American Girl’s Politicized Product Lines Began Long Before Its Latest Gender-Bending Book

The popular doll company, American Girl, recently released a new book “A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image,” containing controversial advice promoting puberty blockers to prepubescent girls. Rather than teaching its target audience of girls older than 10 to accept the natural progression of female puberty, the text states, “You can appreciate your body and everything it allows you to experience and still want to change certain things about it.”

Outraged parents claim the book’s description of hormone suppressants as “medicine” doctors can prescribe to provide uncomfortable tweens “…more time to think about their gender identity” falsely characterizes the irreversible treatment as temporary, failing to convey the permanence of such choices to those who lack a comprehensive understanding of puberty itself.

The legal demarcation between childhood and adulthood exists because there is a societal consensus that children are not developmentally equipped to make life-altering decisions. However, there has been increasing initiative in the United States to transfer the authority to make significant medical decisions to minors. This is exemplified on page 95 of the book, which provides resources for young girls to subvert the control of their parents to pursue transgender medical interventions.

Author Mel Hammond’s 96-page illustrated handbook is latest addition to American Girl’s long-running “Smart Girls Guide” series that emerged in the early 2000s. The series focused on topics exclusive to girlhood, such as friendship troubles, starting middle school, and knowing what to say. “The Care and Keeping of You” was the original American Girl puberty book, objectively explaining these physical changes through a lens of female empowerment. The illustrated cover of three young girls in towels is etched into the minds of millennial women, who relied on this guidebook to navigate the awkward stages of metamorphosis.

Over time, many books in the “Smart Girls Guide” series were republished to reflect changes in American culture. “A Smart Girl’s Guide to the Internet” (2009) was retitled to “A Smart Girl’s Guide: Digital World” (2017). “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Boys“ (2001) was revamped as “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Crushes“ (2020) to include homosexual relationships. “A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image“ (2022) replaced “The Care and Keeping of You” (1998). Gender-bending was not presented as an option in the 1998 puberty guide.

Dolls of American History

American Girl established itself as a brand based on a premise identifiable by its nomenclature. Founded by Pleasant Rowland in 1986, the company started out selling 18-inch dolls reflective of critical periods in American history. Each doll came dressed in clothing reflective of their designated era, accompanied by a book telling the story of the character’s experience as a young girl growing up during historical circumstances.

American Girl’s original stories focused on the personal struggles of young girls in history, but this literature did not attempt to equate these struggles to the triumphs of notable historical figures. These books were educational tools that humanized people of the past and broadened the reader’s perspective. Young girls could visualize historical eras because they could easily

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