Chapter 1: ‘Meet Abby’
It seems dramatic to say, “When 

I was six, I happened upon a book 
in a library, and that’s why, 16 years 
later, I am where and what and who 
I am.” That’s just a completely insane 
statement.

It also happens to be the truth.
By the time I turned six, my mother 

had learned that the best way to deal 
with me was to put a book in my 
hands. And so, on an unremarkable 
winter afternoon, not unlike the day 
I’m writing this, she brought me on 
our regular excursion to the library. I 
picked up a copy of “Meet Felicity,” the 
book that is responsible for who I am 
now, 16 years later.

The book told the story of Felicity, 

a young girl growing up around the 
time of the American Revolution. 
Immediately, I was hooked. I quickly 
devoured “Meet Felicity” and all 
the subsequent books in the Felicity 
series, as well as anything I could get 
my hands on about the Revolution. 
I dragged my exhausted parents to 
every relevant historical site in the 
greater Boston area (and there are 
many relevant historical sites in the 
greater Boston area). I even dressed 
up as a colonial girl for Halloween that 

year. I was well and truly obsessed 
(evidence pictured on the right).

Now, a mere 16 years later, I’m no 

less enamored with learning about 
history. I enjoy reading history books 
roughly the size and weight of bricks; I 
binge-watch war documentary series 
on Netflix; I’m about to graduate 
from the University of Michigan 
with a degree in history. All because I 
stumbled upon that one book.

Chapter 2: ‘Abby Learns A Lesson’
The “Felicity” series was one 

of several six-book series that the 
American Girl brand had authored, 
centering their stories on young girls 
(typically between eight and ten years 
old) at different points throughout 
American history. While the books 
highlighted typical children’s book 
narratives — love, friendship and 
kindness — they also illustrated the 
changes in history each girl would 
have lived through at the time.

They followed a pattern with 

which I soon became familiar: 
“Meet Felicity,” “Felicity Learns A 
Lesson,” “Felicity’s Surprise,” “Happy 
Birthday, Felicity,” “Felicity Saves the 
Day” and “Changes for Felicity.” Over 
that six-book arc, each American 
Girl (with her name inserted in the 
title) navigated her own journeys and 
learned her own lessons. In these 
seemingly-kiddish stories, history is 

not just the contextual background. It 
is a central part of the story. 

Accompanying the book series, 

American Girl fashioned a doll of 
each historical character along with 
her various clothes, accessories, pets, 
toys and other accoutrements — all of 
which are sold separately. Naturally, 
I desperately wanted a Felicity doll 
so I could engage with her books’ 
Revolutionary War scenery that had 
gotten me so excited about history. At 
the time, the doll cost 87 dollars. And 
so I started saving. 

My one-dollar weekly allowance, 

Tooth Fairy and present money went 
straight into my piggy bank. Months 
went by, but I held firm: Felicity, I 
reminded myself, would be worth the 
wait. 

I still remember the pure, delighted 

pride and self-satisfaction I got when 
the doll arrived on my doorstep 
shortly before my seventh birthday. 
I had done this — I had earned it for 
myself — and it had been so, so worth 
the wait. 

American Girl dolls and all the 

accompanying toys and accessories 
are not cheap: A doll currently retails 
for $110; outfits, pets, toys for the doll 
and doll housewares are typically in 
the $20–$50 range; doll furniture can 
be upward of $100. I wasn’t the only 
one saving up: With the arrival of their 
holiday catalog each year, girls all over 
the country just like me were pouring 
their allowances toward the brand’s 
robust offering of sparkly products. 

It was a near-universal part of how 

people experienced the brand — at 
one point, American Girl even created 
an activity to encourage girls to save 
up to buy their dream doll. The hyper-

commercialization of the doll brand is 
also prevalent throughout the books: 
The main characters often want a 
doll, dress and/or other toys which 
are deemed “special”; their eventual 
receiving of it later becomes a central 
development within the plot. 

Promoting 
a 
culture 
of 

consumption is a central part of the 
brand, as Allison Horrocks, a public 
historian with the National Parks 
Service and American Girls podcast 
co-host, explains. 

“Most people … have a story of 

remembering 
about 
saving 
up,” 

Horrocks said. “There’s, I think, a 
difficulty with this, that a lot of it is 
driven by consumption: You want the 

things, you want the stuff.”

The price of their products may 

reflect the historical research invested 
into each doll; multiple historians are 
consulted in the process of writing 
each doll’s stories and designing her 
various clothes and accoutrements. 
But it’s worth considering who 
has access to these toys and the 
historical lessons they offer. Teaching 
young children about history, and 
teaching young girls about women’s 
experiences throughout history, is a 
noble goal. And yet, it’s a goal tainted 
by financial inaccessibility.

Chapter 3: ‘Abby’s Surprise’
In addition to financial barriers, 

diversity 
and 
inclusion 
were 

regrettably, if unsurprisingly, foreign 
issues to my and many others’ 
elementary-school minds. So when 
American Girl released a new 
historical doll, Rebecca Rubin, I was 
intrigued. Rebecca, after all, came 
from the same background that I do: 
She was a young Jewish girl, born in 
America and living on the East Coast; 
her family had immigrated to the 
United States shortly after the turn of 
the twentieth century. American Girl 
had finally released a doll that was just 
like me. 

When reading her book series, I 

remember admiring the glossy brown 
waves of her hair, so similar to mine in 
color. I compared her smart burgundy 
dress to my own, decidedly less stylish 
synagogue outfits. 

The series followed the familiar 

six-book progression, with one key 
change. The third book in the series, 
typically called “Felicity’s Surprise,” 
would be a Christmas story. But 
Rebecca’s third book, “Candlelight for 

Rebecca,” was instead a Hanukkah 
story. After years of consuming 
seasonal Christmas content without 
much of a second thought, I didn’t 
realize how much I’d been craving 
seeing my own traditions represented 
in the same venues as those of my 
Christian friends. The introduction 
of Rebecca catapulted these stories of 
Jewish culture into the mainstream, 
Deborah Dash Moore, professor of 
history and Judaic studies, told me 
over Zoom.

“Certainly, the Rebecca doll is a 

new way of (telling stories about young 
Jewish-American girls in history),” 
she said. “I do think it’s a really great 
means to teach.”

Reflecting on Rebecca now, though, 

I have concerns that didn’t occur to 
me when I was nine. I worry that 
Rebecca, a middle-class Ashkenazi 
Jewish girl living in New York who 
dreams of being an actress, skates 
close to long-standing antisemitic 
stereotypes. 
Rebecca’s 
attention-

seeking, 
sometimes-envious 

behavior and “dramatic flair” could 
cause her to be seen as a ‘Jewish-
American Princess.’ Her “knack for 
business and making money” could 
play into long-held canards about 
Jews as the scheming, miserly 
manipulators of the world’s money 
and economy. 

The full story, along with an 

additional interview with Stephan 
Brumberg, historian and Professor 
Emeritus at Brooklyn College, is 
available at michigandaily.com.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
6 — Wednesday, February 2, 2022 

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

S T A T E M E N T

ABBY SNYDER

Statement Correspondent

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

American Girl dolls: Where the brand has 

both championed and failed America’s girls

T

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 La

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Pa

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ox

:

Reckoning with 
classism at the 
University

My local coffee shop, Goody’s 

Juice and Java, was where I 
mastered the art of so-called 
“unskilled” labor, or work that 
doesn’t require formal education. 
I had spent the previous summer 
working in a restaurant where I 
became an expert in enduring long 
shifts and angry customers. I’d 
serve every order with a smile, even 
as my feet ached and hot plates 
burned my hands. But, I had never 
quite gotten the hang of working 
through an intense rush hour 
without getting overwhelmed, or 
of balancing cleaning and food 
preparation 
with 
completing 

orders. 

In some cafés, baristas go 

through an intensive training and 
certification process. That wasn’t 
the case for my employer. Whatever 
I needed to know, my boss figured 
I’d be able to pick up on the job. 
At the beginning of my tenure 
there, I couldn’t tell a latte from a 
cappuccino — I was basically only 
good for washing dishes. But when 
I left, I could make drinks, clean 
the entire café top to bottom and 
please even the most demanding 
customers. I wasn’t a certified 
barista and I hadn’t earned that 
much money, but at the end of 
the summer, I knew infinitely 
more 
about 
hard 
work 
and 

professionalism than I had before. 

The café was just one role in a 

long string of gigs I worked 
during high school 
and 
the 

summer 

after my freshman year of college. 
First: a server’s assistant at a 
trendy local restaurant. It was 
popular with tourists visiting my 
sleepy hometown from cities such 
as Chicago and Detroit and had 
a gentrifier-industrial-chic look: 
exposed brick, metal bar stools 
painted bright yellow, hanging 
pendant lights and Americana-
inspired decor. 

Roles 
were 
loosely 
defined 

there: 
Sometimes 
I 
played 

hostess, sometimes I made salads, 
sometimes I cleared tables and 
washed dishes. That had been my 
first job; I was 15 when I started. 
Afterward, there was a brief stint 
as a receptionist at a marina. 
And finally, after completing my 
lifeguard certification, I spent two 
summers working at a community 
pool and tutoring on the side. 

In high school, I wasn’t working 

because I wanted money to go out 
with my friends. I didn’t see it as 
a résumé-building experience. I 
was working because I knew my 
parents couldn’t support me after 
I turned 18. I wanted to attend 
college, but at the time, there was 
no guarantee that I’d go on to earn 
a degree. 

My 
experience 
working 
in 

high school felt distinct from 
most of my college classmates’. 
If they had spent a summer as a 
waitress or a lawn-mower, it was 
often because they were “paying 
their dues.” The job was just an 
intermediate, strictly temporary 

phase in a life that 

had set them up to becoming 
a 
management 
consultant 
or 

financial analyst. There was no 
question that they would, in time, 
move up to the ranks of “skilled 
labor.” 

Now, I like to tell stories of 

my “past lives” to my college 
classmates, especially if I know 
they haven’t worked a low-wage 
job before. There were certain tells 
revealing that someone hadn’t, 
the most obvious being how they 
treated low-wage workers. But a 
trained eye can see other signs, 
too. If you don’t stack your plates, 
I know. If you complain about tip 
jars at coffee shops, I know. (An 
aside: It’s common knowledge 
that servers can be paid below 
minimum wage because they make 
tips, but if you see a tip jar at a coffee 
shop or boba place, there’s a decent 
chance their employer classifies 
them as a “tipped employee” and 
pays below minimum wage).

With my friends, I’d reenact 

memorable 
exchanges 
with 

customers or recall the grossest 
bathrooms I had cleaned. Reactions 
were mixed. Sometimes my peers 
were disgusted, sometimes they 
were sympathetic and sometimes 
they’d laugh along with me. While 
I had certainly exaggerated the less 
savory details of my jobs, I never 
felt ashamed for having worked 
them. I never felt like my 
labor was “unskilled” 
or 
unimportant: 

Every job I 
had 
in 

high school proved quite the 
contrary. 

***

With a tightening labor market 

and 
record-high 
numbers 
of 

workers quitting their jobs in the 
service industry, low-wage workers 
have 
received 
unprecedented 

attention from policymakers and 
the 
white-collared 
executives 

who take them for granted. 
Simultaneously dubbed “essential” 
and “unskilled,” the message to 
these workers is clear: Society 
needs your labor to function, but 
won’t give you the dignity or pay 
that you deserve.

Just days after his inauguration 

in early January, New York City 
Mayor 
Eric 
Adams 
sparked 

controversy 
when 
he 
urged 

downtown offices to reopen. In 
what appeared to be an attempt to 
highlight the interconnectedness 
of the city’s economy, Adams said, 
“my low-skilled workers, my cooks, 
my dishwashers, my messenger, 
my shoe shine people, those that 
work in Dunkin’ Donuts, they don’t 
have the academic skills to sit in the 
corner office. They need this.”

Adams later said he meant to 

say “low-wage” instead of “low-
skilled,” but his correction only 
emphasized the logical fallacy 
in his original statement. Adams 
seems to suppose that wage and 
“skill” are dependent on ability, 

rather 
than 
deeper 

issues of access and an 
inequitable job market.

In this line 
of 
thinking 

that 
his 

comments 
represent, 
the 
Wall 

Street 
employee 
making 
six 
figures 

in a corner 

office is there 

because they’ve earned it, they’ve 
studied hard and capitalized on 
their natural talents. The janitor 
cleaning their office just isn’t cut 
out for white-collar work. 

I had a series of internships and 

other 
professional 
experiences 

in college but still felt like my 
financial situation was precarious. 
It wasn’t until November of 2021, 
when I accepted an internship offer 
working in data science and product 
growth at Facebook, that I realized 
my days of working low-wage jobs 
and worrying about money were 
behind me. Since the summer after 
my freshman year, I’ve made the 
jump from an “unskilled” worker to 
a cushy, well-compensated tech job. 
I had a sense I was underpaid and 
undervalued as a high schooler, but 
I had grown up in a post-industrial 
town as part of a working-class 
family. Working in poor conditions 
and for low wages was simply the 
norm. 

Now, people I don’t know 

message me on LinkedIn to ask 
about my internship. When I was 
home for the holidays, my parents 
repeatedly prompted me to “tell 
them where you’re working next 
summer” when in the company of 
others. The male classmates who 
spoke over me in class treat me 
differently once they find out I have 
a FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, 
Apple, 
Netflix 
and 
Google) 

internship.

Upon entering the corporate 

world, I’ve struggled to reconcile 
the long hours and low pay at 
my first jobs with the status and 
privilege that my education has 
afforded me. How did my degree 
catapult me into the white-collar 
world? My low-wage jobs had 
taught me invaluable lessons, but 
would my corporate colleagues 
recognize 
their 
value? 
What 

knowledge and expertise does the 
term “unskilled” obscure? 

I spoke with Adam Stevenson, 

a lecturer in the University’s 
Economics Department, to try 
to understand the relationship 
between education and “unskilled 
labor.” He expressed frustration 
that the term had been co-opted 
from academia, noting that its 
precise definition is often lost in 
translation. 

“One problem with economics 

is that we use a lot of words that 
are conveyed in plain language 
and used all the time, but when 
we use them in our models, they’re 
being used in a very particular 
way,” Stevenson said.. “When an 
economist in a practice of modeling 
says ‘unskilled,’ they mean that the 
requirement of entry into that job 
involves a low degree of education ... 

Do I think that these jobs don’t take 
practice, that they don’t involve 
dignity, that they don’t involve an 
incredible amount of learning? No.” 

Stevenson acknowledged the 

problematic 
implications 
that 

come with labeling something as 
“unskilled.” 

“It’s hard to separate that sort 

of moral judgment of the word,” 
Stevenson said. “It certainly does 
lack in public relations versus 
what it’s actually meant to convey, 
which is that even though those 
jobs are really important, essential 
jobs and even though they can 
take impressive feats of skill and 
endurance and knowledge, they 
still pay less.”

As 
Stevenson’s 
comment 

suggests, the terms “unskilled” and 
“low wage” work are often used 
interchangeably. And while the 
formal definition of “unskilled” 
labor makes no reference to 
wages, it was telling that they 
were used together. “Low-wage” 
and “unskilled” don’t have to be 
synonymous, but for all intents and 
purposes, they are.

Adams’s comments and other 

takes on “unskilled” labor seem to 
reflect this misunderstanding of 
how the term is technically defined. 
Still, the buzzword has taken on a 
life of its own. The term “unskilled 
labor” — both in academic and 
colloquial uses — purposefully 
obscures 
the 
knowledge 
and 

expertise that goes into these roles. 

Engineering junior Peter Wu 

started working when he was 11. 
First, he worked at a restaurant 
owned by his relatives, and then in 
the restaurant his parents opened 
after they moved to Michigan. 
There, he dabbled in all aspects of 
the business. Wu cleared tables, 
cooked food, filed taxes, managed 
business operations and delivered 
orders on his bike before he could 
drive. 

“From 11 to 18, I’ve been working 

in a restaurant with my parents or 
somebody else’s place. I didn’t ask 
for any wage, because at the time 
I thought learning these skills are 
good and beneficial,” Wu said. 

But it was about more than just 

building skills. Wu and his family 
put in long hours at the restaurant 
because “for us, every penny 
counted. And every penny still 
counts. We needed this to make a 
living.” 

***

There’s a certain kind of folk 

knowledge that goes into making 
espresso. 

HALEY JOHNSON
Statement Columnist

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