Playing with Dolls

Dolls seem to be a ubiquitous feature of American girlhood, cherished objects played with by girls from many different cultures over many centuries. These three photos show American Indian girls playing with dolls in the early twentieth century. Figure 1 was originally captioned “Both love their dollies but handle them somewhat differently—Mary May and a little Hopi girl down at the Hopi Village [northeastern Arizona], January 1926.” Two little girls of about the same age are posing with their dolls in front of an adobe building. “Mary May”—wearing a dress, stockings, and boots—sits erect on a stone bench, gently holding her “dollie” in her left hand, and smiles at the camera. The unidentified “Hopi girl” slouches next to Mary May, her bare legs and feet thrust out in front of her, her “dollie” tied nonchalantly onto her back with a blanket. She stares sullenly at the camera.

Figure 2 is an undated and uncaptioned photograph showing several Mescalero Apache girls in southeastern New Mexico sitting on the ground, making miniature tepees and wickiups (brush shelters). One girl, on the far left, has propped her baby doll up in a cradleboard, a traditional infant carrier used by Indian mothers in many different Indian groups. These girls all wear white dresses with the same kinds of stockings and boots worn by Mary May. Their uniforms suggest that they are all attendees at a federal Indian school, probably the wood frame building in the background.

Figure 3 shows a group of American Indian girls at the Santa Fe Indian School—a federal Indian boarding school—in northern New Mexico around 1904. Like the Mescalero girls in the previous photo, they all wear uniforms but instead of playing on the bare ground, they all stand or sit on wooden chairs or on a blanket. They hold their dolls on their laps or rock them in miniature cradles. They also have other accessories for their dolls—tiny chairs and tables.

Since many of us—no matter what our cultural background—played with dolls, perhaps it is easy to feel a sense of kinship with these girls. Maybe we feel a fond nostalgia for our own childhood. Conversely, these photographs might bring back less fond memories of pressures to conform to proper notions of womanhood.

Figure 1.

“Mary May and a little Hopi girl down at the Hopi Village, January 1926.” Courtesy of the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. NAU. PH.99.54.166 (Item 7165).

These photographs invite us to consider two things:

• • the gendered and racialized messages the makers and distributors of the dolls intended for these girls to experience and learn through playing with dolls.

• • the meanings that the girls gave to their playing with dolls.

Figure 2.

Several Indian girls making miniature tepees and wickiups with a frame wooden structure in the background. Courtesy of the New Mexico State University Library, Archives and Special Collections, MS 110 RG 81–38.

On the surface, we might think of dolls as innocent items meant to entertain children, typically (in our own era) girls. Don’t parents give dolls to children simply to amuse them? And don’t dollmakers construct dolls merely to fulfill a demand (and in the case of mass production, to turn a profit)? For many decades now, feminist scholars have read more into the purpose of dolls. Some have critiqued doll culture for instilling restrictive gender roles or promoting unhealthy body images for girls. In these scholarly works, dolls lose their innocence; they become a primary way that parents socialize girls into expected gender roles and even discipline female bodies. As one scholar puts it, many “feminist scholars have interpreted dolls as agents of a hegemonic patriarchal culture in which girls were passive consumers.” The Barbie doll and its mass marketing in the post-WWII era has particularly caught the attention of feminist researchers (and activists).¹

Figure 3.

Students at the Santa Fe Indian School, ca. 1904. Courtesy of the Palace...