more of these, and we can call her Angelina."

UPDATE: We've received a cease and desist order from the Philippine Colonial Ministry. Apparently, in our efforts to bolster the self-esteem of young Filipino children, we have been "complicit in undermining the Philippine media's Cultural Subjugation Programme."

We have been instructed to indoctrinate our daughter in the value of aspiring toward lighter skin and big, round eyes. They recommend that we give our daughter the same blue-eyed blonde-haired dolls that her mother had as a child.

Furthermore, they recommend that she watch any of the telenovelas on The Filipino Channel (TFC), since they feature a lot of mestizo "actors."

The Doll Thing

If you're a parent of color, an Asian American parent, and/or a parent of a multiracial child, I'm sure you've tackled this one (or will when your kid's old enough): The Doll Thing. Sure, you've got your library stocked with multiculti picture books, there are a couple ethnic-pride onesies in the kid's drawer, you make sure you're as surrounded by the diverse faces of family and friends as possible... And then you go to the big-box toy store....

I've already written at length about trying to find toys that reflect back at The Pumpkin, or at least reflect some sort of diversity, on my solo blog, so you can click here to read that. (Though, if you've visited it before, you know the whole "Apple doesn't do comments" thing, so you can post comments about what I wrote in that post here on this RD post, if you wanna.)

But I'm bringing this up today because Jenna at BabyGadget is currently in the same quandary, looking for an Asian baby doll for her own hapa baby, and has posted the not-quite-satisfying results of her search (with pictures!) [via Blogging Baby].

[On a related note, Dutch, he of the "buy locally handcrafted wooden toys" school, recently posted a funny bit on The Blogfathers about his misadventure taking his babygirl into a Toys R Us. The title should give you a clue: "I have seen the future, and it's either really pink, or kind of slutty." Heh. And you can tell already that he's talking about that nasty Bratz line, which, problematically, happens to be one of the easiest places to find Asian-ish (or I guess in this case really they're "Oriental") "fashion dolls."]

So, in trying to find dolls that reflect back at our little ones, what's your story? What are your faves? What's on your "um, no, I really don't think so" list?

Heir and a Spare, a Barbie Doll and an...

Accident. Nope, just kidding! My wife and I actually did want 4 kids. I always wanted a large family because I enjoyed playing with and taking care of kids. I think being one of the older cousins in my family contributed to that since we older ones had to take care of the younger ones at family gatherings. My wife was the opposite, she was on the younger end of her cousin chain so she didn’t have much experience. In fact, I used to rib her lack of babysitting skills.

Somehow I must have rubbed off on her because she decided on a big family too. She told me one day while she was waiting to pick me up at the airport she saw a family with 4 kids. The sight of each child, their heads step laddering down in height from oldest to youngest was too cute. That did it for her, 4 was the magic number so our plan was 2 boys and 2 girls.

I admit I was relieved that the first was a boy (the “Heir”), if just to placate the more traditional elements in our families. So we were ready for number 2 to be a girl but the ancestors must have been pleased to have another boy (the “Spare”). Now we really wanted a girl so much that my wife got some book on strategies for gender selection and it must have worked because my wife finally got her “Barbie Doll” to play with. But ancestors got the last laugh because we got lazy on #4 and another bouncing baby boy arrived.

Am I crazy for wanting 4? I don’t think I am. I mean, most Asian families used to have many kids, my Ma-Ma (paternal grandmother) was youngest of 13. When I grow old and look back on things, am I going to regret not spending more hours at work or having the family we always wanted? So I just smile and tell people 4 is just a small family.

I admit it drives me crazy when people discuss having children as a material tradeoff. Sure I can understand if it is about lack of time, but most people seem to view kids as a cost forcing them to lose out on a better car, a fancier house, etc. (I remember one person who basically said they bought a new house so they can’t afford another kid and because they wanted a lot of upgrades…) Ugh, kids are not UPGRADES to attach price tags to! If you and your spouse really want “X” number of kids, I say just do it. Affordability is all relative; look I am just as poor with four kids as I was with one! And your child won’t miss a few less toys when the best toy he/she could ever have is a sibling. But the person that really drives me crazy about this is…

my very own mother!

She is absolutely obsessed about the costs of raising our kids (and she raised 3). How could we afford this or that she would constantly ask. And how could we pay for 4 college educations? (To me, it isn’t about raising the funds for good colleges, it’s about raising good kids.) While she thinks of herself as very traditional (and once wanted 10 grandchildren) what’s with the Material Girl routine now? Seems she isn’t alone, Asian families across the world are shrinking in size despite greater prosperity.

I have a suspicion that whereas my grandparents generation prided themselves on large families and would expect their children to care for them, my mother has decided that the almighty dollar is more reliable. I remember since I was little she would keep asking me (and my siblings) if I would care for her in her old age over and over again, which I thought was silly but maybe that is just her insecurity. And yet she really enjoys the grandkids immensely.

I guess I subscribe to the traditional view that family is wealth. We seem to having a good time and I don't miss the better car or fancy house.

Seeing Pink

***originally posted at Anti-Racist Parent***

Before my daughter was born, I knew what kind of father I wanted to be for her. My babygrrl was going to be raised to be a fierce, strong woman of color. I was going to make her iron-on onesies emblazoned with portraits of Yuri Kochiyama, Angela Davis, and Frida Kahlo. Her toybox would be filled with both dolls of color, preferably made by either anti-corporate crafters or small indie companies, and things traditionally coded as “boy” like trucks and cars and tools. Both toy guns and Barbie would be equally verboten in our home, and her closet would be a pink-free zone. I knew the constricting, restricting and damaging messages the world would soon bombard her with about race and gender, and dammit if I wasn’t going to all I could inside our home to inoculate her against them.

So yeah, it would’ve only served me right to have been gifted with a stereotypical “girly girl,” a little karmic payback for putting all my crap on my poor baby’s head before she was even born. That hasn’t happened, luckily–while my Pumpkin’s favorite color, for clothing and everything else, is, of course, pink, she does not, like her best friend since birth, demand to wear Disney Princess costumes as casual wear. As for my plans for a line of “Radical Mama” toddler-tees and stacking the deck toy-wise, well, the first toy I ever bought her was a “Little Frida” doll, and we dubbed the racially ambiguous doll we got her from a line of multiculti dolls by an alum of color from our alma mater “Angela” because of her hair-do. bell hooks’ children’s books are on her overstuffed bookshelves. And because I’m not anti-commercial per se but more anti-certain things (you know?), she’s got more than her fair share of mass-produced goods featuring a certain brown-skinned Latina girl who likes to have adventures and help her animal friends, as well as her current favorite, the Backyardigans (who, I’m convinced, are kids of color–I mean, Pablo? Tasha? Tyrone? Uniqua?)

Suffice it to say that as much as possible, her mother and I try to mediate potentially negative messages embedded in popular and commercial culture by controlling what she consumes (at least in our home) and by talking with her about things that might be problematic. But of course, none of this gets any easier as kids get older, with more and more outside influence impinging on them. During her year in day care, she’d come home talking about t.v. shows we didn’t watch at home, or pretending to shoot things with her fingers like one of the little boys there. “Where did you learn that, Pumpkin?” we’d ask, before explaining why we didn’t shoot things or people. Now that she’s started preschool, I know there will be more of these teachable moments, even though we found as progressive and diverse a school environment as we could in our town.

But what’s really got me thinking, about the subtle and insidious effect of both popular culture and the influence of other kids on how our Pumpkin learns to see the world and her place in it, is how she’s started to label things as gender-appropriate or -inappropriate. It started cropping up during the recent holiday consumption season, during our trips to the local Target and Costco. One time, she was looking at some kids’ room furnishings at Target, which, of course, are separated into a mostly blue boy aisle and a mostly pink girl aisle. There was some Thomas the Tank Engine stuff in the boy aisle, and she called out “Thomas!” happily when she saw it. “Want to look at that stuff, sweetie?” I asked. “No,” she said, “that’s for boys.”

I stopped the cart. Say what now? She’s always loved trains in general and Thomas specifically, so where did this come from? “No, love, anybody can play with Thomas, boys and girls, right?” But the moment was past and her attention was already on something else. But I was disturbed. I mean, I wasn’t naive, I knew these messages, what was appropriate for boys to play with, what was appropriate for girls to play with, were out there, bombarding her on TV and even in the choices and behaviors of her friends. But I always thought that the messages coming from home were enough to counteract these–that she could play with anything she wanted (well, not guns or Bratz, but you know what I mean), that she could do anything, that these things weren’t limited because she was a girl.

Not long after, in the holiday gift section at Costco, I was checking out a Fisher Price kids’ digital camera. There were two models, a big stack of blue toddler cameras and a big stack of pink ones. Apropos of nothing, The Pumpkin pointed at the two stacks: “That one’s for boys and that one’s for girls.” “No baby, anybody can have any color camera they want, right, Mommy? A boy can have a pink one and a girl can have a blue one if they want.” But she wasn’t having it–she knew who was supposed to have what, by color.

It was a digital camera, of all things. Of all the toys that did not need to be gender-coded, I thought, this would be it. It was the exact same toy, the only difference was the color. Did there really need to be a “boy” camera and a “girl” camera? I mean, c’mon! Needless to say, when it came time to buy presents, both the boy and the girls on our list got a different brand of camera–one that came in orange.

It doesn’t end there. Where I always thought that I knew where the issues would be coming from–deflecting and deprogramming hegemonic lessons that toy kitchens were for girls and only boys could play with Tonka trucks from commercials that smacked of biological determinism–now even gender-neutral toys aren’t so neutral. Does LeapFrog, for example, really need to make blue and pink versions of their kiddie learning computers? Is it that important to brand something as “for boys” or “for girls“? Will boys only use a computer if the learning game is branded with Disney’s Cars? Will girls only use it if the game is branded with Disney’s Princesses? And what if a girl likes Cars? Or a boy likes Princesses? What then? Or will they not even think to ask, having imbibed the blue=boy/pink=girl lesson for too long already?

I think about all the societal forces bombarding my daughter and her friends, and I don’t want to feel powerless to do anything. The other night, one of The Pumpkin’s best friends, a little boy she’s known since birth, was frantic because he couldn’t find another chair in which to sit at the kids’ table for dinner. He refused, absolutely refused, to sit in a Dora-emblazoned chair because it was Dora, and Dora is for girls. No matter how much I or his parents tried to convince him that that wasn’t the case, and that he could sit in the chair, he wouldn’t change his mind. He wouldn’t play dress-up with the girls, either, since the Disney Princess gear was obviously not for boys. Another boy in our group of friends, however, wouldn’t hesitate to put on one of those tiaras. He unabashedly loves Dora and the Princesses, and his parents support that love. But what messages does he get at preschool, I wonder, from both teachers and other kids, when he shares that love with others?

I’m tired of seeing pink. I’m tired of seeing blue. And I’m both pissed off and saddened deeply that at age three, my daughter and her friends, both girls and boys, have already learned to see those colors, and what they are supposed to mean, so well. And I know that this isn’t the last time I’m going to start a sentence with, “No, baby, both boys and girls can….”

Family Fun This Saturday for SoCal Rice Fams

FYI for all my rice daddies, rice mamas, and rice kiddies in the LA area: the Japanese American National Museum in downtown LA (369 East First St., LA 90012; 213-625-0414) is holding its 8th Annual Courtyard Kids Family Festival this Saturday, August 12, from 1 to 7 p.m. This year's theme is "Every Day is Children's Day," and the arts and crafts, play area, book readings and signings, and musical performances are free [food and admission to the museum galleries are extra, however].

The festivities include a book signing by hapa artiste-provocateur-extraordinaire Kip Fulbeck, of his hapa portrait study "part asian • 100% hapa," the exhibit of which the JANM is hosting concurrently.

Also on hand to sign books will be the author of the marketing-tie-in novel for Jess, American Girl's hapa nikkeijin Girl of the Year. You can even enter a raffle to win a Jess doll! Heh. [If you don't remember my reaction to Jess, and to American Girl in general, here's a link to my post from April, and a link to an article in the JACL's Pacific Citizen newspaper that quotes your truly on the issue.]

In all seriousness, for those living in or visiting the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, my dear hometown, the JANM is great place to stop by. I've been a member since the museum opened, and once, in an early exhibit on America's concentration camps, we even found my grandfather in a group photo from Tule Lake. The museum's website hosts an interactive children's section called the "JANM Kids Bento Box," and in conjunction with the hapa photo exhibit, Target is hosting several "Free Family Saturdays" with special activities and free admission to the museum (Sept. 9, Oct. 14, and Nov. 11).

ADDENDUM: Eliaday just reminded me that LA's Little Tokyo is also hosting the soy-licious annual LA Tofu Festival both days this weekend, so check out the website for more info. Befitting the festival motto "It's Hip to be Square," they've got everybody from Blackalicious rocking Saturday night's concert to cooking demos with the o.g. Iron Chef himself, Masaharu Morimoto (and others). [Eliaday writes that she and baby Tae rocked both the Tofu Festival and the JANM Courtyard Kids Family Festival last year—check it out here.]

Happy Girls' Day!

It's March 3rd, Hinamatsuri (the doll festival), or as I knew it growing up, Japanese Girls' Day. My parents still put up their Empress and Emperor dolls on the fireplace mantle every March, and when The Pumpkin turned one last October, I made a special request of them for her own pair of dolls. So the other day, we unpacked them, figured out where all the little costume parts went, and set them on their pedestals on the table in the foyer, where they will stay for the month.

My dad (who's white, btw) always used any excuse to give gifts to me and my mom when i was growing up, so even though Girls' Day is traditionally celebrated for only young girls in a family, Girls' Day in mine meant presents for my mom. Boys' Day (May 5) meant hanging up a carp kite in the backyard and, of course, presents for me and my dad. [He even gave us cards, at least, on St. Patrick's Day. And of course there was the time I was scarred for life when, on April Fool's Day, I opened a box with my mom's present in it—lingerie. Shudder.] And so, the other day, a box arrived with gifts for their daughter-in-law and granddaughter, continuing the tradition.

Me? I forgot to get my ladies' gifts. D'oh! So here, for everyone to see, is my gift to them—Happy Girls' Day to the most important girls, to the most important people in my life. And to all you lucky dads of daughters out there (and moms, and daughters themselves), Happy Girls' Day, too....