← Sounds Like A Cult
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- [00:00]
Amanda Montell
Culties wait are you listening i have to tell you something very important a project that i have been working on for over a year is now finally out it is a crash course lecture any fans of crash course out there it is the incredible empire founded by science communicator extraordinaires john and hank green and i got to work for over a year on scripting and filming a fifty minute long crash course lecture on cult language after all this time and keeping the secret to myself the lecture is finally out now on youtube on the crash course channel so as soon as you're finished listening to this episode please go check it out i am super proud of it and was honored to be involved with such an iconic series again that is john and hank green's crash course a lecture on cult language go check it out but first onto this week's episode i care deeply about giving my cats a luxurious life experience and their litter box is no exception and that is why i am here to tell you about pretty litter pretty litter is a very special little product that actually helps you monitor your cat's health to testing acidity and alkaline levels and even the presence of blood in your cat's urine i am freaking obsessed with my pretty litter and i really think you should check it out right now save twenty on your first order and get a free cat toy at prettylitter dot com cult that's prettylitter dot com cults to save twenty percent on your first order and get a free cat toy pretty litter dot com cult pretty litter cannot detect every feline health issue or prevent or diagnose diseases a diagnosis can only come from a licensed veterinarian terms and conditions apply if.
- [01:36]
Casey Highsmith
You thought goldenly breaded mcdonald's chicken couldn't.
- [01:40]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Get more golden think colder because new.
- [01:43]
Amanda Montell
Sweet and smoky special edition gold sauce is here made for your chicken favorites.
- [01:49]
Casey Highsmith
At participating mcdonald's for a limited time.
- [01:51]
Amanda Montell
Fall is here and you know what that means soup hearty 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 dot com slack ten fm now to get ten 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 dot com sl a c ten fm to get ten 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.
- [02:43]
Casey Highsmith
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.
- [02:57]
Chelsea Charles
Kind of narrow representation is cultish because it reflects a homogenous group think think where only stories black characters are allowed to tell are rooted in trauma when.
- [03:11]
Amanda Montell
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.
- [03:23]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
That drives engagement with the brand this.
- [03:27]
Amanda Montell
Is sounds like a cult a show about the modern day cults which we all follow i'm your host amanda montel and i'm the author of the book the language of fanaticism and i'm your.
- [03:37]
Chelsea Charles
Co host chelsea charles an unscripted tv producer and a lifelong student of pop.
- [03:43]
Amanda Montell
Culture sociology every week on the show we discuss a different zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture from sleepaway camp all the way to incels to try and answer the big question this.
- [03:56]
Chelsea Charles
Group sounds like a cult but is it really.
- [04:06]
Amanda Montell
And if so which of our three cult categories does it fall into a live youe 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's 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 in 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 twenty twenty five in places you might.
- [05:16]
Chelsea Charles
Not think to look like an empire built on bedtime stories historical trauma braided hairlines and the promise of character development 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.
- [06:04]
Amanda Montell
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.
- [06:12]
Chelsea Charles
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.
- [06:40]
Amanda Montell
God i had no idea i love learning through these episodes about you damn what about you nor i was i mean okay i knew it was important gender wise to like be into 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 twenties 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 away with it anyways but this topic 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.
- [07:54]
Chelsea Charles
Help us dig into today's we've got not one but two very special guests justine orlovsky snitzler.
- [08:05]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Schnitzler but you're right.
- [08:07]
Chelsea Charles
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 weirdly moralistic origin story so first of all welcome justine and casey welcome thank you.
- [08:34]
Casey Highsmith
For having us so i want to.
- [08:36]
Chelsea Charles
Start it 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.
- [08:45]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
I would be remiss not to start by saying that my two thousand two molly doll was right here next to me so i am a folklorist i'm a writer i went to a folklore conference in twenty twenty two 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 felicity mer i was thrilled to get to think about this from an academic perspective and i roped casey into this along for the.
- [09:30]
Casey Highsmith
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 have 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.
- [09:51]
Amanda Montell
Whatever they were lore dropping at the folklore conference one hundred percent it was.
- [09:56]
Casey Highsmith
Amazing and it's actually we've seen that on our book tour too it's just been this great big gathering of restorying 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.
- [10:32]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Good or bad it's a personality thing too where like you feel like it's assigned to you if you encounter this as a kid where 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.
- [10:50]
Amanda Montell
Are evangelizing self reflecting the way that you have to do when you survive.
- [10:54]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
A cult you know casey what was.
- [10:57]
Casey Highsmith
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 womp sad face but i was fully immersed in the books and we would go to the library and read you know the 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 grownup they were historically horribly inaccurate but i was obsessed with them and i would steal my mother's long frilly nineteen nineties nightgowns and pretend i was a victorian child eating like.
- [11:42]
Amanda Montell
Linens wait that's cool you can say.
- [11:44]
Casey Highsmith
It'S cool sure i love that oh.
- [11:46]
Amanda Montell
My god like core part of my youtube algorithm is like people remaking historical 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.
- [12:00]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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.
- [12:16]
Amanda Montell
A sob story so some worse than.
- [12:19]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Others which is also something we talk about in the book like there are different backstories and chelsea this i mean if you're an addie person right like yes 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.
- [12:43]
Chelsea Charles
The major points meanwhile addie's like i'm.
- [12:46]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Escaping slavery yeah addie's like walking herself to freedom they're just not quite at the same emotional tenor so oh my.
- [12:54]
Amanda Montell
God i feel like an american girl doll of twenty twenty five would just be like an eleven year old girl whose trauma is like wasting her childhood away on tiktok and just like repeating the phrase ohio to herself yes that i can just like skibidy skibidi skibidi.
- [13:14]
Casey Highsmith
I have a nine year old and i think that that's a fairly accurate portrayal of what they would be doing.
- [13:19]
Amanda Montell
Right now and scary yeah very scary.
- [13:22]
Chelsea Charles
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 addie 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.
- [13:44]
Casey Highsmith
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 and then at different access points in their life which is a very heartening story but you know they also sold dollar three hundred playsets too online so sure did honey.
- [13:59]
Amanda Montell
Complex and speaking of the many winding paths let's get into the cult history place.
- [14:09]
Chelsea Charles
The american girl doll series was born in nineteen eighty six 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 rowland grew up in the midwest specifically banach 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 feelgood 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.
- [15:57]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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 nine to twelve year old it's different it's meant to be different and of course what happens you know twenty 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 realistic 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 to know that life was not easy you know 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 emancipation 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 is 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 and i think one of.
- [17:35]
Casey Highsmith
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.
- [17:58]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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.
- [18:08]
Amanda Montell
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 do.
- [18:17]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
With dolls or crayons that's my other thought do you think it's either of the i don't know if i'm right also to be clear remember the crayola.
- [18:26]
Amanda Montell
Crayon that was called like macaroni and cheese do you think the macaroni and cheese color is like do not limit me i could be other foods too.
- [18:35]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
I can come in all different shades there are so many different kinds of cheeses that can be in 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 gonna get one right we're gonna have one offering in the historical lineup that represents you know indigenous culture and they did a lot of research they worked 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.
- [19:10]
Casey Highsmith
One and you gotta be happy with.
- [19:12]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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.
- [19:18]
Amanda Montell
Mean i think this is really where the limits of social responsibility in combination with commercialism become really apparent.
- [19:33]
Chelsea Charles
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- [19:44]
Casey Highsmith
Whether you prefer talking in person on.
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Chelsea Charles
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- [19:55]
Amanda Montell
There.
- [19:57]
Chelsea Charles
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- [20:14]
Casey Highsmith
Clear at one year with monthly dosing ebglis lebrikizumab lbkz a two hundred fifty milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate to severe eczema also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies eglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids don't use if you're allergic to ebglis allergic reactions can occur that can be severe eye problems can occur tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye.
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Amanda Montell
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Casey Highsmith
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- [20:50]
Chelsea Charles
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- [20:55]
Casey Highsmith
Hundred five four five five nine seven.
- [20:57]
Amanda Montell
Nine i do want to ask you know it's really interesting and i think important to recontextualize 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.
- [21:32]
Casey Highsmith
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 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 could 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 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 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 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.
- [23:05]
Amanda Montell
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.
- [23:23]
Casey Highsmith
There'S a lot of rebranding then they.
- [23:24]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Introduce dolls that you can make 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 hearing aids for the first time like you could actually get in there and try to make a doll that looked more like you again you gotta 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 nineteen 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 gotta correct this we gotta correct this what's on people's minds oh aapi and anti asian racism so let's hope in there and correct that and don't worry she's still dollar one hundred twenty you know you can finally have your girl of the year for one year only well.
- [24:21]
Casey Highsmith
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 two thousand to mattel so a lot of what justine just talked about the dolls that you can customize the girls of the 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 collaboration 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 three hundred dollars and it's just the plastic truck on the website which honestly i really like and i kind of want it but it's dollar three hundred 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.
- [25:25]
Amanda Montell
Why do i hate that yeah no yeah you should they should not meet barbie is going to be a bad.
- [25:32]
Casey Highsmith
Influencer she's the she's like the terrible big sister that does really she's like.
- [25:36]
Amanda Montell
Giving american girls cigarettes and botox for.
- [25:39]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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 swarovski 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 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 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 god 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 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 dollar eighty i'm kind.
- [26:48]
Amanda Montell
Of loving that i know you do.
- [26:51]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
They look really good but like that is almost the cost of a new.
- [26:54]
Amanda Montell
Doll oh my god with every culty collab they reach like a new of the population to rope into this collar.
- [27:01]
Casey Highsmith
Absolutely yes it was really hard not to spend my advance on this book on random collab accessories oh my god.
- [27:08]
Amanda Montell
It'S like an mlm you're just reinvesting in the lularoe leggings exactly and then.
- [27:13]
Casey Highsmith
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 but i.
- [27:19]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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.
- [27:31]
Amanda Montell
My sweet angelic culties fall is here and you know what that means soup hearty grain bowls warm autumnal sustenance thanks to hellofresh bringing you comforting chef designed recipes and fresh seasonal ingredients right to your sweet front door hellofresh is bigger than ever in fact they have doubled the menu their recipes are also healthier than ever okay protein ok veggie and literally tastier i have literally never not enjoyed a meal that i've cooked from hellofresh and now that they have a hundred options that you can choose from every single week i just like can't wait to embrace it this fall the best way to cook just got better go to hellofresh dot com slack ten fm now to get ten 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 dot com sla a c ten fm to get ten free meals plus a free item for life this show is brought to you by booking dot com booking from vacation rentals to hotels across the us booking dot com has the ideal stay for anyone even those who might seem impossible to please whether you're booking for yourself a partner your sleep light rise early mother or your high maintenance group chat you can find exactly what you're booking for on booking dot com i am in new york right now and let me tell you what the hotel that i'm staying at was booked on booking dot com it's in the gramercy neighborhood i feel safe saying that because i'm no longer there by the time this is airing and it's absolutely gorgeous the website makes booking so easy so seamless there are amazing options it's trustworthy it's reliable what else do you need to know if i can find my perfect stay on booking dot com comma anyone can find exactly what you're booking for on booking dot com booking book today on the site or in the app 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 scooches 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 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 skymall o' brien calls quote intimate pedagogy a coined ideology meaning using intimacy and vulner 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 eighteen twenty four 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 lol once a day i think about the documentary jesus camp has anyone seen where like the these kids in the early two thousands 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 frantic franchise 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 real location irl whether in chicago louisiana 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 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 addie 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 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 big 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 story stories so 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.
- [33:11]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Cult indoctrination these are such good questions.
- [33:14]
Casey Highsmith
They are i want to give like one point of contact 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 like 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 person in the nineties or early aughts that now knows these horrific details so you know you know them but you 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.
- [34:07]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
I think like kids have an appetite for tragedy i couldn't get enough titanic the gory details you know kids want 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 but 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 if even if you're talking about anti asian racism during the COVID nineteen 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.
- [35:10]
Casey Highsmith
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 acceptance 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 nineties 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 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 wastefire i survived titanic i survived nine eleven and i just am like why why do you read this and it's evidently it's a hallmark of preteen.
- [36:08]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Ness there is not been a nine eleven doll that is a lightning rod that they have not touched i demand answers from american girl as to why we have not i need that i.
- [36:18]
Amanda Montell
Need that i need it chelsea do you detect any cult parallels yes regarding like the conversation that we're having currently.
- [36:29]
Chelsea Charles
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 cecile i think they came around in like twenty eleven and i think that that kind of narrow representation is not just lazy it's cultish because it reflects a homogenous groupthink where only stories black characters are allowed to tell are 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 representation it's like doctrine yeah i think.
- [37:30]
Amanda Montell
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.
- [38:38]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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 was 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 sloshed at the american girl doll cafe so these are adults going filming themselves they.
- [39:16]
Casey Highsmith
Don'T have children with them either they.
- [39:18]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Don'T have children this isn't like they're yeah they're not bringing oh so it's like disney adults exactly but going and doing it filming themselves and you know that that was kind of its own fad on tick tock 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 financial 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 i'll hold her up for the benefit of of you amanda it's a bit of.
- [39:57]
Amanda Montell
A jump scare when she enters the.
- [39:59]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Frame i can't lie i swear it's only happened like twice but we yeah we have a zoom in on the book there you go casey so they have these kind of famously little gappy white teeth like a little beaver they all have them except kya right okay so here's a little a little aside part of the research that they did i think that positive the the nez perce nimopou people which kaya the indigenous doll is 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 kya 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 jost that went around where someone was like why is he doing american girl doll teeth going on here like catching him at a bad moment they can't comment on it but they're benefiting.
- [40:53]
Casey Highsmith
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.
- [41:02]
Amanda Montell
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 trad wives is so popular now or even like a micro trend like cottagecore or even something really destructive like the fundamentalist latter day 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 iphones and i think american girl is probably really capitalizing on that craving for nostalgia right now among adults yeah it's.
- [41:38]
Casey Highsmith
Capitalizing on actual historical moments that we all kind of have an idea of that what we didn't experience but also 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.
- [41:54]
Chelsea Charles
Find it a bit weird though 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 it's 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.
- [42:23]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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 twelve year olds.
- [42:33]
Casey Highsmith
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 sound 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 like 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 comics 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.
- [43:20]
Chelsea Charles
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 size symbols the historical dolls retailed for around eighty to a hundred dollars in the nineties and in the early two thousands before tax of course and that didn't include the extra outfits matching books furniture or the absurdly detailed miniatures like a sixty eight dollar butter churn or a one hundred fifty canopy bed a full set could easily run into the thousand 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 assigned accessories at home end quote if you didn't have the ninety 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 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.
- [45:11]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
This is so good i will briefly give an anecdote from 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 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 then 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.
- [46:16]
Casey Highsmith
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 to kind of opt into culture and society oh my god.
- [46:49]
Amanda Montell
It'S genuinely like if i really think about it the cost of owning an american girl doll and 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.
- [47:06]
Casey Highsmith
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 history as these other girls so you know it evened out 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 but you know.
- [47:39]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
When i was a kid my parents would have said why would we spend four hundred dollars 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.
- [47:54]
Casey Highsmith
Been happy with it and been happy.
- [47:56]
Amanda Montell
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 doll 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 ninety eight dollars 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 camouflage cult rebrand.
- [49:18]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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 we 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 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 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.
- [50:17]
Casey Highsmith
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 historic 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 a wash 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.
- [51:21]
Amanda Montell
Don'T know about you chelsea but my just sort of like outsider impression of this whole world is that no 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 absolutely and i don't even think that's like 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 any anything as much as kids seem to care about american girl and that can't be an accident i will say that.
- [52:04]
Casey Highsmith
There'S far too much merch now too angled at adult consumers which i could easily see younger consumers also having when they reissued the historical dolls they also came out with like a tumbler like a stanley cup style thing with the molly print i think justine actually has.
- [52:19]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
One of these i was gifted that and i opened myself up to that because we did did this book to.
- [52:25]
Chelsea Charles
Be fair she's like i didn't buy.
- [52:27]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
It i didn't buy it but there.
- [52:30]
Casey Highsmith
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 know 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 right and they have one for samantha and they have the the original 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.
- [53:01]
Amanda Montell
This has taken over culture i wanted to get like a little schoolgirl 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 up as like slutty molly from the american girl universe and i was like holy shit that is what that was i was like hahaha yeah i totally meant to do that but it was an absolute accident i.
- [53:33]
Casey Highsmith
Know that there's copious american girl fanfiction on ao three oh from what i understand it was to put yourself put your identity like like a representation right like it was to show that other culture cultures other types of girls could be represented but it's ao three it.
- [53:48]
Amanda Montell
Got horny really fast okay i think we have explored the many bounds of this topic and it is high time for us to get to a game.
- [54:08]
Chelsea Charles
Huh so we're going to compare the cult of 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 i.
- [54:27]
Casey Highsmith
Mean they're the same thing.
- [54:31]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
That'S a cop out but also correct felicity is.
- [54:34]
Casey Highsmith
A horse girl like it's a it's.
- [54:36]
Chelsea Charles
Candy canon yeah right so that's right.
- [54:39]
Amanda Montell
Okay american girl dolls or swifties this.
- [54:43]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Is tough swifties swifties i definitely think.
- [54:45]
Casey Highsmith
It'S swifties there's way more money there.
- [54:48]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Yeah there is more money there exactly.
- [54:50]
Amanda Montell
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.
- [55:01]
Casey Highsmith
Don'T see like barbie fans and american girl fans fighting but i've seen taylor swift fans and other musical fans fighting.
- [55:08]
Amanda Montell
So that's where my there you go.
- [55:09]
Chelsea Charles
Yeah there you go us beyonce's okay so american girl dolls or stanley cups.
- [55:15]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
American girl american girl stanley cups a flash in the pan who even has.
- [55:19]
Casey Highsmith
Those anymore right my dad's so mad.
- [55:21]
Amanda Montell
That everyone else has them american girl or homeschool kids o home school kids.
- [55:29]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
But also again some of them are.
- [55:30]
Casey Highsmith
The same yeah there's there's overlap in.
- [55:32]
Chelsea Charles
All of them overlap homeschool i think.
- [55:34]
Casey Highsmith
Is older so i would say homeschool.
- [55:37]
Chelsea Charles
I agree yeah that wins american girl dolls or trad wives trad wives i'm.
- [55:44]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Going with my gut here casey yeah.
- [55:46]
Amanda Montell
Gotta jump on it american girl dolls or love island.
- [55:52]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
I know so little of bouncing i know so little about.
- [55:54]
Casey Highsmith
Love island too but i think 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.
- [56:02]
Chelsea Charles
Then finally american girl dolls or disney.
- [56:06]
Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
Adults disney adults no contest no amazing.
- [56:17]
Amanda Montell
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 girl dolls.
- [56:32]
Chelsea Charles
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 satan safeness just let people do what they want to do that's.
- [56:49]
Amanda Montell
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 etcetera at the end of the day we grade our cults on a curse 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.
- [57:30]
Chelsea Charles
Culty but not too culty.
- [57:41]
Amanda Montell
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 please feel free to check out my book the language of fanaticism which inspired the show you might also enjoy my other books the age of magical notes on modern irrationality and word a feminist guide to taking back the english language thanks as well to our network studio seventy one and be sure to follow the soundslikeacult on instagram for all the discourse soundslikeacultpod or support us on patreon to listen to the show ad free at patreon dot com.
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Justine Orlovsky Schnitzler
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