American Girl Doll vs. Victoria Secret Angel: The Battle for Daughter Dollars

Here we have an innocent, springtime family frolic with the American Girl Doll spring catalog juxtaposed with the oh, this bra makes my lips wet and my hair is in my eyes aren’t you horny highly anticipated bra clearance sale from Victoria’s Secret.

Same day. Same addressee. To my then tweenaged, not quite boobs not done with playing with dolls yet, daughter.

Did somebody purchase a bad list?

Nope.

Did they make a mistake?

Nope.

Spot on marketing.

Tween and teenagers are exactly this. Well, not exactly, but some combo thereof, whether we want them to be or not. Some are all Victoria’s Secret on the outside, all American Girl doll on the inside. Others are all American Girl Doll on the outside, and underneath, a Victoria’s Secret angel dying to bust out.

I think it’s all part of growing up and it’s all normal.

Growing up female according to direct mail catalogs

While I don’t want my kid growing up thinking she needs a push-up padded memory foam water-balloon bra in order to be acceptable according to (primarily) male come-hither standards dictated by unattainable, unrealistic plastic Barbie-doll beauty, neither do I want her thinking a $100 historically correct, albeit white-washed, Lilly Pulitzer Patagonia J Crew country club privileged doll is common place in most American households.

Even though.

Even though we had several in our house, with their coffin like-tombs and matching outfits for every possible social situation all more accessorized and much, much nicer, and more expensive, than anything hanging in my own closet. Thanks Grandma.

Regardless, I never did patronize the Fifth Avenue salon to fix Felicia’s hair when it was dippity-dooed, not once, but several times, into the dog dish by a jealous sibling then sautéed like a chicken breast into the cat litter box, before being hidden, for days, weeks maybe, in the tree fort, afraid of the wrath of angry mom over expensive grandma gift.

Neither will I run to purchase a cosmetically-or-photoshopped-enhanced booby catcher from a look-at-my-cleavage-isn’t-it-lovely barely old enough to vote bra model, quite often herself sprawled seductively and sautéed in sand – maybe beach maybe cat litter – who knows.

To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Even though.

Even though their t-shirt bra is the best and something I’ve been known to dig through the clearance bins in desperate search of a discount, then dig some more for my more bustier daughters, and dig some more and more and more because who doesn’t want to save a buck and do you know I have three daughters – sometimes four, not counting my own two midlife melons, with a boob size in every bin?

The bellcurve of middle school
When talking about middle school, I’ve been known to shock people and say, in the bell curve of what is 7th and 8th grade, there are dolls on one end of the scale, and boobs on the other.

Not everyone is snorting oxy or selling handles in the bathroom. But it happens. And not everyone in middle school is sexually active. But it happens.

Likewise, not everyone believes in Santa or the tooth fairy or that damn elf on the shelf either. But it happens. More often than not in our family history.

The vast, vast majority of kids are right in the middle of that curve, painfully aware of those at the ends, and wondering and trying desperately to fit in someplace, somewhere.

What’s a girl to do? Find a place to fit in that works for her. What’s a mom to do? Let them be, but call out the ridiculousness of both. None of my girls ever looked like the happy girls frolicking in the American Girl catalog, nor have they grown to be the smoky eye, pouty lip sexual sinkhole that of Victoria’s Secret.

The dolls are cool. And they’ve even got some of some color now. Angels too. All still about the same size, but skin tones have advanced.

But until the pages of these catalogs and others represent the world in which we live, I’ll buy what works for us at this time in our lives, and write about the rest, after I dig through the bins in search of a marked down 34c t-shirt bra, because those angels do make a mighty fine brassiere.



Kate Mayer potty-mouthed, irreverent writer, humorist, and activist writing out loud, and occasionally funny on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. She writes with humor, wit, and a great dose of levity about teenagers, aging parents, midlife, social issues, and, sigh, gun violence prevention. Her essays appear on line at Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, BluntMoms, Scary Mommy, BlogHer, Grown & Flown, The Good Men Project, Midlife Boulevard, and she is a proud Listen To Your Mother NYC alum.