Gwen, the Homeless American Girl

It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Amanda Peyser [1], cranky-pants doyenne of the New York Post, but it must be said: Gwen, the new “homeless” doll from American Girl [2], is at best a head-scratcher and at worst a horribly offensive cultural trainwreck.

I don’t quite agree with Peyser on Gwen being a tool of political indoctrination. But selling a “homeless” doll for $95—without any of that money specifically going to homeless charities [3]—is more than a little obscene. It’s also a bizarre choice for a company that makes its bones selling meticulously crafted clothes, furniture, and trinkets for each of its characters. Not a lot of accessory potential here. (Gwen does come with a “a pink headband that doubles as a belt.” Very thrift-store chic!)

Gwen is actually a sidekick in the American Girl-verse: The main attraction is the limited-edition Chrissa [4], a fourth-grader who moves to a new town and has to deal with a bunch of bullies. As far as I can tell, Gwen is there mostly to show how open-minded and generous the non-homeless Chrissa is.*

Given the extensive research that went into creating Rebecca Rubin, the Jewish American Girl [5] that debuted this spring, I’m surprised at this gaucheness. On the other hand, AG has finally answered my nine-year-old dreams: Chrissa’s other sidekick is a (presumably) South Asian girl named Sonali [6], who has long beautiful hair and, thankfully, does not come with a sari.

* Which, incidentally, reminds me of the funniest, most brilliantly subtle bit of undermining I’ve ever read in a profile: In a 2005 Elle feature on Emmy Rossum [7], the Phantom of the Opera star is quoted as saying, “[My] parents taught me to be a very kind person, to be compassionate. That's something that I have in common with Christine, something I could tap into. At Spence, one of my friends was a girl who was handicapped. And I have a friend who had a craniofacial deformity [like the Phantom].”