December 6, 2022 – Alex Hammer Dailymail
- A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image, gives advice to girls as young as three years old on how to change their gender by asking doctors for puberty blockers
- A passage in the book advises: ‘If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes’
- It also provides a list of resources for organizations the children can turn to ‘if you don’t have an adult you trust’
- Parents have since slammed the book’s contents as ‘deceptive and dangerous
- 96-page book – billed as a ‘guide’ – is marketed to girls aged between three and 12
The popular American Girl doll brand is facing backlash for pushing children as young as three years old into changing their gender.
A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image, contains lines that give advice to prepubescents on how to change their gender – without their guardians’ blessing. Parents have since slammed the book’s contents as ‘deceptive and dangerous.
A passage in the book – marketed to girls aged between three and 12 advises: ‘If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.’
It also provides a list of resources for organizations the children can turn to ‘if you don’t have an adult you trust’.
The book, penned by resident American Girl author Mel Hammond, is currently available on shelves in bookstores across the country and on the company’s website.
The 96-page handbook is marketed to girls aged three to 12, and tells what gender expression is – and tells them that the way in which they can show their gender is through clothes and behavior
The book also tells children as young as three: ‘If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity’
The release of the book comes amid a wave of increasingly woke content from the American Girl brand.
Earlier this year, its parent company Mattel, recently put a transgender Barbie doll on the market. Before that, American Girl, which sells more than 30million dolls a year, shilled an Asian doll when anti-Asian hate crimes were skyrocketing across the US.
The company has yet to comment on the contentious content.
In the book, it normalizes being transgender, and pushes children to use puberty blockers.
It read: ‘Parts of your body may make you feel uncomfortable and you may want to change the way you look,’ one excerpt deemed problematic by parents online reads, before asserting ‘That’s totally OK!’
It goes on to advise children: ‘You can appreciate your body for everything it allows you to experience and still want to change certain things about it.’
On the very same page, the book promotes the use of puberty blockers, telling girls to seek them out from their doctor if they feel confused about their gender but are not physically ready to undergo hormone therapy.
The book then tells readers that ‘if you don’t have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you. Turn to the resources on page 95 for more information.’
Parents have since expressed outrage over the book’s contents, with one mom saying that it is using the guise of being just another educational companion to tween girl to convey ‘deceptive and dangerous’ messages that convince girls to question their bodies.
She added that the company is ‘stripping away all innocence’ with the book’s content.
Meanwhile, the book’s resident writer and editor graduated from university in 2014, and lists on her website that some of her ‘favorite things are trees, rainbows, and dairy-free ice cream.’
Hammond, who lists her pronouns as ‘she/her’ on her LinkedIn profile, started working for the company in 2019, holding only one job at a small software company in her hometown of Wisconsin.
In her bio, she writes that she enjoys working at American Girl, which is also based in Wisconsin, citing how ‘last year for my birthday, my coworkers bought me a two-pound tub of rainbow marshmallows – which I named Marsh.’
The writer – whose oeuvre consists of the book in question and two others penned over the past two year – earned her master’s degree in children’s literature at Kansas State, where she says she ‘studied misplaced and giant food in picture books.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to American Girl for comment.
American Girl’s New ‘Woke’ Book About Gender Identity Has Parents Fuming
By Dana McKay
Dec 8, 2022 – Dana McKay WFLA News Radio
American Girl is in hot water with some parents over a new book about body image that also addresses gender identity and suggests puberty blockers.
The Daily Mail shared excerpts from the book, entitled A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image: How to love yourself, live life to the fullest, and celebrate all kinds of bodies, which is targeted for girls age 8 through 11.
“Your gender expression can be feminine, masculine, or somewhere in between — and it might change! Maybe you’ll experiment with bright dresses and long, feminine hairstyles. Or you might try baggy shorts, plaid shirts, and a buzzed haircut. Your gender expression should make you feel at home in your body.”
“Parts of your body may make you feel uncomfortable and you may want to change the way you look. … ‘That’s totally OK!”
“If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity.”
“You can appreciate your body for everything it allows you to experience and still want to change certain things about it.”
Parents have taken to Twitter to express their outrage about the book.
Parents are also upset because the book encourages children to talk to an organization if they don’t trust their parents.
“If you don’t have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you. Turn to page 95 for more information.”
Other parents are applauding American Girl for addressing these issues and some of the reviews of the book on Amazon are very positive.
“I gave this book to my daughter to read independently after I read it myself. I told her to come to me with any questions she has. She has asked me a few things, specifically the gender identity. However, the book made these difficult conversations so much easier to have. I don’t think this is a one and done sort of topic or book though. When discussing these types of things, provide kids with a variety of resources.”
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