Penna Dexter

On a recent Saturday, I traipsed up our attic stairs to retrieve my daughter’s childhood American Girl doll along with the accompanying furniture and doll clothes. It’s time, we thought, to pass the doll along to my 5-year-old granddaughter. Imagine our surprise when, just a day or so later, we began to see critiques of the brand American Girl appearing online concerning the release of its most recent “Smart Girl’s Guide” addressing the topic: “Body Image.”

The Christian Post published a piece in which Anne Young, a mother of 2 young daughters describes a trip to the American Girl store where she noticed the “Body Image” book and paged through it.

I remember reading the book that came with Samantha, my daughter’s early 20th-century American Girl doll, and perusing a description of other books that were available. Each book included a doll’s character in a story that taught facts about the era that doll depicted. The stories described how young women navigated the challenges women faced during their particular era. I thought the books advanced a feminist agenda so I chose to let my daughter enjoy her doll without the books.

That tendency to indoctrinate has only increased. As Anne Young points out, American Girl books address “topics that are relevant to girls as they move into their middle school years.” In that sense, the Body Image guidebook is relevant. But its message is “deceptive and dangerous.” In her article titled, “American Girl Wants To Trans Your Daughter,” Anne Young says “the book holds nothing back in teaching girls how to change their sex by seeking puberty blockers, making permanent changes to their bodies, and going behind their parents’ backs to organizations that can ‘help’ them.”

This is utterly disappointing. But we shouldn’t be surprised. American Girl’s parent company, Mattel, released the ‘transgender Barbie’ last spring. This company offers dolls to delight our little girls. Then it tells them how to destroy their bodies.

It’s sickening.