Company Releases First Transgender Doll
- Updated Feb 22, 2017
The Tonner Doll Company is planning to release its first transgender doll, based on a real-life transgender teenager.
According to NewsChannel 4 KFOR, the doll is modeled after 16-year-old Jazz Jennings, a transgender teen who was born a boy, but transitioned to identify as a girl.
Jennings has written a memoir titled Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen. The doll will be dressed in jean shorts and a red shirt--the same as Jazz is dressed in on the book cover of her memoir. Tonner has also created a version of the doll which comes dressed in a sparkling white ballerina dress.
“Jazz stands for everything I respect from a human nature point of view,” Tonner said in a statement. “She’s incredibly brave, intelligent, warm-hearted and creative.”
The dolls are being marketed to children, rather than to adults as a collectible item.
Jazz herself praised the creation of the doll, stating, “I hope that it can place transgender people in a positive light by showing that we are just like all other people.”
Jazz reportedly began transitioning into a girl at the age of five.
Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com
Publication date: February 22, 2017
