American Girl's New "Girl of the Year" Is Already Causing Controversy Online

[frejasface]

Meet Kira Bailey! The 2021 Girl of the Year loves ALL animals. 🦘🐨 She gets to feed a joey kangaroo and cuddle a koala, but she also teaches girls about being responsible and respecting the Earth. Discover more about Kira: https://t.co/WHifqBaa7v pic.twitter.com/cafxTLEDJd
- American Girl (@American_Girl) December 31, 2020

American Girl, the toy

Comments

[ladychips]

why not have one with a mom who's a doctor/nurse/frontline worker while the girl tries to keep peoples spirits up during the pandemic and helps make masks and donate food etc?

[ellyrianna]

This was probably in the works before COVID, no?

[ladychips]

true, i didnt even think about that

[devopet]

But how long would that take to change/update? Like it's just the mktg write up on the doll? Her lesbian parents aren't actually real lol. The doll might have been planned pre-COVID but no way the Mktg and brand plan was.

I think if they wanted to do an environmentalist theme they should have made her a doll of colour as so many of the young Indigenous, Black and Brown environmentalists are getting whitewashed/ignored in favour of blonde Greta (and she herself calls this out) and they have been speaking up on this for a long time.

[__onthebound]

I was thinking if they were going to do an Australian doll they could make them Indigenous

[whysogayprop8]

They don't know white people weren't in these lands first.

Indigenous people magically appeared on the outskirts of civilization.

[__onthebound]

Hey now, they changed their anthem. A whole crumb of recognition

[whysogayprop8]

Welp, America still sings theirs. We just found out a couple years back that there's more verses that reveal the racist origin smh.

[__onthebound]

Oh yeah. All the America is great founding fathers type songs have LOADS of racist verses no one talks about

[elderpricely]

my friend works for them and they were indeed working on it well before COVID. it's more involved than people think.

[arilicious]

yeah, I heard it takes them like 2-3 years to develop a doll and her story

[frejasface]

sheesh.

[vintage_boom]

yep at least that. I'm friends with someone who used to style toys for advertising and that's the average.

[whysogayprop8]

Damn. They stay doing the least.

All of these dolls literally look the same just very rarely a different shade.

Clothes are rehashed and the books are just rearranged to seem new.

[arilicious]

I think the last 4/5 "girl of the year" dolls have had the same face mold (the Josefina mold), and only 1 of them was actually Hispanic
not only is it unoriginal, but pretty whitewashing too!

[whysogayprop8]

And they literally look like dollar store dolls, but people are paying like $150 for them smh.