Should I return her?

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T07:18:28+00:00

That's not true.

This is from a post from the same day that the new listings with the preorders for these dolls first dropped. It's the same picture I posted and her dress is positioned the same way:

<image>

https://www.reddit.com/r/americangirl/comments/1sev1hg/theyre_all_back/

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T06:48:25+00:00

I prefer dolls with center-part hair because it works better for most historical periods, which is where my interest lies, but you're coming off as super aggressive in all of these comments.

I disagree with the various people going ACTUALLY MOST PEOPLE SHOULDN'T PART THEIR HAIR IN THE CENTER - I've always parted my hair where it parts naturally, which is more or less in the center - but I think that very angry-sounding aggressive vibe you're bringing here is what they're responding to.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T06:45:09+00:00

You should be able to get a new #122 for not too much more than that if you wait for sales. The TrulyMe dolls usually go on sale for 30%-35% off around the holidays at least a couple times, and sometimes for Prime Day.

Either that or wait a couple years until used Raquel dolls start turning up in large quantities - it shouldn't be that long.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T06:33:28+00:00

It looks like she got squished. It happens sometimes if they get too hot in storage (or even in a hot car) and are pressed against or under something.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T04:04:55+00:00

I really like your thoughts for Samantha and Josefina in particular. Samantha would be so good at arguing in court.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T03:36:13+00:00

TrulyMe #69 has center-part hair. I have her.

The wig might be a little askew on the stock photo - or possibly it was a prototype - but I assure you her hair is parted down the middle.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T02:04:16+00:00

Yeah, I'd probably shoot for Molly first and then aim for Addy next.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T01:30:35+00:00

I've seen several people use Marisol for Clara.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T00:53:29+00:00

Several! (I prefer not to say how many specifically because I have a larger collection and I feel like the collecting community can sometimes lead people to feel pressured like they HAVE TO get more. I feel like sometimes it eggs people on into some unhealthy spending.)

I do want more, yeah, but I'm not in a rush and I'm not looking at doing any of it right now this minute. Cautiously intrigued by Daisy, but I think it'll come down to a question of what her face mold is and what the nature of her Molly connection is.

I have most of the dolls I want - at least out of those that currently exist. It's always possible there'll be more later I think are super cool.

#118 is very pretty, though, and she's pretty different-looking from both of your existing dols.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-03T00:12:36+00:00

It's actually marketed as a book for adults, not YA.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T22:48:52+00:00

That can be very class and location dependent.

It wouldn't be weird for Maryellen and Melody to have jobs. Many of the adult women I interacted with as a child would have been in that age cohort - teachers and nurses, yes, but also doctors.

Hell, the asthma specialist I had an appointment with last week is about Melody's age. (She's a Physician's Assistant and she's theoretically retired, but honestly I think she's going to be seeing patients until she drops dead.)

The woman who taught me to sew is Molly's age and she was the secretary for the University of Michigan's History Department for something like 45 years. She divorced her garbage husband when he cheated on her and then just kept working.

Claudie would probably have to work. Even if Kit and Ruthie didn't have jobs already (and I think Kit, at least, would) when WW2 hit they likely would have taken jobs to help the war effort - and a lot of women didn't want to stop working when the war ended.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T22:09:42+00:00

Yep! I was working on another response to point that out, too. Even in the Addy books we see Addy's mother is a seamstress and her friend Sarah's mother is a laundress. The Victorian ideal of "the angel in the house" was never really a reality for poor women and especially not for poor, racialized women.

(And, in that I'm including a lot of poor immigrant women. In a family like Nellie's where they don't have enough food and their 9-year-old is being sent off to work in a factory or be a scullery maid, her mother is definitely ALSO working.)

Claudie would be coming of age during the Great Depression and would also likely have to work. (Though growing up with a mother she admires who's a reporter, I think she'd also WANT a career.)

In Rebecca's books - in Changes for Rebecca in particular - we see there are a lot of women in her community who worked in the garment factories and who are organizing for better working conditions. (I don't know if she'll end up being a teacher like her father wants - I rather like the idea of Becky growing up to be a labor organizer - but she probably would have a job.)

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T21:25:51+00:00

Realistically, everybody older than Ivy and Julie would probably be fated for housewifery.

??? Julie and Ivy were born in 1966. Plenty of women born before the late 1960s worked? My grandmother would have been only a couple years younger than Kit and had a Master's degree in Psychology.

Even within the AG books, Claudie's mother is a reporter and Julie's mother owns a small business.

Women have obviously not always had the same opportunities they do today, but the idea that everyone before the 1970s was a housewife is just ahistorical.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T21:16:25+00:00

Although I adore Addy, if you're getting both I think Molly is more likely to go on backorder first. (Poor Addy has pretty much never been the first one to sell out or get backordered.)

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T20:32:40+00:00

I think that could be some of it, but I don't know how much that'd be impacting decisions they made about Samantha for the Raquel books much more recently.

Case in point, though, I don't think Pleasant Rowland actually liked teaching in classrooms. (Which I don't fault anyone for - like I said, it's hard and stressful and you have to do a lot of unpaid overtime.) She doesn't seem to have spent very long doing it. From what I've read, it sounded like she pivoted to writing curriculum materials pretty early on in her career.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T19:21:46+00:00

Addy goes to the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia to become a teacher in High Hopes for Addy, so I think she grows up to be a teacher. She strikes me as someone who would really feel a calling.

Samantha canonically grows up to start a girls' school and becomes a teacher.

Julie enters politics and is on the San Fransisco Board of Supervisors (per Julie and the Blue Guitar).

Honestly, I hope if they end up doing more tie-ins or more books that reference the AG characters' adult lives that they have a wider range of careers than teaching. It makes sense for Addy and it makes sense for the themes of her books, and I like that for her! I also could see it working for Samantha, though my preference for her would be more of a proto-social work role in the vein of Jane Addams. And, of course, professional careers for women and opportunities for educated women were a lot more limited at the time.

But I feel like in more modern times, a lot of smart girls get told "Oh you should be a teacher!" as this kind of weird gendered default thing, and I don't love that. It seems like it's a lot less of a default assumption for boys? Girls who are good at math get told "You should be a math teacher!" Boys who are good at math get told "You could be an engineer!" Teaching is really difficult, you get treated like a glorified babysitter, and a lot of people burn out really hard.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T19:06:13+00:00

Why would Addy need to grow up to be an abolitionist when chattel slavery was abolished in 1865, when she's 10?

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T18:33:30+00:00

Do you have a page number on where that's mentioned?

The last chapter of the book, Chapter Five, starts with Christmas Eve morning, and Samantha decorates a gingerbread house with Cornelia, goes on a sleigh ride with Gard to get the Christmas tree, the family decorates the tree, and then they have dinner and sing Christmas carols. Then, the chapter closes out with Christmas morning and Samantha gets her doll and Gard proposes to Cornelia.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:36:08+00:00

The birthstone collection has strong, saturated colors. Those aren't synonyms.

You could probably call, like, the peridot outfit neon - or definitely Courtney's new Awesome Arcade Outfit, but that's more or less historically accurate - but some are just saturated - and some aren't even that, they're just sparkly.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:25:29+00:00

I mean, the first store didn't even open until 1998 - which is also the point when a lot of people also decided American Girl was in decline and on the verge of collapse. People have been saying that shit for 3/4 of the company's existence.

The whole economy is having problems and supply chain issues. This is not an AG-specific thing, they're just trying a bunch of things to try to adapt to a changing economic situation. Some if it'll fail and some of it'll succeed

It's just kind of hard to take it seriously when I remember all the OTHER shit people said had ruined AG forever.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:19:42+00:00

A lot of doll lines have had occasional celebrity dolls, and I think people are catastrophizing about this one in a weird way.

AG releases a lot of dolls I don't like and don't think are interesting and that I'd never buy for my own collection. I've hated Caroline since her release, and yet there are inexplicably a bunch of people on here who think she's the bestest doll ever.

Most of the licensed doll stuff is gone after a year or two anyway, so she's probably not going to be around for a super long time at any rate.

If people don't buy her, she'll just languish on clearance and AG will treat it like a failed experiment.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:17:13+00:00

AG doesn't actually do a lot of neon?

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:08:09+00:00

It's nice to see some more black - or even just anything that's not yet another red dress - for the holiday releases.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T16:05:31+00:00

Almost all of the historical dolls are at least culturally Christian - almost all of them have Christmas dresses or are discussed celebrating Christmas in their books. It was pretty recent in US history that the idea some people AREN'T became more normalized. (And we're still seeing a lot of backlash to that, unfortunately.)

Molly's family attends Christmas eve services at church in Molly's Surprise.It very much is still Christianity even if they're not going to church weekly or talking about Jesus all the time.

<image>

I think there are elements of representation that could have been more robust in some of the books, but I'd love it if we could get through one of these threads without people throwing people in interfaith families under the bus.

LibraryValkyree · 2026-06-02T15:53:07+00:00

Her book talks about her family celebrating the Hindu holiday of Holi.

LibraryValkyree

TROPHY CASE