I didn’t really want to discuss the ‘homeless AG doll’ controversy since I don’t like to rant about AG stuff on this blog. However, after seeing a couple of misinformed blog posts around the internet, I wanted to set the record straight for any of the followers on this blog (or anyone who just happens to come across it).
If you read the mini-article from 2009, it discusses the controversy over Gwen, a doll who came out alongside GOTY Chrissa. Chrissa’s story was all about bullying, and for the first time AG tried to sell 3 dolls at once with a Chrissa doll, a Sonali doll (Sonali being one of Chrissa’s bullies until she became nicer), and a Gwen doll (Gwen being one of Chrissa’s friends and also a bully victim).
In the middle of one of Chrissa’s books, Gwen reveals that she was homeless. Note the past tense. Gwen and her mom used to be homeless, but they found help and now have a home. A lot of people seemed to have forgot that particular detail, because this caused enough controversy to get misinformed on the news.
I recall seeing a forum post wondering why AG didn’t release Addy’s slave dress or Nellie’s servant dress for sale. It’s because that those outfits both represented incredibly negative parts of the girls’s lives. No matter how much the AG company sells out they would never try to romanticize or capitalize on such terrible events, so why on Earth would they try to make money off a girl who was still homeless, something Gwen isn’t?
