Between 1973 and 1978, using his wife as a model, Laing worked steadily towards figurative sculpture which both fulfilled his own aesthetic ideas and had some symbolic connotation. An American Girl can be seen as the culmination of the Galina series, showing how Laing had approached the figure with both abstraction and naturalism, absorbing a variety of influences in order to find a figurative language for the human form. Laing described An American Girl at length:

'The headscarf is intended to be reminiscent of a US World War II helmet; it has always seemed to me that the large cranial size of these helmets gave US soldiers of the period a disturbing and paradoxical juvenile appearance. […] The contrast between the US helmet and the German one of the same period, which looks efficient and brutal, and the British one, which looks plain silly, like an upturned basin, is worth noting and the possible reasons for the difference is a fertile area for speculative conjecture. The pose of An American Girl is romantic, driven by the expression of aggressive consumerism. She is disruptive to the viewer: confident, seductive and relaxed. The figure seems conscious of this, but at the same time it is self-contained, introspective, and completely independent. The geometric articulation of the spine and the almost landscape-like quality of the parts of the sculpture reinforce this enigmatic certitude, while other parts are extremely realistic, human and therefore vulnerable.'