Look at that face. Poor homeless thing is miserable...

By now, I’m sure you are all aware of the blogosphere’s outcry against Gwen, the homeless American Girl doll.

If not, than essentially what you need to know is that Gwen’s deadbeat dad left her and her mom to live in their car. She meets a girl named Chrissy, who enjoys keeping the bullies from picking on Gwen’s sad plight.

OK. Fine. So the controversy amounts to Dads who think this doll puts fathers in a bad light. What if this doll’s story gives little girls a reason to distrust men? Also on the blog rant table is the price tag. This is a $95 doll. That’s homeless. If you were homeless, what would you do with $95? You probably wouldn’t buy a doll.

This issue was brought to light for me on a blog that’s now on my ‘never miss’ list: Clark Kent’s Lunchbox, in a post entitled ‘Why I “Hate” Mattel Toys’ CEO , Robert Eckert’. It again beckoned to me from Dadcentric, in a post called ‘Daughter, Can You Spare An American Girl Doll?’. So I said fine, sure, if everyone else is jumping off of the American Girl cliff I can too.

But as I thought about it, I came up with this crazy idea:

What if a homeless American Girl doll with a deadbeat dad isn’t such a bad thing?

No. No. Two bloggers whom I admire have told me that I shouldn’t buy in to this. This is crazy, why would I even think this way?

Justification? Validation, perhaps?

Perhaps…

When my nearly 16 year old step-daughter was younger, she played with American Girl dolls. Her first one was bought by her aunt and grandmother. Molly was the girl at the time that closely resembled Kat, so that’s what she got. I thought it was cool because she’s from the WWII era. Her father is off to war and she dreams of a better world back home. Kat and I used to look at the books together and talk about WWII and the lessons we could learn from it and Molly’s story. Sure, the stories were basic, but, that’s what a kid reads to foster deeper reading later on. She had this one Molly book that was almost all pictures from the WWII era. I got to read about the doll with her and look at WWII era planes. Win/win.

So back to Gwen and my paralyzing ability to see all sides of an argument. As I thought about Gwen, I remembered a poem my parents kept on the fridge as I was growing up. It was called ‘Children Learn What They Live‘. Essentially it says that if you praise them, they’ll appreciate goals, if you love them they’ll be loving, etc. Which is true, but I also hold onto another theory. I also believe that children learn the opposite. They learn what not to do.

Here is my hope for the owners of Gwen: From her story I do hope girls are more cautious about the men they choose to bring into their lives. As they start dating, a little caution will not be a bad thing. They won’t want to end up like Gwen’s mom, living in a car with a child, so they may give a little more thought into dating the ‘bad boy’.

As for the price tag? Are we being too short sighted? The idea that many have put forth is that if you’re spending $95 on a doll, you’re probably some richie-rich that should be donating to the poor. I beg to differ. After Molly started an obsession for us, we ordered one of the custom dolls: ordering Kat’s exact hair and eye color, to instill narcissism I guess… We were anything but rich. We just thought the way any consumer thinks: higher price tag, higher quality. I’m always amazed at people that absolutely will not buy electronics at Wal-Mart. As if Wal-Mart arbitrarily slaps ‘Sony’ on an ‘Orion’. A Sony’s a Sony. An American Girl doll must be quality if you’re shelling out 100 clams, right? For the sake of argument, let’s say that mother is rich, and the daughter begins to feel like all that excess may not be necessary. As she grows, the story of Gwen haunts her. In school, she’ll be more sensitive to other kids. She won’t be a bully, and maybe even stand up for the kids who are bullied. When she grows up and has kids, she maybe spends a little less on the excess and takes her children to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, demonstrating to her kids that they can live a better way…

I may be a little too optimistic for my own good. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that our kids aren’t going to go south due to the toys they play with. I grew up looking at Garbage Pail Kids, and I only wipe my boogers on the couch every once in a while. I turned out just fine. There will always be dubious toys out there. If you’re that opposed, don’t buy it. If you’re kids have to have it, be there to guide them.

In the end, that’s all that really matters.

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• “Homeless” American Girl Doll Costs $95 [Crass] (consumerist.com)
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