Doll Mail with Chelsey Weber-Smith

chelsey sounds exactly like the skeleton from the ispy spooky mansion video game

SUCH a nice rope to hang onto.

Has anyone brought up Kira Cousins’s fake pregnancy and the Reborn Doll???

I feel that “mannequin parts nailed to the walls of the psyche”

I remember exactly where I was when I first tried a milkbone.

Another gem of an episode from Sarah and Chelsey!! Smiled the whole way through!! Laughed out loud several times but especially when Chelsey said “idiot” in reference to Brian Orser’s two small mistakes and when they said Molly is “like Jan Brady” !!

Did Molly have a victory garden? Does anyone else recollect that?

Patty Reed’s Doll is a children’s book about the Donner Party.

I also got the worry dolls in the 90's and I'm also in Vancouver BC!

An episode about Jerry Springer would be amazing

Speaking of summer books, is that a hint that we’re getting another summer book club series? Those are my favorite! ❤️

I just finished the Stephen-King- adjacent book, King Sorrow! Written by his son, Joe Hill. Highly recommend. It has been my favorite read this year.

I don't have a good doll story to share, but I do have two weird *puppet* memories that feel adjacent. 1) In the sixth grade, prompted by The Smart One In My Friend Group, we put on a Tiananmen Square puppet show. Did the rest of us know anything about it? No. Was it offensive? Oh, definitely. Did we use a school bus pencil topper we got from the school store as our tank? Yes. 2) For literal decades my family has been trying to track down whatever happened to these Three Stooges puppets my uncles had, to the point that my mom once asked a psychic if she knew where they were. My parents recently re-opened a well on their property that had been sealed for like 50 years and when they told me about it, they immediately said "No puppets."

I just bought the American Girl coffee table book, so maybe they get into it, but I expect they just felt like PATRIOTISM was enough for Molly, her tap dance outfit was stars and stripes.

as ever, Sarah’s King recommendations are absolutely perfect

Subbed to the Patreon for the first doll episode, here for the second. (I didn't remember to e-mail in about my doll experiences, so I'll have to do that for the next call in for Doll Mail.) Loved the episode, including the memories/riffs on American Girl and the stories of people making their own dolls. I do have to step in and correct this common mistake people remember incorrectly about American Girls, both as a Black woman and an American Girl researcher (and thus an American girl pedant). The dolls from the 90s that are assumed to be designed to "look like you" weren't actually customizable. People who bought the dolls could pick from a pool of dolls, and a lot of them had features that many white people could pick from to match them. But--for example--if you were a darker skinned Black kid looking at the catalog in 1995, you only had 2 dolls to pick from at the start. Latina girls had about 3 that were medium toned. And the Asian girls had just one total face mold that was theirs to pick from (who now goes for stupid amounts of money online because she was the only doll with that face style). You can see the first available ones here from this 1995 catalog scan on page 64: https://toysandcollectiblesmuseum.org/aghd1995 It was in 2017 that the company under Mattel released a line where buyers can pick several of the features, but those are more expensive than the main modern line dolls which still can't be customized, and the feature pool is still limited because if a feature goes away, you just can't have it. The reason I feel like I have to correct that mistake when I see it is because, while I was slightly older than most AG fans when the modern ones came out, I remember my heartbreak at seeing that only two looked anything like me and felt disappointed that the "white" dolls were plentiful but Black girls like me had so few options. Also to help out your memory: Kirsten is Swedish and from the 1850s.

PROVIDENCE MALL APARTMENT SHOUT OUT

There is a great kids book called Donner Dinner Party by Nathan Hale! But its a graphic novel, so there's still room for a Dear America style 😁

I really enjoyed this. When I was growing up I primarily played with stuffed animals (a nonbinary trait of mine imo) and a couple of American girls (Josephina and Kaya), but when my mom found out American Girl has connections to Planned Parenthood, she switched me to Violet, a Life of Faith doll, and the accompanying books. 💀 Great clothing options, but the historical (Christian) fiction didn't deal very well with topics like slavery :/

So excited for the first letter to be about my local museum and specifically about the coffin dolls, one of my favourite objects in there! On the subject of Burke and Hare - as far as we know they never robbed graves before falling into serial killing. It seems a tenant in their lodging house died of natural causes, they made good money selling his body and temptation overtook them. "Burking" was indeed 19th-century slang for smothering someone, specifically by placing your hand over their nose and mouth. This was how Burke was said to murder the victims, as he had unusually large hands (I'm unclear if this is factual or part of monstering him in myth-making). If either of you either come back to Edinburgh, see if you can visit the anatomical museum where his skeleton remains on display almost 200 years after his hanging and subsequent medical dissection.

Chelsey episode are my favorite and this one was so good! Also...not a doll but does anyone remeber the weird 90s toy named Big John? It was a toilet with a face..i think the trailer is on YouTube.

Kit was my favorite American Girl Doll!!

You (or fellow comment readers) might be interested in a wonderful book: American Girl Anthology: Finding Ourselves in the Pleasant Company Universe. Talks a lot about identity - both of the dolls and of ourselves as doll havers. Also how to love something critically under capitalism.

Why is everyone so hard on Molly, she was my girl!!

Sarah x Chelsey crossovers are always my fav!! The coziest, sweetest, loveliest conversations in my opinion ❤️☀️

Sarah, are you ever going back to co-hosting You Are Good? I love both that show and this one, but there was just something about you and Alex talking about your feelings about movies.

Love this and love when Chelsey co-hosts. Going to drop a book reco here. I'm deeply enjoying Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams) by Anita Heiss. I feel like this is a perfect book for YWA listeners.

Every corn cob is a glamorous doll!

🤣🤣🤣🤣Molly is the Jan Brady of American Girl Dolls🤣🤣🤣🤣

Please read The Mennyms by Sylvia Waugh, if you have not already! It is a strange and charming series and listening to your evocative description of different doll faces and construction made me think of it.

This was the delight I needed this week/year/presidential term! "It makes decluttering very difficult" 😆 Also been thinking about Flowers in the Attic lately! Must be the moon phase... Lastly, I immediately knew the first book quote was from Little House in the Big Woods because I loved that book soooo much. I grew up in a very rural area in Colorado, along a small dirt road and my sister and I made sock dolls stuffed with our cattle dogs' hair!!

Re: Burke and Hare- After Dark , a podcast by History Hit has done a few really fantastic shows about them and their medical and spooky legacy! (I’m an avid listener of all of the History Hit podcasts as well as the ‘You Are Good Extended Universe’. I celebrate both of your whole catalogs!

I really appreciate the Dear America segment because I read those + I Survived religiously as a preteen. I have a history degree and work at a museum now and I think they had a part in that. I'm glad they hold up because I really would recommend them. :-)

More doll episodes! I love them.

Glad to be listening in the morning as that first image is pure nightmare fuel.

The speed at which I gasped "DOODLE BEAR". Memory unlocked

This was excellent. I could listen to you talk to each other all day. Thank you! I grew up in a conservative household where traditional gender roles kept me from ever venturing towards my sister's Barbies. I do have memories when I was young enough to be encouraged to enjoy stuffed things. My older brother and I had stuffed Bert and Ernie dolls. I slept with Ernie which totally fits in retrospect. We also had a doll named Chubbles who looked like an Ewok ripoff and had a 9v battery that made their eyes light up. They made a glorious noise I cant describe in words. It was a motion detector, and as my brother and I became obsessed with spies and guns we would set Chubbles by doors to alert us of bad guys roaming our house. If my dad noticed, it probably annoyed him, but maybe he noticed how "manly" our play was. It did let us keep our doll longer, which led to some cuddle sneaks for the gentler me :)

Yay, looks like fun! I really, really don’t want to offend just share my opinion as a longtime listener, Chelsey Weber-Smith is not my *favorite* co-host. Would love more variety in guest co-hosts versus another American Hysteria crossover. But I’m just one person listening and no one has to listen to me and I hope Chelsey never reads this bc I don’t want to offend and I hope Chelsey and Sarah and all the other listeners have a beautiful day, month, season!!