A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image Book is self-described as exploring “how to love yourself, live life to the fullest, and celebrate all kinds of bodies” for kids aged 10 and up, serving as “a feel-good reminder that all bodies are worthy of love and respect.” In a world where Body Dysmorphic Disorder affects about one in 50 individuals—in which approximately 80 percent experience suicidal ideation and about a quarter attempt suicide—it’s a noble message to start instilling in kids at a young age. “Remember, your body is not a problem or a burden,” a blurb from a page titled “Awesome and Able” reads on the American Girl website. “Your body is worthy, valid, and good. All bodies are.” Other pages in the previews explore the shifts in beauty standards over the centuries and across the world, ADA activists, adaptive sports for disabled kids, related insecurities and more. But, according to the Daily Mail, parents are “slamming” the book as “deceptive and dangerous” for including advice for kids “to change their gender” behind their parents’ backs. One of the passages that the publication highlighted as seemingly negative reads, “The way you show your gender to the world through clothes and behavior is your gender expression. 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 expressions should make you feel at home in your body.” Another highlight they made reads, “Being transgender is not an illness or something to be ashamed of.” That page goes on to suggest that kids who are questioning their gender identity—or know for sure that they are trans or nonbinary—speak with a trusted adult, who can connect them with a doctor that can help the child and their family decide on the best course of action for them and their body. One possible option for children who do not identify as cisgender is the use of puberty blockers, which the book mentions in a single sentence in the pages scanned by the publication, and which seems to be taken out of context in a myriad of tweets quoting it. “In the book, it normalizes being transgender, and pushes children to use puberty blockers,” the Daily Mail writes. But just below that, a blurb quoting trans activist Jazz Jennings reads, “Being transgender isn’t a medical transition. It’s a process of learning to love yourself for who you are.” While the advice “You can appreciate your body for everything it allows you to experience and still want to change certain things about it,” which parents have also called problematic, is written on a page about gender, the same can be said of people who wish they struggled less with acne or their weight. Any person, trans or not, can appreciate their body’s capabilities while wishing things about it were different. The book also provides a list of resources that children who don’t feel they have a trusted adult to rely on can turn to, which some reviewers view as “grooming” kids to sneak around behind their parents’ backs. It’s unclear who first took issue online, but it quickly spread like wildfire, with the bulk of one-star reviews flooding in over the last day or so, likely coming from angry individuals that haven’t even read the pages for themselves.
