LEGO, now for girls!

Posted by MrPopularSentiment on December 17th, 2011

I grew up on LEGOs, and many of my fondest memories feature those fantastic little bricks. Whether it was building a Robin Hood castle with my older step-brother (and getting beaten up after the subsequent RAWR! Dragon attack!) or building a giant labyrinth that covered the entire livingroom floor with my dad, LEGOs were a huge part of my childhood.

It never occurred to me that they were a gendered toy, or that they weren’t meant for kids like me. Sure, I would have liked some women in my castles who weren’t witches, but I found ways around that. I was perfectly happy appropriating female minifigs from other sets, using time travel to save a dying society that for some reason had no (non-witch) women of its own.

But I never felt offended until the Paradisa and Belville collections came out. I admit that I did buy one Paradisa set, but only because it had a foal and I felt that my medieval society would do better with some baby horsies (horsies!). Other than that, I stayed away from the sets because for me, as a tomboy, they were too strong a reminder of the pressure I was under to conform. Paradisa told me that I was abnormal, that my tastes were inappropriate, and I was expected to stop playing with the toys I enjoyed and start acting my gender. Even as a kid, I avoided these two collections because they made me feel uncomfortable in my own skin.

And yet, they were nothing compared to the new Friends collection, which can only be described as Bratz for LEGO. Not only are the sets simplistic and involve very little complicated building (something that has always been a problem with “girl versions” of popular toys), but they reinforce body image expectations as well. Gone are the blocky figures that represent people while leaving room for imagination. These new Friends are curvy and thin, with delicate button noses and large eyes.

The sets themselves are the standards: The puppy set, the beautician’s salon, the clothing designer’s workshop. As with all companies that don’t want to appear sexist, LEGO even includes a token “smart girl” who looks fabulous, has equations written on her blackboard, and builds robots with pretty purple tools. Ugh.

If I wanted a Polly Pocket, I’d buy a Polly Pocket. This new collection sends a clear message to girls: Regular LEGOs are not for you.

Shpoontik

FIRST

Fanstacia

Ah uh. You’re only FIRST if you have something to say. It’s much like calling shot gun before the car is in view.

http://twitter.com/ccentenrun Carley Centen

I completely disagree. It doesn’t have to be about restricting girls from regular legos – it can be about adding choice that might appeal to some. Some girls like purple. Some girls like lego as-is. Some girls might get more interested in lego with these new sets.

Some women want to be housewives, but this does not mean that they are failed feminists. They simply have exercised their choice, which is what, in my mind, feminism is all about. Searching the ‘girls’ category under the lego website gives results that seem almost entirely gender neutral, with a pink set and a cake set that might be considered more aimed at the feminine. Yes, there shouldn’t be pressure to conform to stereotypes, but why should there be pressure to not be interested in stereotypes? Pressure to conform to gender stereotypes is a societal issue – Lego is not creating these stereotypes, they are at most pandering to existing markets that I imagine they have researched thoroughly. As a byproduct, they might be reinforcing these standards. So what do you want to see? Nothing targeted at girls? Everything gendered-neutral? Everything with a male standard? Things made with girls made in the same version with boys, even if market research suggests to the company that it likely wouldn’t be profitable? P.S. That robot looks a bit like Wall-E and is amazing. I want one.
Fanstacia

Toys do not teach gender roles.
Toys are toys. I think parents teach gender roles when they say: “You don’t want that. That’s a toy for girls/boys.” or Getting an “action
figure” when your boy specifically asks for a certain Barbie.

My
daughter is what I coin “a pink tomboy”, she is well rounded and loves a
variety of things, but will also love a good “girlie” moment.
As a single woman, I often said to myself that I would not buy Barbie
or Disney Princess stuff for my daughter, etc… That I would not “Miss Muffet”
my girl. What I have learned, is that it’s better for HER, to let her be who she
is going to be. Right now, my daughter is confident, enjoys life and is
social, thoughtful and intelligent. If she wants to put lipstick on GI
JOE and send him out in a party dress, then, OKAY! But he’s going bare
foot because [sadly] we don’t have heels to fit. Most of her
dolls and things she picked out herself in all their pink and purple glory–button noses and all. She likes these things, she also LOVES to play with Hot Wheels and similar type toys. She
likes Lego as much as any kid, but she would ‘LOVE LOVE’ this kit. It
pushes ALL her buttons. I think these sets will
attract girls into using Lego that were otherwise reticent. We have
three generations of Lego in our home… it’s A LOT of Lego. Yet my daughter still seems a little unsure of how to play with it in a way that fits her style of play. She likes to
dramatize in her play. Having bright coloured characters and a cool lab with “gear” in
her favorite colours, I believe will get her building onto this set, with our present Lego, rather than limiting her.
I’ma gonna
get one for her!
Kevin

I think the writer is over reacting. If the choice was only between “regular” Legos and “girly” Legos, then that would be bad. But in reality this is just one more entry into a huge product line, which covers a good range of interests and gender roles. And the customer gets to choose which one they want to buy.

http://www.lego.com/en-us/products/default.aspx

I see no problem with this.
Chris Hassall

I would argue that there are innate differences in toy preferences and that these form the basis, mediated by hormones and social pressures, for the stereotypical gender norms that we see (
http://katatrepsis.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/lego-friends-toy-or-tool-of-the-mysognists/). To deny that there are “boys’ toys” and “girls’ toys” is just plain ridiculous. Looking at the marketing and nature of LEGO, it has clearly been designed and marketed to appeal more to boys based on our knowledge of male predilections. If you disagree, feel free to provide data.

The LEGO guys went out and asked girls why they didn’t like to play with LEGO and designed a new product based around their answers. You are criticising a product that has been ASKED FOR by girls because it matches their preferences.

The body image comment is interesting, too, considering that there is almost no anatomical detail to these characters. They are bland and “straight-up-and-down” – no waist, no hips, no secondary sexual characteristics. I expect that these figures are typical of the shape of most 7-10 year old girls or boys. That should be a straightforward morphometric/allometric comparison with relative sizes. The onus is on you, having proposed the problem, to demonstrate that it actually exists.

Also, you can argue that “many girls like trucks and many boys like dolls”, but I would like to see the data for that oft-stated assumption. I’d wager the effect isn’t as strong as people think. Again, the onus is on you to provide something more than anecdotes.

Finally, I cannot believe that you are criticising them for including a vet and a scientist as characters! Have you ever been to a lab? Would you like your play set to be scientifically accurate? I have a few boring white coats lying around, and you could paint bags under her eyes, maybe give her a failed marriage and a few rejected manuscripts sitting on the desk…? Colours lend to the sense of the fantastical, which is what everyone needs to be able to create stories.

Seanna

I don’t disagree with the apparent predilection of boys for trucks and girls for dolls. Having recently finished reading Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender , I do, however, disagree that it is inherent. At one point, Fine cites the oft-heard comment that if a little girl is given a toy truck, she will pretend to put it to sleep in her doll bed. Interestingly, Fine pointed out that her sons did the same thing with their toy trucks, and I recall my sons doing that sort of thing as well (yes, I know the plural of anecdote is not data).

Also, according to Fine, studies have found that children exhibit strong preferences for playing with a toy that they have been told is for their gender. So, if girls have been told that Lego is for boys, the way for the Lego company to sell more Lego to parents of girls is to make sets that are obviously “for girls”. Sigh.

Chris Hassall

Seanna,

I haven’t read the book, but I have read the primary literature and it seems to be fairly robust (to a scientist from another field). Most of the papers that I cite in my brief (knocked-up on a Saturday afternoon) review are available for free so you can peruse them at your leisure.

I would suggest that there are three lines of evidence for innate gender differences in sex-typed toy preference:

1 – The age at which the preferences are found (3-8 months) is, arguably, before the child’s cognitive machinery is sufficiently advanced to appreciate the social pressures that you suggest.

2 – Some studies explicitly ask children to associate toys with gender. Boys who were unable to do so still preferred male-type toys. This is more evidence against the existence of social conditioning.

3 – We can find evidence of sex preferences for toys outside of humans. Both vervet monkeys and rhesus monkeys have been shown to exhibit much the same preferences as humans (infant and child). This suggests an evolutionary, rather than cultural, basis for the differences.

I would not argue against the presence of a cultural component (that is undeniable), but we should not be so quick to seek excuses and apportion blame for the diversity of the human experience. For details, citations and links to studies, see my post at http://katatrepsis.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/lego-friends-toy-or-tool-of-the-mysognists/

http://carpescriptura.wordpress.com/ MrPopularSentiment

3 month olds are already being socially conditioned. A newborn will observe his parents and mimic facial expressions.

Transferring over from race research, very young babies will “prefer” to look at faces of people their own race. This isn’t because little white babies have a gene that tells them to look at white people, but is rather a biproduct of familiarity. Babies are VERY observant. They are designed to make sense of their world and to understand their place in it within a rather short timespan, so they are constantly on the lookout for social and environmental cues.
So if you consider that the majority of girls will be dressed in pink, laid to bed in a pink room, and wrapped in pink blankets right from birth, it makes sense that they would seem to prefer that colour. They are simply more familiar with it.

I feel awkward challenging a study because it feels too close to saying that my “Mommy Instinct” trumps research, but this seems to be a very key flaw. A more interesting study would be to enlist pregnant parents to dominate their future newborn’s lives with a particular colour (some gender-typical, some not) and then repeat the test at regular intervals through the first year.And like I said on Facebook, I’m skeptical of any claim that girls naturally like pink because this is only the case in western cultures and even then has only been the case for the last 100 or so years. Therefore, what I took from that study is just how freakin’ powerful and fast-acting cultural influences are, NOT that girls just innately love pink.

http://tachyonlabs.com Tané Tachyon

I hate the way more and more
things get sold as “for boys” and “for girls” instead of just having more colors and options *period*, and I used to buy
Megablocks so my sons would have pink and purple blocks too, and
Belville so they would have more cool pieces, but still, as a woman who among other things does computer repair I am totally
lusting after that set — a girl robot builder!

LEGO, now for girls!

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