Brittany Tucker reduces ambient, ghostly spirits down to an index in conversation with her younger self. The caring parents and Barbie doll exist as figments of themselves and therefore, cannot exert influence over her. Tucker captures the most simplistic and least harmful properties of whiteness and depicts those characters by reversing historically dehumanizing minstrel iconography.

The child’s innocent gaze is awash with a far-offness, disinterested in the loving characters that watch her. Her delicate appearance denotes a naivete and purity of her own self awareness expressed in the flowers on her shirt. American Girl, Doll can be examined as the moment when a Black child becomes aware of the white, nuclear family dynamic and the cis-hetero item of worship that cannot represent her complex values. Tucker removes the sharpness of white hegemony and erodes the psychological burden placed upon the impressionable Black child. Phantoms of white consumer culture linger but do not exert any influence over the American Girl.

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