American Girl is an iconic doll company that is considered to be a staple in the lives of many children. The company recently featured a young African American girl named Amaya in its magazine. Amaya has two white dads who adopted her and three other children into their family. One of Amaya's fathers, who she refers to as "Daddy," also went through the foster care system. Together, Amaya and her daddy work to help other children currently in foster care through a charity that her daddy started to provide new bags for the children to travel with since they usual travel with their things stuffed into trash bags.
You can read the article here. It brought tears to my eyes.
Here is another type of article by "One Million Moms," a group of conservative moms who are boycotting American Girl for featuring Amaya. As 1MM sees it, "American Girl could have focused the article on the child and not about the parents, since it is a magazine for children." I find it a little strange that 1MM read the article as focusing on the parents and not on the child. When I read the article I found quotes solely from Amaya and understood completely that I was reading Amaya's story. Am I missing something? Other than a photo that shows the name of each member in Amaya's family, her other dad is never even mentioned. You never hear the dads' voices. In what possible way does this article focus on the parents? I invite 1MM to respond to my questions because I am utterly confused.
1MM also says, "The magazine also could have chosen another child to write about and remained neutral in the culture war." Basically, there are two main flaws with this comment. Firstly, sure, American Girl could have featured a white child, or an Asian child, or a Mexican child, but I would not have read the article any differently had they done that. The fact that anyone could read this article and let skin color taint their views of a beautiful story is the real issue! This is a story about a father and daughter who both went through foster care and came together to help others going through the same experience. This is not a story about culture or race.
The second flaw lies within this concept of staying neutral. The reason 1MM wants American Girl to stay neutral is that this neutrality would mean choosing a white child with straight parents because that would cause the least controversy. I'm not saying that American Girl should never feature any white children. They should. They should also feature every other race out there, too. I'm also not saying that they should never feature a child with straight parents. They should. They should feature any child with a story worth sharing, regardless of the child's race or the parents' sexual orientation. By "remain[ing] neutral" American Girl would really be picking the side that chooses to stay quiet because they are afraid of change.
Lastly, I would like to point out that American Girl has always sold dolls of various races. The main dolls come with stories that describe the doll's lives, but these stories do not specify the doll's sexual orientation. Many dolls also do not come with their own story and leave the doll's story up to the owner. Why is 1MM just choosing to attack American Girl now? Is it because the doll company has featured real people who have different values than 1MM believes in? As I see it, American Girl has always supported different races and sexual orientations, just through dolls rather than real people.
Ultimately I am appalled at One Million Moms' response to American Girl's article. Please read the article that features Amaya and do not let Amaya's skin or her dads' homosexuality blind you from the beauty of her story.
