Kate Zambreno

Her pretty little head snaps back as the brush tugs through her raven locks. Her tangles get spritzed, smoothed into a tight half-ponytail, and fastened with a pink bow. The hair stylist glances at the sheet next to her. "Samantha," it reads. Wearing "ski trip outfit."

"Okay, Samantha, all done," the stylist singsongs, peeling off the bib and helping her off the miniature chair. Samantha doesn't have much to say today, all serene gaze and buck-toothed docility. Her expression is permanently pleased.

That's because Samantha is made out of eighteen inches of soft plastic. Samantha is an American Girl Doll, one of the numerous such dolls getting their hairs braided, upswept and ponytailed atop a counter-sized salon at American Girl Place. At this deluxe doll triplex on Chicago Avenue, I'm the only one who appears horrified at this extended care for collectibles, much like Alice at the tea party. Except this is a tea party populated entirely by Alices, sipping air from their china cups, sweet expressions on china faces, a strange land where dolls come to life and consumer mania is given giddy free reign.

It started innocently enough, how I came to get trapped on the other side of the looking glass. I had never been inside the downtown doll emporium, launched in 1998 as an entertainment complex and mecca for devotees of the mail-order catalog founded by Wisconsin schoolteacher Pleasant Rowland, and until the phenomenon hit Manhattan last month, the only location anywhere. I was too old for the catalog craze that has now dwarfed the Cabbage Patch Fever of the early eighties. I vaguely knew that American Girl Dolls, the $80 anti-Barbies for over eight-year-old girly girls, were based on characters your own age from American history and that you could choose your doll to look like you. You could dress up exactly like your doll. But I had no conception of the phenomenon, the madness, the way of life, involved in living la vida American Girl.

Early morning the day after Thanksgiving and the holiday shopping tsunami is soon to hit the Mag Mile downtown. No lines have formed yet outside of the swanky three-tiered structure, a vision of luxury in keeping with nearby Michigan Avenue real estate, the red carpet soon to be stamped upon by generations of girls clasping red and white bags. From the beginning the experience is one of the royal treatment. A doorman nods me inside. At the front desk, a concierge checks in guests, smile already fixed on her face. The mostly older, mostly female employees, well-dressed mostly in black, wait poised in their positions for the impending orderly chaos. Music floods through the store, a manic jewelry-box melody that you can imagine the dolls twirling on pedestals to at night when the humans are away. Or perhaps that's just what I remember. Maybe there was no music at all.

Mothers and daughters file in, clutching dolly dearest by the hand. There are grandmothers, too. The girls with their dolls multiply and begin to fill the room. The murmuring is of divide and conquer, conquest and purchase. The level of excitement approaches that of finally completing one's pilgrimage to a paradise whispered about under pillows at night. Already I feel stuck in a tween dream and unsure where to step next. So I follow the forward motion upstairs and press level two on the golden elevator.

Little girls might be made of sugar and spice and everything nice. But, here, mommies are made of money. The two-syllable child's call builds to a collective fever pitch in the mezzanine. Mommy! I want this! Mommy, look! Saucer eyes scream want, need, give me. Many girls have hoarded away their allowances for this trip, and they eye all possible purchases.

They shriek whenever they happen upon an old friend. Dolls are not "what" at American Girl Place, they're "who." Look, it's Molly! It's Kit! It's Kaya! Clusters stop in front of the "Peek into the Past" displays, American Girl dolls glass-enclosed inside life-sized rooms. "Look, you can buy the whole room!" one little girl, a future interior decorator, squeaks. There are windows for each of the main historic figures from the collection--Native American Kaya chilling in her teepee, Victorian Samantha playing by her Christmas tree, Depression-era Kit, pioneer girl Kirsten, nineteenth century New Mexican Josefina, slave girl Addy, World War II Molly.

The window displays also peddle nostalgia. This trip is a time for grandmothers to reminisce with granddaughters about the old days of yore and innocence their grandmothers told them about, when things were slower, when girls could be girls and didn't show their bellybutton. "I had ornaments like this," I overhear. "Oh, look it's Kirsten's doll!" someone pipes up. I look at blonde Kirsten with her looped braids, playing with a blonde rag doll with the exact same looped braids. A sweaty chill slips over me. Entranced, I scan all of the windows. All of the American Girl Dolls have dolls as doubles. Even Nez Perce Kaya has a moccasined doll. And they also have animals as companions, doggies and kitties and horseys. And, in some cases, their dolls have dolls. The dolls have dolls with dolls.

I stumble along the floor, past the souvenir shop selling tiny tiny T-shirts near the theater where they put on the American Girl Revue, a musical that features a slumber party with the historical characters. Oil paintings of illustrations from the book hang in the lobby. Bespectacled Molly cheerfully places her hand on her heart. "Molly loves singing songs at camp!" chirps the caption. I feel nauseous.

Pushing back against families slowly filling up the main shopping area, I grow increasingly claustrophobic and sink into one of the plushy chairs where the stray men also cower, shopping bags in laps. I watch eager faces. Faces and faces and faces. One comes close, blinks at me, smiling flirtatiously, long curly tendrils framing an angelic face. There are pedestals where you can buy laid-out rooms for each American Girl Doll. Then you go downstairs to collect the merchandise with the tickets. Girls tear off the tickets at eight-year-old eye level for the clothes that accompany each storybook. There are the minutest accessories for each doll, each scene.

Everyone has her doll, holding, cradling, clutching. Three girls with apple cheeks and identical ice-skater buns rigidly pose, smiling a wide smile in front of a display of all the dolls, also smiling the same calm Stepford toddler smiles. A black girl clutches her porcelain-skinned Samantha doll. A closer examination of a baby stroller reveals a doll tucked beneath the blanket. An immaculately dressed girl clutches twin baby dolls. A blonde snub-nosed mother with a pageboy cut lifts up her cherub with identical pageboy cut, to meet eye to eye with Kit, sporting the same blonde pageboy cut. The girl strokes Kit's red dress, her hair, her hands.

I shudder with terror. The room overwhelms me. Cameras flash, eager fingers point. I am surrounded by dolls. I am lost in a stormy sea of Jon Benet Ramseys. Alienated in this beauty-pageant world, where mothers treat their daughters like dolls and daughters treat their dolls like daughters. Where girls can actually be mommies.

"She's Kayla," I overhear a mother say to her daughter of the new limited edition California American Girl.

"I want to call mine Skylar!" she whines.

"You can call her anything you'd like."

The dolls are the perfect wholesome little girls who will never grow up, trapped in a yesteryear that never occurred. American Girls Dolls are Pinocchios for girls. They are real girls, who are also perfectly pretty, the popular girls. Who's dressing whom? The dolls are projections of themselves; this is the paragon of a narcissistic motherhood. These girls will grow up to be vain little girls who will spend hours in front of a mirror, porcelain babies, infantilized women, precious dolls who keep careful watch of the gaze. And they will treat their daughters like dolls. This is frickin' nuts.

A nymphet in an American Girl sweatshirt and Mary Janes spreads her wares out on one of the couches. She has already cashed in her tickets and carefully examines the box almost half her size holding her newly purchased best friend. Flushed yet triumphant, she counts her purple and blue polka-dotted boxes, easily holding $600 of recently acquired doll furniture, clothes and accessories. Two sisters dress their dolls in the sparkly blue outfits on special sale. I stand up and am swept away again, upstairs on the elevator to the third floor. The families with young children stare curiously at this lone woman fearfully clutching the rails. Somebody's aunt, perhaps, they wonder. What's she doing here? Where are her children?

I step out to the "Dress Like Your Doll" store, where the exact replica of the numerous outfits these clotheshorse dolls wear are for sale. I am trailed by two meek sisters in the historical wear, a Molly lookalike with identical tortoise-shell glasses and black velvet dress, and her younger Kirsten in a red velvet dress and white stockings. They cradle the dolls in front of themselves.

"Isn't that adorable," a group of mothers breathe about the new limited edition holiday wear, a red velvet dress, white fur-trim coat and tiara and pearls. Next to it a sequined Las Vegas-style dress hangs. There's more modern wear hanging on this floor. The outfits are trendy yet remain innocent, a green wool miniskirt, purple sparkled shirt, with sweater tied with a bow sash, purple tights. The store is flanked by blown-up images of American girls playing with American Girls with exuberant catchphrases.

Talented! Athletic! Smart! Spunky!

I glance into the café, a tearoom facing Chicago Avenue where reservations are necessary. I spot a longhaired blonde doll gaping at me, sitting on her miniature seat next to her owner, slightly leaning over, about to fall into her glass of orange juice she hasn't touched.

The store swarms with dolls. Signs point to more doll displays, for babies and toddlers and many more American Girl prototypes. I make my way through a room and I am attacked by rows of faces. Rows and rows of faces. Rows and rows of faces. Faces.

There are at least thirty American Girl Dolls, all wearing the same outfit, that green skirt, purple shirt and sweater set, lined up like a cherubic cult choir, all differing in skin and eye color and hair type, with a sign pinned to their sweater, GT 8F or GT 19F. Brunette, redhead, textured hair, slightly thick nose, shiny bangs, pick your girl, make your own girl. They stare back, bloodless faces, slightly parted lips, dead eyes. The effect is Frankensteinian. Replaceable parts. If they break, little girls can admit them to an infirmary at the Wisconsin corporate headquarters, where their head or limbs can be replaced, and then returned with a hospital smock. (Wheelchair's an extra $30.)

I push past the salon, past more books, more accessories, more dolls. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Someone I don't recognize looks back in terror. I need to get out. I somehow escape downstairs. I stare down at a four-foot girl carrying a shopping bag, her new doll laying on her back in a box, eyelids fluttering to the beat of her new mommy's steps. My heart beating rapidly, I push through the lines, past the glazed eyes, and escape into the cold, crisp air. I have survived inside the dollhouse for just under an hour.

But outside I still see them everywhere, swinging their trademark red and white bags, going in, coming out, the same eyes, same hair, same satiated expressions. The mother with her dolly. The daughter with her dolly. The dolly with her dolly. The dollars.

(2003-12-02)

Also by Kate Zambreno

Give up!
In its most cynical form, the holiday retail Olympics can be reduced to a giant game of "If you show me yours, I'll show you mine."
(2003-11-26)

Tip of the Week
A three-dimensional ballerina projected onto a fourteen-foot screen begins 2002's "Amelia," choreographed by Montreal virtuoso Édouard Lock...
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Tip of the Week
A pioneer of modern dance who danced solo for Martha Graham and famously collaborated with fellow modern master John Cage, Merce Cunningham's the legendary choreographer who used chance techniques including coin tosses and computers to determine sequences of movement and whose dancers learn a work in silence
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Tip of the Week
This year, two programs in the Chicago Humanities Festival stand out as tributes to two modern masters who were also two of the greatest mama's boys of all time
(2003-11-05)

Red Scare
(2003-11-05)

Fun with plastic
(2003-10-29)

Rainbo blue
(2003-10-16)

Window shopper
(2003-10-16)

Rodan
(2003-10-16)

Dr. Laura
(2003-10-02)

Tip of the Week
(2003-10-01)

Tip of the Week
(2003-09-17)

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