New American Girl Doll

Today, the American Girl company debuted their new historical doll, Rebecca Rubin, with fun festivities at their various store locations.  In Chicago, where I happened to be with my ten year old American Girl enthusiast, they had giveaways, craft activities, and a flurry of television news cameras filming the goings-on.

The first AG historical doll to be Jewish, the compant faced an entire set of potential pitfalls. According to the New York Times :

While other dolls represented ethnic backgrounds with distinctive visual characteristics, what constitutes a Jewish girl’s appearance is much more open for debate.The goal is that no one be offended and that Jewish and non-Jewish little girls alike will want to play tenement house with their new toy, which costs $95 — plus more for accessories like a sideboard with a challah resting on it.

The preliminary research that led to Rebecca’s development started in 2000, said Shawn Dennis, the senior vice president for marketing. American Girl had wanted to do a doll focused on the immigrant experience. After work by two in-house historical researchers, and interviews with focus groups, it was decided to make the character Jewish.

Rebecca also apparently, has a charity box into which she drops her money in order to bring the rest of her family over from Russia. Today at the store, girls were making their own charity boxes for their own causes.

The debut prompted the following conversation with my fair skinned, blonde daughter.

"I might want to get Rebecca, but she doesn't have blue eyes."

"Do you want her to have blue eyes?"

"Everyone in our family has blue eyes, so I always get blue-eyed dolls too," she explained.  She'd been studying genes in school and knew that since David and I have blue eyes, everyone in our family would.

"Do you think it'd be okay?"

Camille took one glance at Rebecca and knew immediately, our family was about to get more diverse. At least ocularly.