My Secret Life as a Reporter for “Doll Reader” Magazine

As a women’s studies major and Very Serious Journalist, I thought I had nothing to learn from people who obsessed over expensive children’s toys. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Illustration by Ellen Surrey

Richard Simmons’ cheek is surprisingly rough.

That was the first thought that registered as the fitness guru pulled me in for a spontaneous embrace. I guess I’d assumed his skin would feel as soft as the silky short shorts he wore in my mom’s Sweatin’ to the Oldies videos, not the pumice-like cheek that scraped mine as he squealed at making my acquaintance.

I was attending my first doll convention as an employee of Doll Reader magazine, and meeting Simmons, an uber-collector with his own line of figurines, was one of the job’s rites of passage.

I was 24 and self-important, impatient for my “real” career to begin. I didn’t want to be excited about doing anything at a doll magazine. I needed the paycheck, but I considered the job beneath me.

Yet Richard Simmons was kind and joyful, and so were the other people I encountered that day at the doll fair. Maybe, it dawned on me ... maybe I was seeing this job, and my life, all wrong.

Doll Reader was a so-called “enthus…