When Every Little Girl Carried a Doll
I rarely see dolls anymore. It seems that the days little girls carried around their favorite dolly with them are long-gone. The unscientific parallel I would draw is that children are too busy with technology to play with something as elemental as a doll.
I remember a handful of my own dolls. I had Barbie and Chatty Cathy and a strange stuffed doll called Hedda-Get-Better, who had a plastic face with a turn knob on the top of her head. She had three faces – one was sick with chicken-pox, one was sleeping, and one was awake and smiling – all controlled by the pom-pom knob. She was really neat and I was crazy about her.
But there was nothing sweeter than receiving a real old-fashioned “dolly” to play with. No gimmicks, just a dear little lamb of a doll, with molded hair and sweet rosebud lips and an accompanying baby bottle to “feed” her with. Those were the kind of dolls I carried with me everyday. They sparked my imagination and I loved caring for them and putting them to bed in the small maple crib I had. My little dollies were very real to me, at least in early childhood, and I recall dragging them to the doctor’s office with me and anywhere else I went.
My daughter had a favorite doll who unfortunately was kidnapped on the playground by a “boy on a bike”. Naturally, my daughter was bereft and that night she crept into my room and woke me. “I can’t stop thinking about HER“, she sobbed. Her little dolly was a HER, a personage loved to realness. It broke my heart. A thoughtful friend gave us her grown daughter’s doll, of the same make and model, but it wasn’t quite the same for my poor child. When you cherish a doll to wholeness, the loss of it is heartfelt and truly legitimate.
When I was 16, it occurred to my mother (belatedly so) that she would not be buying anymore dolls for my sister and I. So that Christmas, she gifted us with brand-new dolls. She said she “just had to do it” and we humored her without any teen scoffing or side-eyeing. We knew it meant a lot to her to wrap up those two final tokens of a disappearing childhood. The boxes they came in were large with the requisite cellophane panel showing them in their glorious party frocks, petticoats, and hair bows.
So today I wonder how much little girls might be missing by not being familiar with dolls.
~
There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer and the morning more fragrant than ever again. ~ Elizabeth Lawerence
9 Comments
Cate Cathleen Conrad Jones
I, too, feel sad about grandchildren who spend most of their waking hours (during the summer, anyway) on their ipads. My granddaughter never did LOVE dolls so she wouldn’t have played with them as much as some little girls even if the ipad were not part of life…..she had several that she played with a bit but they did not seem pretty to me. She was scared of the prettier dolls I bought her and returned a couple of them to me. We do not know the longterm results of kids on ipads so much. I hope there will be a now- hidden (from me, anyway) good result from it but I may not be around to see it. I still have a number of my childhood dolls and am presently unpacking them to occupy my office/craft room. They spark so many happy memories of childhood and of my mom who dressed them with beautifully-made clothes. I, too, was so much more active than today’s kids…..outdoors a good deal of the time rollerskating, riding bikes, playing imaginary games with my friends, climbing trees, pretending to be characters from the bit of TV we watched. My mom let us turn the family room into forts, restaurants with real food & flowers that were weeds but beautiful to us, etc. We had friends in and out every day of the week and it was a rich childhood experience. It is not one that I see happening much around me and I feel so lucky to have experienced it.
Tracy H
I still have many of my dolls.
The majority of them are Madame Alexander’s. They are not the carrying around type of dolly, but still…
Little girls today, sadly, are more often handed a cell phone to keep them entertained.
La contessa
So true!
The dolls today I find terribly ugly as well!
I don’t know what it is the plastic?the head with lack of hair it’s just not desirable!
On another subject have you heard about our commuter gal?
Xxx
A Lovely Inconsequence
I sent you an email Elizabeth
Robyn S.
I love this post so very much! I have often commented that I rarely see little girls carrying dolls anymore. So sad! I had three special baby dolls: the Crissy doll, whom I named Kristy; the Gerber doll, whom I named Amanda; and a blonde curly headed doll, whom I named Misty. My grandmother hand sewed all kinds of beautiful clothes for them. I’m 53 and still have all three of my “babies”, and when I get them out of storage to hold them again, they still evoke so many emotions for me. ❤️
Nancy Magi
I came upon your essay while I was writing about my dolls of the 1950s. Your thinking matches some of mine. While I don’t think my childhood was perfect, I do think roller skating in the neighbor’s driveway, checking books out at the library, and playing outside with the kids near me had great value to positive mental health and building lasting friendships. I hope I live long enough to see that the “tech kids” have the same outcomes with their lives.
A Lovely Inconsequence
I hope the same Nancy
Karen
Thats “you love a doll to wholeness”! Thanks, autocorrect!
Karen
Oh, how I loved this post! Those two little girls are so innocent and sweet, and having such a wonderful time with her dollies. My favorite doll was, of all things, a clown doll. (Something that would not even exist now with the current understanding that clowns are sinister and somehow horrific.) It was a little floppy doll with a patchwork jumpsuit and jingle bell-topped pixie hat. My mother got it for me with her green stamps! I carried that doll everywhere–until my mean brother destroyed it. I replaced it with a soft tiger stuffed toy named Sleepy! You’re so right, you love adult to wholeness!