Meet Chrissa. She is the American Doll Girl of the Year for 2009. The victim of a brilliant marketing concept, shamelessly priced at $95 (with a storybook about her, but without her swim team gear which will run eager-to-please parents another 24 smackers), I love and hate what she represents.
Dolls are made for cuddling (said the girl who still sleeps with a teddy bear named Tena which she received for Christmas sometime in the 1970s). We of the pre-Cabbage Patch generation get this. To spend nearly $100 in today's economy for a doll that you can't even really snuggle with is ridiculous and sad. She's made of hard plastic in some far away country; her carbon toeprint is astonishing and she's not even 10 years old yet.
That said, I think about this. Good for the American Doll people for issuing a special little girl in a swimcap (dispelling the myth that nobody is pretty wearing one). For girls of the next generation to think swimming is cool is worth a great deal. To have girls swimming laps and loving lakes, and realizing that having bigger shoulders than the boys means more than looking sexy in spaghetti straps, well, that's something.
Paradoxically, Chrissa makes me think of Livia. My friend Livia is over 85 years old. She of the Raggedy Ann generation swims 30 minutes of breastroke each and every morning, then retires to the sauna to visit with her friends before starting her day. Livia, who is originally from Latvia and experienced World War II like no one else I have ever talked to, is the heart of the 6 am hour at Green lake pool. We love her and are ever inspired by her.
While Chrissa and Livia may never meet, I believe that in their hearts, they are the same. Chrissa, and the girls who adopt her, could well be the Livias of the future. I hope so.
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