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Why an 11-year-old girl’s campaign for a new American Girl doll matters

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Why an 11-year-old girl’s campaign for a new American Girl doll matters

Why an 11-year-old girl’s campaign for a new American Girl doll matters

Since 1986, American Girl dolls have been there to spark the imaginations of girls around the world. In case you’re unfamiliar, American Girl dolls represent different moments in American history, and each comes with a book about her life, her struggles, her family, and her world. Personally, I am a huge American Girl fan. I have three, and I feel no personal shame or guilt about this.

But one doll that I don’t have, that no one has, is an American Girl doll with a disability. And a brave young girl named Melissa Shang is looking to change all that. At just 10-years-old, she and her sister, YingYing, set up a petition on Change.org to rally for an American Girl doll with a disability.

Now 11, Shang has a form of muscular dystrophy known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth. She explains in her petition video why a doll with disabilities is so important to her:

Being a disabled girl is hard. Muscular Dystrophy prevents me from activities like running and ice-skating, and all the stuff that other girls take for granted. For once, I don’t want to be invisible or a side character that the main American Girl has to help: I want other girls to know what it’s like to be me, through a disabled American Girl’s story.

Disabled girls might be different from normal kids on the outside. They might sit in a wheelchair like I do, or have some other difficulty that other kids don’t have. However, we are the same as other girls on the inside, with the same thoughts and feelings. American Girls are supposed to represent all the girls that make up American history, past and present. That includes disabled girls.

It should be noted that you can buy an American Girl doll wheelchair on their website. It costs $38.00.

But even though there’s a wheelchair, there’s still no doll that comes with the wheelchair, and with her own story, and that’s important. There’s no reason why this doll shouldn’t exist. The American Girl dolls, have, for years, represented girls everywhere, from bespectacled Molly McIntire to Addy Walker, the company’s first African-American character. Girls can see themselves in these dolls more than they could see themselves in Barbie or Bratz dolls. But it’s hard to see yourself when no one out there is representing you.

The post Why an 11-year-old girl’s campaign for a new American Girl doll matters appeared first on HelloGiggles.


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