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Alyx Chandler​
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Girl of the Year™
Like any woman, I could use
a makeover, rock a redesign:
widen my eye size, get my
sclerae to supershine white.
At the American Girl Doll
Place, I gaze into hazel resin.
Get a look-a-like! Bubble-letters
glow with warnings: glaucoma
is normal, as are refitted limbs.
At The Doll Hospital, head
replacement is expensive, but
worth it for most girls, the rep
explains. Am I most girls? Lashes
clumped in glue, fake-pretty.
Gramma clasps plastic hands,
smooths the Sparkly Concert
Outfit—$48 for a foot of fabric.
You only live once, she sighs,
joining the ribbon of families
inching toward checkout,
credit cards beaming. Girls
accessorize based on price:
a not-too-short jean skirt
looks hot on every torso.
Add a star-squad tumbler. Fishtail
braids. Rainbow heart sunglasses.
Transfixed, I take the escalator
up, recall that year the executives
voted for panties to be stitched on
permanently. Unsew! the Internet
threatened, and bare bodies were
back. A girl begs for razzle-dazzle
on her nails, cosmic grape streaks
in her hair, but the stylist reminds
her: makeovers are for American
Girl Dolls only. A beaten-up Bratz
can’t be beautified here. She pivots:
glitter-bomb drinks. Strawberry-
kiwi candy bracelets. Goody bags
of butterfly hair clips. The Doll
Café sneaks her cake bites until
frosting purples her loose baby
teeth. I learn that every doll can read.
“The Feelings Book” assures
me I’m a blushing beauty, not
mentally ill. When I can afford
to, I feel deeply. Gramma agrees:
medication is unnecessary for
vinyl heads. Cloned in rows of
plastic boxes, one doll reigns blonde
and iridescent: Girl of the Year™ —
her feet in platformed sandals, waist
petite, Summer McKinney™ seduces
customers to buy frosted pupcakes,
her mixing bowl a shiny rose quartz
with three tiny eggs a free-range brown.
For her small business to succeed, she
needs all of it. This is the year of things,
like every year before. Each granddaughter
is a doll reborn in a mall this big.
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Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Fellow and taught poetry. She now lives in Chicago and works as a Poet in Residence with Chicago Poetry Center. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Poetry Anthology, North American Review, EPOCH, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere at alyxchandler.com.