![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
No, Really: SRS BZNS!
Jan. 12th, 2009 03:40 pmI imagine that being a somewhat sane doll collector is a bit like being a somewhat sane furry—you get tossed in with the batshit ones who you actually despise. I really dislike a lot of American Girl/doll fans. They’re inarticulate and clueless and a bit Stepfordy.
That being said, here’s a fan I like (thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kittikattie, another fan I like). Watch her lay the smackdown on an idiot who didn’t do her homework about the company, who has that book-banning tendency not to understand the difference between “subject” and “what you say about the subject,”* who is spectacularly clueless about actual cultures, and who waves her biracial daughter around like the national flag of SeeI’mNotRacistopia.
Keep going for the surprise ending, too. How is Clueless Lady’s solution in any way an actual solution? How will this communicate to her daughter that she disapproves of AG so damn much? And if she decides her moral objections aren't strong enough to bother with the battle, why the knockoff? If she was wanting to avoid confrontation by not sitting the kid down and saying “You can’t get the doll you want, here’s why,” just wait until the other girls take it upon themselves to inform the daughter that Knockoff Doll Is Knockoff. I think “Mommy thinks I’m gullible and I can't trust Mommy” is going to be a much more difficult lesson in the long run than “Mommy sticks to her ethics.”
*Boils down to a book saying “Slavery is bad” and the banninators going “OMG YOU SAID SLAVERY! BAN!”
That being said, here’s a fan I like (thanks to
kittikattie, another fan I like). Watch her lay the smackdown on an idiot who didn’t do her homework about the company, who has that book-banning tendency not to understand the difference between “subject” and “what you say about the subject,”* who is spectacularly clueless about actual cultures, and who waves her biracial daughter around like the national flag of SeeI’mNotRacistopia. Keep going for the surprise ending, too. How is Clueless Lady’s solution in any way an actual solution? How will this communicate to her daughter that she disapproves of AG so damn much? And if she decides her moral objections aren't strong enough to bother with the battle, why the knockoff? If she was wanting to avoid confrontation by not sitting the kid down and saying “You can’t get the doll you want, here’s why,” just wait until the other girls take it upon themselves to inform the daughter that Knockoff Doll Is Knockoff. I think “Mommy thinks I’m gullible and I can't trust Mommy” is going to be a much more difficult lesson in the long run than “Mommy sticks to her ethics.”
*Boils down to a book saying “Slavery is bad” and the banninators going “OMG YOU SAID SLAVERY! BAN!”
