Where Now?

      I pulled Melody out of a bin the other day. One of her shoes had fallen off in the bin and her hair was flatter than I like it to be. I held her and stared. I suppose contemplated would be the word. I know I have room for four dolls alone and I don't want to have more than four at this point. There's something about it all, though. There's something that feels like a betrayal. I can't tell if it's to myself or to the dolls. Not a current version of myself, but the eleven-year-old girl who painted a slab of wood and wrote on it to never under any circumstances sell my dolls. I didn't write that imagining I was saying it to myself, but rather to some descendant one hundred years in the future. I sold two of my dolls around that age, I don't remember feeling that deep sentimentality. Maybe I did and I just don't remember. I more remember being very tough on not pricing them too low, much to my mom's annoyance (and she was correct, for the record).

     Just a few minutes ago I was working on setting up ads on my site. As I excluded spaces for ads to be places (which was most places) I saw the titles of my most recent posts over the past 4 years. 3 titles about selling my collection (only one of which was fully truthful), half-hearted goodbye posts, and a bit of the good ol' imagining and theorizing. I realized I always posted more around some change in my collection, whether that was selling or adding. I'm doing the same thing now. I wrote a post about selling and then roughly an hour later am writing a post about dolls. 

      I'm in a couple Discord servers for collectors. I'm continually surprised at the new things I'm learning, like how American Girl kept numbers for some JLY dolls even after altering them. This has led the collectors to dub dolls 18.1 and 18.2. (One version has bangs, the other doesn't). I'm shocked I never knew that, especially after numerous posts about face molds and American Girl's practices towards updating dolls. These little histories are what I find most interesting. I read a Tumblr post the other day about the most rare and expensive AG items. I found it was a lot of things from when American Girl was "better quality," using real wood and teensy weensy little pieces, like in Felicity's windmill. 

     I don't see myself theorizing again. The last time I theorized on this blog was in late 2021. I'm not tying myself to "coming back" like I have every other time I've gone through my dolls and decided this is My Thing. 

I do see myself researching. I do that already on YouTube and I found that I was able to gain the same thing through there that I gained on here. I found people who are genuinely interested in what I have to say. I don't want to film more videos just to talk about American Girl. I sort of enjoy the facelessness (which my mom gave me as a rule when I first started this blog). My phone also doesn't seem to believe in storage anymore and I don't have a good camera. I'll make YouTube videos again once I can rent a camera in the fall, I will not be making videos for dolls though, is my ultimate point. It's a heck of a lot easier to source things in a written format and it's easier to prevent myself from swearing, especially considering American Girl dolls are marketed to children. I'm not saying everything I will speak about is targeted to children, but I'm very aware of who American Girl dolls are targeted towards. 

If you'll let me return and write about how American Girl and Disney have become intertwined, the underlying racism within American Girl, and the odd political controversies the brand has been in, I'd enjoy it. I'd enjoy being opinionated but also being able to source my opinions.

Ella