Dear American Girl Magazine,

When I was seven years old and reading your articles about how to set up a lemonade stand, what to keep in my tree fort, and how best to decorate sidewalks with various shades of chalk, I always had a vague sense you were writing to a different audience. No one in my neighborhood would bother to buy lemonade, and I never had a tree house. The nearest sidewalk was at least a mile away. Did that mean I wasn't an American girl? No, I never questioned my citizenship or cultural status, but I did believe your world was fictional.

Then I moved to Madison. In this place, families ride their bikes together, and children walk home from school in safety, and I passed at least two lemonade stands when I was out for a walk yesterday (a walk on sidewalks, no less). People play frisbee in the park and have tree fortresses in their backyards and jump on pogo sticks in their driveways. Even the streets are crisscrossed like an apple pie crust.

I officially live in the fictitious neighborhood you always assumed I lived in two decades ago, and I'm happy to see children living out the American Girl ideal, but there's something still a bit unsettling in seeing what I had heretofore assumed was fictional suddenly come real.

Does its reality imply that subrural east-coasters bereft of sidewalks, tree houses, and lemonade stands aren't as American as their midwestern counterparts? What does your magazine say today, I wonder. Do you write for all American Girls, or just the ones who live where you do? It's no surprise to me that you're based in Middleton, WI, just six miles or so from Madison. What of the country girls? The suburbanites? The inner-city dwellers? What about the American Girls living abroad with parents who are missionaries, ambassadors, or teachers?

I'm delighted to find myself in a lovely neighborhood today, but living this out has made me wonder what you're up to now as a magazine. Maybe I'll dust off Molly (yes, I'm from the era when the dolls were all from a specific "back then") and pick up the latest copy of American Girl to see whether anything has changed.

Hugs & kisses,
B