Melissa Shang, a 10-year-old girl from Paoli, Pa., has a request for American Girl, the Mattel-owned toy maker known for its popular, customizable mini-me dolls: Release a doll with a disability.
Shang, who uses a wheelchair, has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a form of muscular dystrophy that effects motor and sensory nerves, making it difficult to control muscle activity, including walking, speaking, and swallowing. In a Change.org petition, she says all American Girl dolls have "stories about overcoming obstacles." The Girl of the Year doll — a limited edition figure with a backstory involving current issues — is her favorite, she says, because "they have helped me understand how it feels to be someone else."
She goes on:
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However, none of the American Girl Girls of the Year are like me. None of them have a disability.
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.[Change.org]
American Girl has recently made steps toward representing a wider range of kids. Last summer, the company released a bald American Girl, joining Barbie, another Mattel product, in including girls experiencing hair loss. Then, for 2012's holiday season, it added hearing aids and allergy-free lunches to its accessories list.
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These additions could be helpful for all kids, not just the ones with the allergies and hearing problems, explained Dodai Stewart at Jezebel at the time:
[P]lacing the hearing aid and wheelchair right on the same page alongside boots, eyeglasses, and a hairbrush normalizes these disabilities. Whether or not a a little girl is deaf, she gets to see a hearing aid not as some strange, foreign object, but one of many possible accessories a kid can have. Just being exposed to things like wheelchairs and allergy-free lunches can be a teachable moment, making a child who doesn't need those things accept and understand that some people do. [Jezebel]
To help Shang reach her goal of 9,000 signatures, go to Change.org.
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