Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of American Girl Doll

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

She survived the Great Depression, she fought for women's suffrage, and for many of us, she was our first window into what it meant to be American. This week, Amanda and Chelsea are joined by culture writers and co-editors of An American Girl Anthology, Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler (@justineodashs) and KC Hysmith (@kchysmith), to unpack the cult of American Girl Dolls. Because these weren’t just toys… they were identity-shaping, history spinning, $120 personality tests. And behind the tiny teeth and perfect braids are much bigger questions: Who gets to be American? Whose stories are worth telling? And what does it mean when those stories are written by a brand who's bottom line is trying to sell you tiny matching accessories? From revisionist history to real emotional impact, this episode explores how American Girl Dolls didn’t just reflect American girlhood, they quietly helped define it. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Right now save 20% on your FIRST order and get a free cat toy at ⁠https://PrettyLitter.com/CULT Go to https://HelloFresh.com/SLAC10FM now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free Item for Life!  Find exactly what you’re booking for at https://Booking.com, Booking.YEAH! Please consider donating to those affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Team SLAC are donating to the PCRF, a nonprofit organization providing vital medical care, food, and humanitarian aid to children and families in need. The Big Magical Cult Show is coming to Just For Laughs Toronto on September 27th. Get your tickets before they sell out!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Slash-Y-Amex. Fall is here, and you know what that means? Soup. Hardy grain bowls, warm autumnal sustenance. Thanks to HelloFresh, bringing you comforting chef-design recipes and fresh seasonal ingredients right to your sweet front door. I have literally never not enjoyed a meal that I've cooked from HelloFresh. The best way to cook just got better.

Go to hellofresh.com slash Slack 10Fm now to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. One per box with active subscription, free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. That's Hellofresh.com slash S-L-A-C-10Fm to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. If there's anything that American Girl can be kind of blamed for, is that they really lifted up American exceptionalism in a lot of the different ways that they've told stories about who gets to count as American.

I think that kind of narrow representation is cultish because it reflects. likes a homogenous group think where only stories black characters are allowed to tell are rooted in trauma. When I think about truly destructive cults from history, a lot of them have sort of manipulated or misrepresented historical events in order to achieve the leader's ultimate aims. That drives engagement with the brand. This is Sounds Like a Cult. A show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel and I'm the author of the book Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism. And I'm your co-host, Chelsea Charles, an unscripted TV producer and a lifelong student of pop culture sociology. Every week on this show, we discuss a different

zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture from sleepaway camp all the way to in cells to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out. After all, cultish influence, cultish fanaticism, and groups, they fall along a spectrum these days. And cult vibes don't always show up the same way. Some modern day cultishness is super fringy and ritualistic.

on the surface, for sure. But underneath the surface, it adds actually relatively harmless. Like, I don't know, episodes we've done on hardcore plant parents or Trader Joe's lovers, Gilmore girls. The cultishness, the ritual, the us versus them dynamics, they don't necessarily mean we're a nexium level territory here. But then you've got your modern day culty groups that might appear really mainstream, really harmless on the outside, but actually have more in common with classic cults than you might think.

That is what the show is all about analyzing and even poking a little bit of fun at the way fanaticism shows up in 2025 in places you might not think to look. Like an empire built on bedtime stories, historical trauma, braided hairlines, and the promise of character development. With just enough consumerist chaos to make you question your entire childhood. It's high time we crack into the cult of American Girl Dolls. The highbrow toy franchise turned identity machine where girls, mostly white, mostly upper middle class, didn't just play with dolls, they became them. Whether you were a Samantha, a kit, or an Addy girl, your doll wasn't just a companion. She was a personality blueprint, complete with matching

outfits, niche trauma, and a fully furnished Victorian parlor set. Wait, Chelsea, before we get into the background and the analysis and everything we do on the show, I have to ask you if you have a personal relationship to American Girl. Just so we're clear. Listen, this is my childhood version of Addie, and I remember the day that I got this book. I cried when I saw Addie on the show, and I begged my mom for this book. It didn't really take much convincing. She bought it immediately.

But my grandmother saved this book for me. And on my last trip home, I found it in my old room. And I was obsessed. Oh, my God. I had no idea. I love learning through these episodes about you. Damn. What about you?

No. I was, I mean, okay, I knew it was important gender-wise to, like, be into dolls growing up. And so I cultivated a sort of forced appreciation for American girl dolls, but I wasn't a doll girl. I was, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast. I was a stuffed animal freak. To the point that my parents, when they moved across the country, when I was an adult, brought all of my stuffed animals. I was in my 20s and they brought my childhood stuffed animal collection across the country with them. Because I think they were afraid I wouldn't take kindly to them doing way with it. Anyways, but this top.

has long been on the sounds like a cult list because one of my closest closest friends years ago was like, have you considered a cult of American Girl Dolls episode because she was fully in it and she had recently visited one of the American Girl Doll stores and it felt like a pilgrimage to Mecca in a very urgent and visceral way. And so I'm so glad we're finally addressing this. Yes. And to help us dig into today's topic, we've got Not one, but two. Very special guest. Justine Orlovsky, Snitsler.

Snitsler, but you're right on top of it. Okay. And Casey Highsmith, co-editors of the forthcoming anthology, An American Girl, Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe. They've spent years untangling the American Girl Industrial Complex, from its nostalgic chokehold on millennials to its weird. moralistic origin story. So first of all, welcome Justine and Casey. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having us. So I would have started off with what is your

connection to the cult of American Girl and off the dome? What does that phrase even mean to you? Okay. And I would be remiss not to start by saying that my 2002 Molly doll was right here next to me. So I am a folklorist. I'm a writer. I went to a folklore conference in 2022. I wanted to talk about memes, an American girl, and the rise of the, we need an American girl doll, who insert phrase of your choice, did her own bikini wax, et cetera. But what I found when I got there is that a lot of people had a lot of stories about American girl. And this was great because it was a chance to go backwards into my own past. I had Molly.

I hadn't thought about her in a good window of time, but I started to think about her a lot more. You know, with the rise of Instagram accounts like Holicity Merriman. I was thrilled to get to think about this from an academic perspective, and I roped Casey into this long for the ride. And so I think Justine's discussion of the folklore conference, you open this conversation up and then afterwards, and I don't know if either of you've ever been to an academic conference, but they tend to have more comments than questions at the end, which is usually annoying. But at the end of this one, there were so many people standing up of various ages saying, I had this doll, I was Samantha, I was whatever. They were lore dropping at the folklore conference.

100%. It was amazing. And it's actually, we've seen that on our book tour, too. It's just been this great big gathering of restoring and lore sharing and things like that. But one of the phrases I think that our contributors kind of says most succinctly, she calls this generation, the Felicity Generation. And it's those of us who were so moved by this particular brand and all the things that encapsulated with the American Girl historical dolls that we've gone on to have careers as folklorists, scholars, historians, writers, and culture keepers of various types, largely traced back to kind of this first moment with American girl, good or bad. It's a personality thing too. We're like you feel like it's a sign to you. If you encounter this as a kid, we're like, I am a Molly girl, not by my own choice. My parents bought her for me and it has shaped the trajectory of my life very clearly because now I'm on this podcast. So. And here we are, evangelizing, self-reflecting, the way that you have to do and you survive a cult, you know. Casey, what was your doll?

So we like telling this story whenever we get asked to. We let Justine go first. She shows off Molly. And then I say, I couldn't get a doll when I was a kid. Like, I didn't get one. You know, womp, want, want, sad face. But I was fully immersed in the books. And we would go to the library and read, you know, if you look down the row of books in

the kids section, it was just like a whole dang shelf of them. And I was really obsessed with the cookbooks. The original historical doll did have cookbooks. and I would beg my mother to make these stupid historical recipes that really weren't that good. And now as a food scholar, as a grown-up, they were historically, horribly inaccurate. But I was obsessed with them and I would steal my mother's long, frilly 1990s nightgowns and pretend I was a Victorian child eating like lemon ice. Wait, that's cool. You can say it's cool, sure.

I love that. Oh, my God. A, like, core part of my YouTube algorithm is like people remaking historical recipes. recipes. It's a good space to be in. It is. American Girl was like almost an entry point into like caring about history if you were a girl. Yeah. There's also such a big overlap and I fall into this category. You were a Titanic girl. You could be a triangle shirtwaist factory fire girl. You had to pick your thing and then American Girl comes along and you're like, oh great, I can have all of them. And then some. They all have a sob story. Some worse than others, which is also something we talk about

in the book. Like, there are different backstories. And Chelsea, I mean, if you're an Addy person, right? Like, you've got these radically different backgrounds for these dolls. And like, yes, trauma comes in all forms. And RIP to Marta, sorry to Kirsten's friend who died of cholera, but, you know, Molly's story, not to throw her under the bus. She's like, her dad's away at war. She doesn't like turnips. Like, those are the major points. Meanwhile, Addy's like, I'm escaping slavery. Yeah, Addy's like walking herself to freedom. They're just not quite. at the same emotional tenor so oh my god i feel like an american girl doll of 2025 would just be like an 11-year-old girl whose trauma is like wasting her childhood away on tic-tok and just like repeating

the phrase ohio to herself yes that i can't just like skibbity skibbity skimity i have a nine-year-old and i think that that's a fairly accurate portrayal of what they would be doing right now and scary Yeah, it's very scary. Casey, that was my experience with American Girl as well. I never had a doll. I just had every single book obsessed to the point where in adulthood I was gifted the Addie Cookbook because I had every version of Addy and then I literally was trying to find where it is in my house right before this call.

But yes, I have the Addy Cookbook as well. There's so many ways that people like connected to them. There's so many ways that women and girls met the brand at different stages of their life. then at different access points in their life, which is a very heartening story. But, you know, they also sold $300 play sets to you online. Sure did, honey. Complex. And speaking of the many winding paths, let's get into the cult history play. The American Girl Doll series was born in 1986 out of the brain of educator and entrepreneur, Pleasant Rowland. After a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, left her inspired and mildly disappointed in the toy market.

Roland set out to create a line of historically accurate dolls that would, quote, teach girls history through empathy. Each doll came from a different era of American history and came bundled with a book series, matching outfits, and if your parents were rich enough, an entire bedroom set. From the beginning, the brand wasn't just selling toys, it was selling character development. Pleasant Roland grew up in the Midwest,

specifically, but not burn, Illinois, a small suburb north of Chicago. Even as a kid, she was known for being studious, creative, and unusually drawn to storytelling in history. She was raised in a fairly traditional household, but by her own account, she always felt like a bit of an outsider, bookish and imaginative. In interviews, she's described herself as, quote, the girl who always wanted to be a teacher. And it shows, She went on to major in English and went straight into elementary education. Long before dolls were in the picture, she was already obsessed with how to make learning feel alive. So Pleasant Rowland had this big aha moment at Colonial Williamsburg, which is basically historical

cosplay, the world's largest living history museum. Do you think that glossy feel-good version of history shaped how American girl tells its stories, and is there a risk in teaching kids' history through such a perfectly curated, soft focus lens? This is such a great question. And obviously the perfect place to start, it's very sweet, it's very endearing, pleasant, didn't like the selection of toys that were available to kids, particularly girls at the time. And actually, in several interviews, says directly, I did not want a Barbie doll for my nieces, right? Barbie is an adult woman. We can talk about her proportions at a different time. But an American girl doll, that's a child. It's meant to

represent a 9 to 12 year old. It's different. It's meant to be different. And of course, what happens 20 years on, sold to Mattel. But it's interesting the idea of how we teach history to kids, because I think what's magnificent and worth praising about the American Girl historical lineup, at least in the beginning, is that they put a lot of effort into connecting with historians, connecting with experts to try and make these stories real and real. And These stories that these girls are living were harsh. They weren't easy. They weren't all the same, right? They all didn't have the same kind of emotional tenor or kind of trauma or difficulties, but it was important for kids to know that life was not easy, you know, and at any of these critical points in history. That said, they're limited, right? They're dolls. And they're also trying to sell you something. You know, it's wonderful to tell a story about self-mancipation through Addy, but Addy needs to have an accessory kit. And what accessory kit can we create and market? that's going to be palatable and desirable for children. So I think that's the beginning point is, is the story she's telling accurate, for one, about herself and her intentions, but also

if that reflected in the way the company operates, because it's a company, right? At the end of the day, they want to sell you something. Well, I think one of the things that one of our authors gets so right, too, and she writes about indigenous American girls and how she grew up, there wasn't one. And she really asks the question, like, who gets to be an American girl? What does that mean. And, you know, not only who gets to hear these stories gets told these stories, but who are the different people being the characters. So I think soft focus is a perfect explanation for kind of the approach. I think, too, that the nature of having it be like, this is the X doll. It's limiting. They want to create a product that is going to sell in a box. Oh, my God, wait. Do you think

the origin or at least the reference of the phrase putting someone in a box literally has to with dolls? Or crayons. That's my other thought. Do you think it's either? I don't know if I'm right also, to be clear. Remember the creola crayon that was called macaroni and cheese? Do you think the macaroni and cheese color is like, do not limit me. I could be other foods too. I can come in all different shades. There are so many different kinds of cheeses that can be in macaroni cheese. When I was a kid, when I was interested in the doll, they didn't have a Jewish doll. And that's definitely the one that I would have wanted when I was seven or eight years old if that was an option. I had to wait. And again, by that point, I was in high school, and you're going to get one, right? We're going to have one

offering in the historical lineup that represents, you know, indigenous culture. And they did a lot of research. They worked with the tribe directly. They wanted to be culturally sensitive. And for a toy, I think they did a great job at the time with what they knew, but they still wanted it to sell. And you get one. And you got to be happy with it. Exactly. You have to be happy with it. And you have to hope that your parents can afford to buy you the doll. That represents you. I mean, I think this is really where the limits of social responsibility in combination with commercialism become really apparent.

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Oh, hi, buddy. Who's the best? You are. I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Ed? Uh, Dave, you're Huff mute. Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers.

Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. I do want to ask, you know, it's really interesting and I think important to re-contextualize the American Girl Empire. But some listeners may be unconvinced that this is cultish. So when we say the cult of American girl dolls, and we didn't come up with this idea. Like, we've been requested over the years to cover this. When we use that phrase either earnestly or cheekily, what behaviors or other phenomena spring to mind for each of you? So what comes to mind for me is not necessarily the historical dolls.

I genuinely think they were created with very earnest, sincere attempts at making space for young girls. and you can literally see a graph of an uptick in women in the humanities and academia and taking on historical roles and writers and all these things. You can see a graph that correlates with like the birth of American Girl doll brand. So I think that's really interesting. But you swiftly jump into this wormhole of paraphernalia. There was the mail order magazine, not the catalog, the magazine that you can subscribe to and be part of the American Girl Club.

It came with a hat. I don't know, Chelsea, if you ever did grin pins. Do you remember grin pins? So they were little pins, like little badges, right? Kind of like Girl Scouts. All of this, of course, you had to buy. There were Christmas ornaments. There were cookie cutter subscriptions. There was events you could join, not just, you know, birthday parties that someone organized, but full on branded events at Colonial Williamsburg, at Barnes and Nobles, at all these different spaces. And all of this really perpetuated the buying, buying, buying, become, become, become. And all of this really perpetuated the buying, buying, buying, become, become. And if you didn't have the right bits and pieces to join, you could probably still join, but you would definitely look out of place. Add that to the fact that, you know, there was only one African-American doll. There was only one Hispanic doll. And kind of that's it for a long time. So anyone else other had to fit themselves into these categories if they were also going to partake these events, if they could afford them. Okay. So that's where I think it gets worse. They're trying to take over your life, much like a missionary religion.

But also like a lot of missionary religions, there is not an equal place for everyone to fully immerse themselves in this world and belief system. Right. There's a lot of rebranding. Then they introduced dolls that you can make look like you. In skin tone, hair color over the last few years, they've gotten a lot more fun and flexible with this. Now you can have a doll that has purple hair if you want. You couldn't prior to that. Little stick on braces. They had curing aids for the first time. Like you could actually get a little. get in there and try to make a doll that looked more like you. Again, you got to pay for it. They also have an annual doll of the year. That's an interesting line of toys. They're annual. They're limited edition. They're one year only. And it wasn't until the COVID-19 pandemic that they actually had an Asian-American girl of the year. It's fascinating because that's some backstepping, right? That's them going, oh, we got to correct this. We got to correct this. What's on people's minds? oh, AAPI and anti-Asian racism. So let's go in there and correct that. And don't worry,

she's still $120. You know, you can finally have your girl of the year for one year only. Well, and I think we should give Pleasant a little moment of grace because not that she is absolved of everything, but the company did sell in 2000 to Mattel. So a lot of what Justine just talked about, the dolls that you can customize, the girls of year. That was all after the company was sold to Mattel. So we've got a whole different kind of overlord that's kind of manipulating all of this, and she's not in the picture anymore. So there's some interesting changes there as well. And I think one that is kind of where all of this discussion is leading to, too, is the nature

of collabs, because now American Girl does collabs, which the word itself is already, like, embedded in the cult world, right? And so brand collabs, swag collabs, there's things like the Jenny's ice cream truck that you can get for $300. And it's just the plastic truck on the website, which honestly, I really like, and I kind of won it. But it's $300. And then when we were finishing wrapping the book and sending it off to our publisher, the Barbie movie was coming out. And they had announced that they were doing their first ever Barbie doll American Girl collab.

Wait, why do I hate that? Yeah. No, yeah, you should. They should not meet. Barbie is going to be a bad influence on American Girl. She's like the terrible big sister. that does really bad things. She's like giving American girl cigarettes and bodice. For sure. For sure. Like the visual on it was very odd. When the doll came out, you could only pre-order her. And it was an absurd price. I mean, she had like Swarovsky crystals on the little. It was the iconic black and white bathing suit that the first Barbie came in and the ponytail. But on the body of an American girl doll. So, you know, Barbie has breasts and hips. And her proportions are, again, absurd. But they just kind of transported that onto a little. an American Girl doll body. You know, American Girl Dolls have those little flat feet, but this

doll was the first one that they ever made that could not stand under her own weight. And I think there is some heavy symbolism there. Whoa. Oh my gosh. She sold out on pre-order and again, they're coming off of the hype of the Barbie movie. And it went so well, they just did another Barbie collab. They just released a Peaches and Cream American Girl Barbie collaboration. So whatever the outfits were that the Peaches and Cream Barbies were wearing, you can now put on your American Girl doll. And they have been releasing collaborations at a frenetic clip. There just feels like there's always something. They just announced a clueless outfit. The outfits are $80. I'm kind of loving that though. They look really good, but like that is almost the cost of a new

doll. Oh my God. With every culty collab, they reach like a new segment of the population to rope into this call. Absolutely. It was really hard not to spend my advance on this book on random. collab accessories. Oh my God. It's like an MLM. You're just reinvesting in the Lula Row leggings. Exactly. And then I had to stop myself. Justine was the one who kept trying to drag me to the American Girl store, so I blame it on Justine. I just said if you got a doll now, no one would blame you. You've done the book. It's okay. But it's your money. It's your money. My sweet Angelic Culties Fall is here. And you know what that means? hearty grain bowls, warm autumnal sustenance, thanks to HelloFresh, bringing you comforting

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One battle after another. Only in theater, September 26th. Experienced in IMAX. Okay. So you two are consenting adults. You have like the prefrontal cortex development to be able to make those decisions. But something about this cult and certain others that we've discussed on the podcast before that sort of scoches it closer to the watcher back end of the spectrum is the fact that it's aimed at kids. And we want to talk a little bit about that. So from the jump, the American Girl franchise blurred the line between education for kids and identity in a way that, as we've already mentioned, was beautifully immersive, but also deeply cultish. Each doll wasn't just a toy. She was a fully fleshed out historical avatar, complete with her own trauma, moral arc, and meticulously curated wardrobe. This is what cultural critic Sky Mall O'Brien calls, quote, intimate

pedagogy, a coined ideology meaning using intimacy and vulnerability as key components of learning about difficult knowledge and producing action. So when you read about Kit's struggle during the Great Depression or Josephina's life on a New Mexican ranch in 1824, you weren't just absorbing historical facts. You were empathizing and feeling them in your bones, which as a kid can feel more intense. Like sometimes I think about, I mean, sometimes, L.O.L. Once a day, I think about the documentary Jesus Camp, has anyone seen? Where like these kids in the early 2000, are being radicalized by a charismatic Christian Pentecostal summer camp and taught about

the alleged evils of abortion and brought to the Capitol to protest. And they are like freaking out with like tape on their mouths saying no more and their hands in the air and they're crying. And just like these somewhat intense historical stories, I think are really playing on kids' emotions in a way that could cause them to further commit to this franchise. And And this wasn't just an experience that you were having alone in your room because then there was the IRL pilgrimage American Girl Place. A relocation, IRL, whether in Chicago, L.A. or New York, a visit to this store, this American Girl store, was less a shopping trip and more a spiritual initiation. You dressed up. You brought your doll. You booked a reservation at the cafe. You might

even check your doll into the hospital. This ritual of in-person devotion reinforced the brand's deeper message. Your relationship with your doll was sacred. But behind the innocent facade of tea parties and hair salons lurked a slightly more complicated truth. American girl was inviting kids to internalize sanitized versions of historical trauma. Addy, Chelsea's girl, and the company's only black historical character for decades, was introduced as an enslaved child escaping to freedom. And while her story was groundbreaking in many ways, critics have pointed out how it flattened and even sentimentalized the horrors of slavery to make it digestible for a white suburban audience mostly. So in an interview with former American girl author Valerie Tripp, any fans?

Any fans? She reflected on the emotional intensity built into the books. She said, we didn't want to shy away from real problems, but we always frame them with a sense of hope and individual agency. That's what made the stories so powerful. powerful and easy to get attached to. So a question for the group, given all that we know about the methodology that went into this world, in your opinion, is it ethical, manipulative, or a bit of both to use historical trauma as a bonding mechanism for children? And how do we think that might mirror more serious cult indoctrination? These are such good questions. They are. I want to give

like one point of context for the historical dolls is that there's the historical part of it all, and then there is the full-blown consumeristic American Girl place that you could take your historical doll to, but the space itself was not steeped in historical anything. But in the historical books and including the cookbooks, and I think the cookbooks more so than the regular book, if you flip to the back, it did give you some additional historical context that I think simultaneously filled knowledge gaps, you know, checked curriculum boxes, I'm sure, too. Then you can go about your day and be a normal little nine-year-old person in the 90s or early odds that now knows these horrific details. So, you know, you know them, but you don't necessarily feel as stuck

in them after reading. But that was if you read it all the way through, too. I'm sure that's not the norm. I'm sure plenty of people just read a horrific passage and then, you know, went to school. I think like kids have an appetite for tragedy. I couldn't get enough Titanic, the gory details, you know, kids want that. It's not always good, right? It's not always great for them to encounter it, especially, like, devoid of context. And kids also experience tragedy. One thing that I think is different is there's a conclusion. And especially when you're looking at the historical line, you can safely move through the story and then say, that's over. So I think where American girl has struggled is as they've tried to pull it into the present, right? They're trying to find

resolutions for issues that are not resolved. You know, how do you come to the natural endpoint? Even if you're talking about anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, I don't have a satisfactory conclusion and a way to summarize that up for kids and to move forward and move on. You look back at these stories like Kirsten's dealing with cholera on the prairie and we don't deal with cholera anymore. They're not taking that extra step to say like kids around the world still deal with this. They're just maybe not dealing with it right now and right here. So how do you resolve it in a satisfactory manner? I think if there's anything that American Girl can be kind of blamed for, but at the same time, the title of the brand is American girl,

is that they really lifted up American exceptionalism in a lot of the different ways that they've told stories about who gets to count as American, but then they aren't addressing the fact that cholera is a real disease at the time of all of these dolls. And still now, even you, young nine-year-old in the 90s, just in other countries, you know, and the fact that kids have access to way more content and things that we never had growing up. And I will also say that kids do really like trauma and tragedy reading. There's several other series. There's a series that my nine-year-old is obsessed with that's called I Survived. They are an anxious little hot mess of a child. I love them so much. And they read these books with their friends and they all talk about

I survived the Triangle Shirt Waste Fire. I survived Titanic. I survived 9-11. And I just am like, why? Why do you read this? And it's evidently, it's a hallmark of preteeness. There is not but a 9-11 doll. That is a lightning rod that they have not touched. I demand answers from American Girl as to why we have not faced this. I need that. I need that. I need it. Chelsea, do you detect any cult parallels?

Yes. Regarding like the conversation that we're having currently. I think one of the cultiest things about the franchise, at least from my childhood perspective, is that the only black historical doll available was Addie and the character's entire storyline was rooted in slavery. And that's it. And it took decades for American girl to finally tell other black stories of like joy, creativity, community. But like Melody and Cecil, I think they came around in like 2011.

And I think that that kind of narrow representation is not just lazy. It's cultish because it reflects a homogenous group think where only stories black characters are allowed to tell our real. rooted in trauma and racial struggle and it reinforces like a belief system that black history equals pain and anything outside of that is somehow historically inaccurate and I don't think that's a representation. It's like doctrine. Yeah, I think it ultimately does reinforce a kind of sense of hierarchy within the franchise, especially since it's like supposed to be representing history or real life on some level that can feel a little sinister. And when I think

about truly destructive cults from history, a lot of them have sort of manipulated or misrepresented historical events in order to achieve the leader's ultimate aims, which, I mean, the ultimate aim of American girl is to make money. It is a company at the end of the day. And so that is going to be the bottom line. It's not really to like educate and bring joy to kids. It's not a nonprofit. It's a business. And a lot of cults had profit-driven, power-driven aims too. Like Jim Jones, the leader of the People's Temple, aka Jonestown, manipulated a lot of

historical events and particularly black stories in order to have cultish control over black followers. I do think that a manipulation of history is an interesting technique and is culty in ways that we might not notice at first blush. Yeah. And they also, there's an element of it that's like American soft power. I think this is an interesting way to think about it, like not just in selling a certain kind of patriotism in these stories and these histories. But there's also the way that they're benefiting from the nostalgia of certain generations

in ways that they can't publicly engage with. The example I'm thinking of is that there's a really wild and wonderful New York Times article a few years ago called Dolls and Drinks for Likes and Clicks. And it was following TikTok influencers and creators who were getting slashed at the American Girl Doll Cafe. So these are adults going, filming themselves. They don't have children with them either. They don't have children.

This isn't like they're, yeah, they're not bringing in kids. Oh, so it's like Disney adults. Exactly. But going and doing it, filming themselves. And, you know, that was kind of its own fad on TikTok. But I think more broadly speaking, that drives engagement with the brand. Even if you're watching it like I was, I'm like, oh my God, and I'm sending it to every person I knew. They can't publicly like the post.

They can't think about drinking. They're a company aimed at children, but they're benefiting from it financially. That's in the zeitgeist. It's still in conversation. I also think a lot about the phrase American Girl doll teeth. This is, you know, something you may have encountered out there in the world. So I'll hold her up for the benefit of you, Amanda. It's a bit of a jump scare when she enters the frame.

I can't lie. I swear it's only happened like twice But yeah, we have a zoom in on the book there, Casey. So they have these kind of famously little gapy, light tea, like a little beaver. They all have them. Except Kaya. Right.

Okay. So here's a little aside. Part of the research that they did, I think that was very positive, the Nespiers Nimapu people, which Kaya, the indigenous dolls meant to belong to, historically did not show their teeth when they smiled. It was seen as a sign of aggression in their culture. So Kaya is the only doll with her mouth closed. Oh, that's dope.

Different facial mold. But all the other ones have the little teeth, right? You can see them. And there have been so many moments over the last few years where, you know, a celebrity is doing an apology or I think even quite recently there was a photo of Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jose that went around where someone was like, why is he doing American Girl doll teeth? What's going on here?

He's got them. He's catching him at a bad moment. They can't comment on it, but they're benefiting from it. You have huge swaths of millennials who grew up with these dolls and now have disposable income to either spend it on their own kids. or on themselves if they don't have children or both. What you're saying is reminding me that nostalgia is another totally underrated cult recruitment tactic. That's why like the cult of tradwives is so popular now or even like a micro trend like cottage core or something really destructive like the fundamentalist Latterday Saints on their commune.

You know, it's like there's this idea of a time in history where everything was simple, you know, before. or iPhones, and I think American Girl is probably really capitalizing on that craving for nostalgia right now among adults. Yeah, it's capitalizing on actual historical moments that we all kind of have an idea of that what we didn't experience, but also for so many millennials, our childhoods that were pre-cell phone, pre-internet, and just very different worlds, there's like multiple layers to the nostalgia. I did find it a bit weird, though, as I was prepping for this particular episode. I went to TikTok to just see where American girl doll lives in the ether. I did find it a bit strange that is not really millennials as collectors. It's a lot of the latter half of Gen Z.

And I'm like, this is not your world. Like a lot of them are getting like high school gifted American girl dolls. And I'm like, how does this even relate to you? It's so strange because apparently the official focus of the company has shifted earlier, right? So who they're actually targeting is not just nine to 12 year olds. Six to eight is, I think, what the official target is now. I was talking to somebody the other day, and I was explaining this to them, and they kind of came to the same conclusion that, oh, this sounds like a cult, which is a good endorsement for this episode. And they said it sounds a lot like Taylor Swift. You've got parents. You have moms who grew up with it. You could have had a doll later in your teenage years with the original dolls. And then now

have a Gen Z teenager who is also interested in it because you've shared this with them. Again, I guess this example of Taylor Swift makes sense. You've got mothers and daughters and generations going to these concerts. So you have this really interesting overlap of the Felicity Generation, how that influenced your career. But it also influenced so many things and maybe how you went about your life and your consumer habits going forward too. Totally. And speaking of consumer habits, that's a great segue. to our next portion because let's be real. American girl dolls were never just dolls. They were status symbols. The historical dolls retailed for around $80 to $100 in the 90s and in the early

2000s, before tax, of course. And that didn't include the extra outfits, matching books, furniture, or the absurdly detailed miniatures like a $68 butter churn or a $150 canopy bed. full set could easily run into the thousands. For many girls owning one doll was a privilege, owning multiple. That was a full-blown flex. The brand's pricing structure made it clear. This was aspirational nostalgia, not mass accessibility. As journalist Alana Samuels wrote in the Atlantic, quote, there was a caste system in elementary school cafeterias, and it often came down to who had what American girl accessories at home. end quote. If you didn't have the $90, Samantha, Christmas dress, and the matching muff,

you felt left out of the historical girl boss club. And then there are the adult collectors. Scholar Emily Zaslow suggests in playing with America's doll, a cultural analysis of the American Girl Collection, that adult collectors may be engaging in a kind of identity maintenance through their dolls, preserving not just the toys, but their original relationship to them as markers of safety, control, and nostalgia. So my question to you is, in your research, how did the brand's pricing structure contribute to a sense of hierarchy within the cult of girlhood? This is so good. I will briefly give an anecdote for my own experience. I had and have one doll. She was not given to me to be taken outside. She cost a lot of money. She was not just a toy in that sense. It was a decorative object. And I know that I'm not alone in that experience, but as you said, I also went to elementary school with girls who had seven or eight dolls and got to take them outside and drag them through the mud, which that to me was true wealth if you were allowed to take that doll outside and mess her up a little bit. There was definitely a hierarchy of if you had the actual accessories that came from American Girl or not, because I had the doll. I don't want to dismiss that privilege at all. but I didn't have any of this stuff that was branded to go with Molly.

That said, I mean, it is fascinating, the in and the out. I know that there was a program. Some libraries did this for a little bit where you could rent the doll and have it, you know, take it home with the book, right? But obviously, in the cruel and miserable way that kids can be, they're very perceptive of who's got the library doll, who doesn't. You know, one of the things that I always giggle when I think about it is this subscription magazine that you could get teaching you,

how to make miniature accessories for your doll, which I thought was like, well, why would you do that? You still had to pay to get access to the magazine in order to learn how to make like a subpar version of Samantha's tea cakes for your doll. So there's still like layers of opting in, of pay to play and pay to work kind of thing that honestly set the scene for I think all of our lives growing up and knowing that we'd have to pay something to kind of opt in to culture and society. Oh my God. It's genuinely like if I really think about it, it, the cost of owning an American girl on everything else that you might choose to go with it or afford to go with it was one of my earliest memories of like class division. I swear to God.

I distinctly remember being invited to this girl's birthday party and being there and feeling so out of place, not having the right clothes and like all these layers of just like other and not quite right. And I remember my mom being very mad and being like, you know just as much. much history as these other girls. So, you know, it even doubt, okay. I think what's also really funny about writing about the various accessories and what are effectively toys, right? These are all toys we're talking about. I love that we call them accessories and things like that. They're toys. Pleasant really wanted them to be heir limbs. But you know what? I was a kid. My parents would have said, why would we spend $400 on an accessory that's actually extremely limited in its use and its purpose, right?

It's literally a little branded version of this train car. I would have used a cardboard box. And been happy with it. And been happy with it, exactly. Okay, that brings us to the next thing that we wanted to talk about before we get to our game, which is the rebrand of it all, specifically with regard to attempting to make the brand more inclusive since it came under Mattel's ownership, as we've discussed now, there are like American girl dolls who are like girlies in STEM.

And there's a generation of dolls where there's Gabriella, who's a black poet and dancer, and there's Luciana, who's a Chilean-American aspiring astronaut. And things are moving, but any former cult member or cult media scholar will tell you that aesthetic change doesn't always mean structural change. And there have been many critiques of that endeavor and like the ways in which they've tried to do that because the brand still really centers a white neoliberal model of girlhood, one where empowerment is tied to individual achievement, brand loyalty, and of course, the $98 accessory sets. So I wanted to ask you all in cultish movements, we often see rebranding as a way to maintain loyalty while sidestepping real critique. So do you see American girls' diversity push as genuine evolution or a camouflaged cult rebrand?

You know, I think there's elements of it that can go in both directions, which is a little bit of a cop-out, but I can explain, you know, we've said this a bunch. It bears repeating. They're a brand. They want to create dolls and characters that are going to sell. You know, if they don't think that there's an audience for it, that's going to influence what they come out with. I think it is notable, though, that the way that they've really expanded in trying to have, again, more diverse stories or different characters is these girls of the year that they only last one year. So there's a, Little risk to the company in that respect to roll out some character, but they get to go away at the end of the year. And if their sales weren't so good, they get the points for trying, but that's not public knowledge. And then they're retired because they're supposed to be, you know, actually adding a diverse and interesting new character to the historical lineup. That's way harder to get accomplished. So I think they figured out within their own structure of the way the company works, how they can like test the waters and then not face too many repercussions, financial or otherwise. I think that we, so often, and rightly so, talk about the dolls themselves, and they are the most expensive

portion of kind of the American Girl universe. But they have a huge publication arm that has been here from the very beginning, obviously. We talked about the historical books, but they have so many other books. The Care and Keeping of You is an American Girl book. But I think that those books really have allowed the brand to talk about these things. Like, I have copies of that for my kids, like because they've updated language and they're trans-inclusive. They talk about different bodies in very positive ways, health at every size, like they've really gone in the right direction with those, and they've worked with board certified medical professionals to really like inform those texts to the right degree for that age group. They've also split it into

various, they have a book for the younger girls, a book for the older girls, and they have a book for boys. Hopefully they'll smash it all together one day and it'll all be awash, but they are like making steps towards updating those materials. And I don't know if it gets them points at all, because it's really just like bare minimum, the lowest bar of what they should be doing. But it at least kind of gets at some of these DEI issues that the dolls are not going to address in a lot of ways. I don't know about you, Chelsea, but my just sort of like outsider impression of this whole world is that no matter what contemporary steps they take, it is so obvious to me that

their ultimate goal is to just like take over the life and identity of children. And I don't even think that's necessarily totally bad because we have to triangulate an identity somehow growing up. And like this isn't the worst way to do that. And we'll get to our verdict. But I played with toys as a kid and I never cared about anything as much as kids seem to care about American Girl. And that can't be an accident. I will say that there's far too much merch now to angle at adult consumers, which I can't. easily see younger consumers also having, when they reissued the historical dolls, they also

came out with like a Tumblr, like a Stanley Cup style thing with the Molly print. I think Justine actually has one of these. I was gifted that. And I open myself up to that because we did this book, to be fair. She's like, I didn't buy it. I didn't buy it. But there is this like this answer to what I think that, and this does not absolve American Girl or Mattel at all. I just think they also see that other places are doing this. There is this cult of having and being part of and being able to demonstrate, like, and be in the no, because it doesn't say Molly on the thing. It's Molly's fabric pattern. And you have to know that that's Molly's fabric pattern. And they have one for Samantha and they have the original six. And so there's this thing where you can have a

Tumblr that has your secret girl identity on it. And other girls will know. The way that this has taken over culture, I wanted to get like a little school girl outfit for a recent live show that I was doing and so I bought something from Dolls Kill that was labeled like nerdy girl whatever and then all these people who came to the show were like oh my god I love that you dressed up as like slutty Molly from the American universe and I was like holy shit that is what that was I was like ha ha yeah I totally meant to do that but it was an absolute accident I know that there's copious American girl fan fiction on A-O-3. Oh, I'm sure.

From what I understand, it was to put yourself, put your identity, like a representation, right? Like, it was to show that other cultures, other types of girls could be represented, but it's A-O-3. It got horny really fast. Okay. I think we have explored the many things. bounds of this topic, and it is high time for us to get to a game. Uh-huh. So we're going to compare the cult of American Girl Dolls with other cult-like consumer

bases and fandoms we've covered in the past on this show, and you'll give your opinion on Witch's Cultier. Okay. So first things first. American Girl Dolls or Horse Girls. Horse Girls. I mean, they're the same thing. That's a cop-out, but also.

Correct. Felicity is a horse girl. Like, it's canon. Yeah. So, that's right. Okay. American girl dolls are Swifties. Oh, this is tough Swifties.

Swifties? I definitely think it's Swifties. There's way more money there. Yeah, there is more money there. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that sometimes if you have a chip on your shoulder and you have less, it actually gets cold here. But I know what you're saying.

The Swifties, it can get a little more hostile. I just don't see like Barbie. fans and American Girl fans fighting, but I've seen Taylor Swift fans and other musical fans fighting, so that's where I bring. There you go. Yeah, there you go. Us, Beyonce's. Okay, so American Girl Dolls or

Stanley Cups. American Girl. American Girl. American Girl. Stanley Cups a flash in the pan. Who even has those anymore, right? My dad's so mad that everyone else has them now. American Girl or homeschool kids. Oh, homeschool kids. But also, again, some of them were the same.

Oh, yeah. There's There's overlap in all of these. Home school, I think, is older. So I would say homeschool. I agree. Yeah, that wins. American Girl Dolls or Trad Wives. Trad Wives.

I'm going to my gut here, Casey. Yeah, Trad Wives. Got to jump on it. American Girl Dolls or Love Island. I know so little about Love Island, too. But I think it's going to be American Girl Doll. I don't know if there's enough accessories for Love Island. Yeah, right.

And then finally, American Girl Dolls or Disney Adults. Disney Adults. No contest. No. Amazing. Okay. We've come to our final segment. Have to ask.

Out of our three cult categories. Live your life. Watch your back. And get the fuck out. Which does the cult of American Girls? Dolls fall into. Live your life. Without a doubt, live your life.

If you want to collect the dolls, especially like millennials, like we discussed in the episode, we're just looking for any sense of like nostalgia and safeness. Just let people do what they want to do. That's how I feel. Yeah, I would have to agree. I just think when you ponder the worst case scenario of this cult, it's still fairly innocuous. So even though we've somehow talked for an hour about American girl dolls and could have gone on and on and on and it's a whole world and it takes over people's lives and there's problematic stuff, et cetera. At the end of the day, we grade our cults on a curve and compared to even Sephora consumers, it just seems kind of fine.

Well, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty. But not too, culty. Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the pod cabin. This episode was hosted by Amanda Montel and Chelsea Charles. This episode was produced by Chelsea Charles.

Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it. if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, notes on modern irrationality, and word slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. Thanks as well to our network studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram

for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult pod, or support us on Patreon, to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult.