Dolls of Our Lives
Be There in Five
Kate Kennedy
4.8 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2023
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Kate is joined by Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney, self-identified Mollys and hosts of the Dolls of our Lives Podcast (FKA American Girls), to talk about their newly released book, Dolls of our Lives. They discuss the origin story of American Girl dolls and why they were vital to so many of our girlhoods, Pleasant Rowland’s brand of feminism, their tie to Colonial Williamsburg, reexamining historical plot lines, hot takes about Uncle Gard, and so much more AG lore, e.g., the doll hospital, catalog culture, best/worst fashions and furniture, and niche drama in Aurora, NY. Randomly, there are plenty of Saved by the Bell tangents, too. Enjoy!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everybody welcome back to the Be Therein Five podcast I'm Kate Kennedy your host. |
| 0:15.4 | Today I'm so excited because we have on Allison Horix and Mary Mahoney who are |
| 0:21.2 | friends and now authors and historians who have a very popular |
| 0:27.3 | podcast about American Girl dolls that was called American girls but is now |
| 0:32.1 | called dolls of our lives and last week their book that was called American Girls but is now called Dalls of Our Lives. |
| 0:33.7 | And last week their book, Dalls of Our Lives, |
| 0:35.8 | came out and I got a chance to read an advanced copy |
| 0:38.5 | and interview them and I had so much fun. |
| 0:42.0 | It's a combo of the brand's history, the travel log of them trying to discover more about its origins, |
| 0:50.0 | kind of a memoir that talks through their experiences in the doll fandom and in the broader AG |
| 0:58.1 | universe and it goes beyond the historical dolls and talks about like the magazines and the grin pins and the plays and the pen pals and just kind of a lot of the |
| 1:06.8 | lore involved in this brand that is very beloved by many Beths out there, myself included. |
| 1:15.0 | Weirdly, I mean, American Girl nostalgia |
| 1:18.2 | has kind of been a cornerstone, |
| 1:20.4 | not only of this podcast for many years but like even just my social media presence in general like |
| 1:27.2 | American Girl dolls were one of the first things like when Inst stories came out in 2017 |
| 1:33.7 | Was it the dolls were one of the first like long-form stories I did |
| 1:37.4 | that got me like a handful of followers. |
| 1:40.8 | And I remember realizing, I mean more so than doormats, it was one of like my first |
| 1:47.5 | points of connection with like girlhood and internet followers in terms of having this like shared history |
| 1:56.2 | with something so important to us that at that point in 2017 had been kind of |
| 1:59.9 | dormant in our minds and it all all started, yeah, in late 2017, |
... |
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