Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Broadway, Brown Skin, and Bollywood Beauty: Kavi Sharma of 2023

On the corner of Broadway and Representation.

Happy Valentine's Day! Or Palentine's Day. Or Fuck James Cook Day. Or Discount Candy Eve. Or Halfway through February Day. or It's Still Black History Month, Run Me My Money. For me, it's the last day of the Chocolate Gauntlet, with tomorrow freeing me from the loosely defined fears of cocoa products lurking in the seasonal aisles until September rolls around. I made it, people!

It's also a month and a half--give or take a New Year's--since the newest Girl of the Year launched. Though I have a backlog of AG posts spanning to before the entire damn still ongoing pandemic and a whole word doc to organize the items in, it won't get any shorter if I don't try--key word, try--to stay on top of newer things. Like news of outgoing girls who have worbs.

Speaking of outgoing things, and I don't mean the character I'm about to discuss. Remember in 2021 when AG Seattle closed, and I told AG Houston to sleep with one eye open?

Yeah, about that.

Spotify, play Chopin's Death March.

In a move surprising both no one and some one, AG Houston got murked like Flash Player at the end of 2020. Not only did it close--yesterday, in fact! body's still cooling!--but so did AF San Francisco Bay Area, which I had never been to. AG Miami is also done; it closed back in Sept 2022. This leaves only five non-flagship stores now, one--still!--in Dallas. AG Houston's demise is because, along with "the stores are not moving product like they used to", the entire Memorial City Mall is getting refreshed into a new look. Since the buildings are going down, AG was like "oh look, a reason to exit strategy the store!" Retail stores: they ain't what they used to be. There's a reason I toy shop at Target. That reason is because it's the only place with a decent toy department that isn't Wally World.

RIP AG Houston, we hardly knew ye.

I also know about the something new coming on 2/22 that involves Historical Jewish Twins and skipping the actual good part of the '90s, but I'll get to that when it launches. Or five months later, who knows, I keep my own fucked up schedule around here. On the real, I'll try to get on top of it before the month ends, hopefully no more than two weeks after they launch. Key word hopefully. For now, we're giving Kavi her diamonds, before people get distracted. I have quite a bit to say about Claudie once I get into that post and how she got undercut by releases and still is being so.

Go to the woods!¹

Defying Gravity and Mediocrity with Kavi in 2023

And thus the Indians, theater kids, neurodivergents, and MG Mold lovers rejoiced.

Continuing the pattern AG's been doing of "maybe less white girls with confusing themes of farm life? allergies? many things as GotY" into 2023, the 2023 Girl of the Year is Kavi Sharma. She released on December 29th, 2022--they're just releasing them early now, it is what it is--and she's a big boost of representation and uniqueness in several ways.

First and most important of all, Kavi--short for Kavika--is South Asian. Specifically, Indian. And she's not like Sonali's² "companion to the white main, her mother is Indian but if you ask the workers in the store she's whatever" or even my sweet Naomi's "I made her half Indian later on", but Indian from the start, the focus of the story, and unambiguously Indian. She does traditional Indian dancing. Her grandmother is from India, and she has several members of her family living there. She's Hindu--and thus not Christian or implied to be, which would get her posts filtered on AG Fans for not being about Jesus as filtered through Mormons and fundies--and celebrates Holi and Diwali among other holidays. Kavi is All Indian, All The Time, and a representation of her culture that has been sorely lacking. See my talk earlier re: Sonali. More can be read here on the site: Why Kavi Matters. Stories, as I said years ago and learned in other places, are both windows and mirrors: Kavi not only represents Indian children--old and young who haven't seen themselves before in AG--but lets those of us who are not see and connect to them and expand our character relativity to more than just what we are. (Which is more a white person problem than PoC, because we've been expected to relate to the issues of white people in books and other media our whole lives.)

This just leaves modern Indigenous and MENA characters to cover, AG. Get to stepping on that. Kaya, Minuk, and Leyla can't be the only ones holding this tent up. The other two are Girls of Many Lands.

Secondly, Kavi covers a topic that hadn't been done yet: theatre. Not the stage crew nonsense I saw once. Stage crew isn't shiny. She's into musicals--and since she lives in Metuchen, New Jersey,³ she's close enough to NYC to attend Broadway plays and gets to see Wicked⁴ for her tenth birthday on Broadway. She does have dance components in her collection, but it's really just one, and it's part of her culture. It's not the "let's slap ballet on everyone who's been near a studio" that we were struggling through for a while there. Between ballet dancers and ballet flats, we were going through it in the mid to late 2010s. She also likes to write music, which was only touched on by Gabriela, and has a theatre set that isn't out here undercutting the first Black GotY. More on that later. AG is partnering with Camp Broadway, which makes theater arts more accessible for young people through theater-focused summer camps. Her second books should have her go to theatre summer camp. Do it, AG, don't be a coward.

Thirdly, Kavi has the brain worbs. That is, she's neurodivergent. It's not yet clarified in detail--more on why that is in a few paragraphs--but it's clear she has a form of ADHD, if not it outright. Her mind wanders, she taps and drums around on things and gets distracted in the middle of tasks, and she's often told to focus--she struggles to the point of grade issues. Her own father is called the absent-minded professor, and neurodivergency tends to be genetic. And in the Doylist as opposed to Watsonian, there's ADHD experts, Rae Jacobson and Allison Tyler, on her advisory board. So this means she's got the same issue I do--a person who is right now writing this blog post while running on a mix of Starbucks cold brew with oat milk I mixed at home, cup noodles, and looping Sam Smith's No God as an auditory stim. The Spotify algo would be a mess but I've already got it at the top of my On Repeat playlist so I can't break it more. More representation of brain diversity in the world, thanks!

And last but not least--but not as important--Kavi has the Marie-Grace face mold. The mold made a comeback in 2022 just in time for me to not be in the headspace to blog about it just yet. Look, I just made it to my September ArtSnacks here. Give me grace and space. I'll have more to stay about that in a post that I'm still working on, but here I'll point out the MG Mold is so far, the first and only mold to be retired and then come back into the rotation. Both devaluing all the people trying to make you pay too much for their ratty MGs and adding to the customization market.

I am thinking hard about getting her. Kavi, that is. MG is another topic. But not before March--because it won't be until March that her first book is released, and I insist on having her book with her so I can learn her whole story, not just a quick journal take on it.

...journal? Journal.

It's like a book! Except it's a journal.

AG, in a new strategy of "if you're going to treat them like packing material then we just won't put them in the box," has not released her first book yet. Instead, Kavi has a journal. It's highly illustrated with the same images in her first books, and made to look like a notebook, and I haven't read it because it only comes with the doll. I just said not until March. To add on, the upcoming twins also do not have books. According to the leaks, they too have journals. Journals: they're like books, but abridged even more than the historical abridged books were!

Why are we being given journals, instead of full books with the dolls anymore? It's likely a mix of children don't read like they used to, cost cutting measures in not having to put full cost books in with the dolls, and something else. But I'm going to blame the book pirates because I can and I hate book pirates. I hope something creative they worked on hard and put out into the world gets treated like crap, because people feel entitled to the work of artists and think we shouldn't get paid for the work we put in to entertain you. Art is one of the core creations we, as humans do and authors especially do not make tons of money.⁵ Good job, you did it by not reading the damn books.

Til then, we have excerpts.

Well, at least there's still books. The first chapter of It's Showtime, Kavi! is available on the website here; it also includes excerpts for Kira and Corrine.⁶ Enjoy this bit until you can get the whole book from your favorite bookseller--and not your Google Drive of thievery. I already banned one user for using book piracy to put data on the wiki and, as the Goofy meme goes, I'd fucking do it again. Buy the damn books. Go to the library. Use AG legitimate sources. Stop fucking authors over. Don't play in my face.

I'll happily say more on Kavi once I can book. I don't want to say things that are inaccurate to her without the full canon, after all. For now, let's talk shop.

As in, the stuff you can buy.

You're going to be--Pop. U. Lar~

Kavi and her Meet Outfit: Kavi comes with her hair pulled back in a half pony that hides her center part, brown eyes, brown skin, brown hair, painted eyelashes I have no beef with,⁷ a long sleeved lettuce edged mesh-and-solid multicolored print shirt, shiny silvery cargo pants, and pink tennis shoes with actual laces and not just elastic ones. And of course, panties. Remember, always assume panties. It's a cute outfit that fits her style--and unlike several other dolls I could name, has mix and match capabilities outside of buying a second set of accessories. The Lilac Dress era had us struggling, people. Also she, like Kailey and Joss, is not wearing her meet set on the cover of her book. Journal doesn't count except on the wiki. Don't play in my face.

Kavi's Accessories: Remember, before you leave the house, look in the mirror. Then put on three more accessories because Coco Chanel collaborated with Nazis. Kavi's extra stuff includes an elephant figurine, a purse to put it in, a bracelet, and a fuzzy pink bucket hat. We're bringing back bucket hats? Okay but we really need to pin the fronts up with big sunflowers. Bring back the 1994 aesthetic. There's also a planner but she has the brain worbs. We're not going to use that. It's a sketchbook/idea book now.

Kavi's Dog: Kavi's family has a pet dog named Scamper. Black and white, ears, four legs, attached leash, not like the new jointed ones. I'm honestly tired of pet dogs. Please, AG, can we get a cat again? We haven't had a cat as a pet for a GotY since Gabriela. Kira doesn't count. Her foster cats are in Michigan, not in her collection.⁸ There's only slightly less cats in homes percentage-wise as dogs. Give me the purr purr. Give me the scrungly baby. Give me the pitiful meow meow. Give me kitties.

For the culture.

Kavi's Bollywood Dance Costume: The only--and major--dance costume is a costume in the sense of "unique clothes people wear," not in the sense of Halloween outfit. Culture is not Costume. Kavi goes to Indian dance classes weekly, and later in the book/journal performs in a blue-and-red-and-gold outfit consisting of a top and skirt, bangles, a tikka (head decor) and dupatta (headscarf), and bindi stickers. And useless nail stickers I will replace with the polish I own and stick on earrings which will be promptly be replaced by my hand drill.⁹ I think it's Kathak dance, but I need to do more research. I love this and when I order Kavi I'm going to order this outfit with her. I might order two so Sonali can perform with her. Three if I decide to let Naomi dance too. I'd also want to see if it's proper to add ghungroos to the set. It's a gorgeous set and here we respect cultures. Appreciation not appropriation. Team in Kansas City, take note.

Tunes and tapping to stim.

Kavi's Performance Outfit: Does Kavi do a performance in this somewhere? Maybe? All I know right now is she wears it on the cover of the first book, so I can't slot it into her collection just yet. Sparkly top, pink slacks, ankle-turning platforms, silver barrette that may shed glitter, and faux fur coat. Fur coats are the style of the time now, but they're faux fur. Which is plastic. Boo. But since the coat is the only part I hate, we'll consider it. Maybe pile. We'd replace the coat.

Kavi's Songwriting Accessories: Kavi makes music and so does the keyboard in her set! Batteries not included. Always assume batteries not included unless they're the small button ones. Along with neon keys on a stand we've got a laptop, drum pad, clear plastic desk, headphones, mic, and a stool to sit on. It costs as much as a doll does now, though. which makes me back away from it. I'd rather buy shoes.

The blood rushes to my head to make me feel.

Kavi's Yoga Outfit: Hey, AG Oldies, remember when AG Fans shit their delicate white pre-Mattel bloomers over the Warm Up Outfit and Mat because talking about yoga promoted satanism? We're still doing that, and we're doing it for the GotY! I hope the delicate eight-year-old children they used to oppress PoC and queer people don't speak to them anymore. Also I got a Keep Calm and X mail in Current Era Twenty-Twenty-Three, people. AG update your memes. Top, wrap, leggings, headband. Kavi, according to the book/journal, uses yoga to help her focus and deal with the brainworbs. And hopefully some meds, too. Or at least lots of coffee. I'll get it--maybe not from jump, but before the end of 2023--but wish it wasn't the colors it was. Personal thing. It'll go with my other yoga sets.

Kavi's Yoga Accessories: Sold separately this time instead of with the set, here's the extras: mat, bag, poses poster, book that I need to add to the wiki, towel, and a faux bottle of essential oil that will not in fact heal you from covid and cancer. I'll probably toss them in with the yoga outfit.

Fuck it, we stage.

Kavi's Backstage Set: Oh look, a showpiece set that isn't 500+ goddamn dollarydoos. Maybe y'all was asking too much for vans, AG. Kavi is backstage at--school? See this is why I need books--and prepping for a show with a lot of stuff that I'm not about to list out. The big things are a vanity, a shelf, a whole big stage frame, and a outfit cart with clothes; everything else is small and fidgety and you can go look at the wiki link.¹⁰ As for clothes, we've got a whole entire skirt, jumpsuit, jacket, a hairclip, and a pair of shoes. It's a lot, and extra clothes are not enough for me to take this much space up when I could get a bakery instead.

Storing the outfits.¹¹

Kavi's Backstage Trunk: Kavi's trunk has all the things a girl needs to perform, I suppose. A jacket and skirt, tights, a leotard, gloves, shoes and a hat, a boa, and stickers to put outside it.

--hey, we did this with Marisol! Down to the extra outfit included in the set, pretty much. But the current target age wasn't even thought of when Marisol came out so I'll allow it. At $125 it's more than a doll and I'd really have to think about it or see why it's worth it. An outfit isn't enough. I could get something else. I already own a trunk. Two of them. Including Gabi's. Maybe to no pile.

Bedtime for brown girls.

Kavi's Shining Star Pajamas: We all go to bed. Kavi goes to bed. Kavi goes to bed in shiny blue pajamas with a rainbow star across the chest, shiny pants, and the trend of ugly fuzzy slippers I refuse to enjoy. They look like someone mashed all the play-doh together and then turned it into shoes. Do they suck? yes. Do they suck hard enough to ruin the desire to get some pjs? No. I made it through the years of capri leggings for damn near everyone. We were struggling. I'll knit her some nice house socks.

*~*~*

And that's all of Kavi's collection! Until either the late spring or early summer, when we'll get one more outfit and accessory set. Watch this space. In another post. Hey, it took less than two months, we're taking our wins where we can eke them out.

I am hoping to get on top of things, both in the Retrospecticus and other topics. Key word hoping. I'll try and cover new 2023/end of year 2022 items in another post between now and when AG once again tries to persuade people to buy two dolls from the same time period again.

I personally think they're needed as characters for the rumored representation sorely needed, but also don't have much hope of two dolls moving a split time period collection well. How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man? I know it's been 10 years but it didn't go so great in 1853, I don't think it will in 1999. Seriously, you skipped the best part of the 90s, the creamy middle where Mariah Carey released Daydream. Y2K styles gave people eating disorders.

PS. I said I'd let you know when I was 2200 weeks old and I turned that in December last year! Now let's go for 2300.

--Neth

¹ Speaking of which: I saw Into the Woods live at the 5th Avenue Theatre recently, and it was all I wanted in a live performance and then some! Masked up, of course. We don't breathe community air in this house. Also while I have you in the footnotes, if you're annoyed by me referencing musicals then you should probably go fuck off and read something else.

² A lot--a lot--of news articles pointed out that she was first, if not the first main like Kavi. And linked to Sonali's article in the process. You love to see it.

³ The city did a celebration for her. Neat!

⁴ I saw it years ago on tour at the Paramount. We got super good seats at the time. I sincerely doubt I'll have seats that good again for some time.

⁵ We can't all be castle-dwelling antisemitic anti-woman TERFs who threaten people with UK laws to silence critique of their ugly actions with their billions and force empty apologies from trans people while simultaneously whinging that they're the ones being silenced, ramping up the continued hatred of trans people in the world. Wheesh already. Wheesh forever. You are on the wrong side of history. Use superglue as chapstick.

⁶ The other GotY have their books as well on the site. Here's everyone from Lindsay to McSeattle, and here's Saige to Joss. It has the entire first (or only) book for each of them. There's also, if you look around the AG site, excerpts for any books available to buy and full first books for characters that don't have books available. AG literally is offering you full text books without being a dirty thief through their free access online book shop. Be better.

⁷ More on eyelash issues later. I'm not huffed but some people are. Anywhosy.

⁸ If I had a nickle for every GotY who lived in Michigan but spent their entire series in a non-US country, I'd have two nickles. Which isn't much but it's strange that it's happened twice, right?

⁹ AG now charges $18 for ear piercing, dolls can't be returned if they get it, and there's almost no earrings to buy anyways. I save money by owning a drill and/or using a hot doll needle.

¹⁰ See that spray bottle on the shelf? It comes with this set, but is empty. AG sells braid spray and wants you to buy it. Don't buy it freestanding from AG. They're ripping you off charging 6 bucks for 1.35 oz. Go to the black hair store and buy a bottle there which'll have 12 oz for the same or even less. I fussed about it on IG. Listen to Auntie Neth. Or don't, I'm only trying to save you money.

¹¹ There's no pretty promo images after this, so stock it is. My nearest store is on the other end of the West Coast.