A few weeks ago, an unsolicited American Girl Doll catalog arrived in my mailbox, featuring what I found to be fairly ground-breaking accessories: A hearing aid; an allergy-free lunch, a wheelchair. While researching how long these options had been around, I stumbled into a rabbit-hole-esque YouTube phenomenon: The…

To tie in with the Met's upcoming Costume Intitute show, Vogue produced an editorial (allegedly) offering modern takes on classic American fashion. Vogue calls them "historic archetypes of our national style." We call them reductive stereotypes of bygone ages.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the New York Post's Andrea Peyser, she is a very furious person who, today, turned the force of her rage on the latest American Girl Doll - a topical doll:

The new American Girl, WWI-era Lower-East-Side-dwelling Jewish doll Rebecca Rubin, unfortunately has the same name as a serial arsonist wanted by the F.B.I. "We feel confident that people will clearly see this as nothing more than what it is - an unrelated coincidence," says a spokeswoman. [NYT]

Meet Rebecca Rubin, the first historical Jewish American Girl doll, whose story will introduce young readers to Russian-Jewish immigrant life amongst the tenement houses of the Lower East Side of New York City in 1914.

Like a sorority girl who has stayed too long at the kegger, Barbie's stock continues to drop.

• R.I.P. American Girls original, Samantha Parkington. May you rest in peace with the other overpriced, historically accurate plastic toys in the sky.
• Another American icon on the decline: Hugh Hefner's bunnies and balls are musty.
• Speaking of old balls, John McCain mocked women's health in an apocryphal argument against…