Image courtesy the Hunter Family
When you think of girls playing with Legos do you think of girls creating their own robots?
I do.
I wish I could say the same for Lego executives. In the next few days Lego will roll out brand new sets designed for girls ages five and up, with the theme, “Friends.” The sets were developed with four years of company research into what girls want from Legos.
A group of girl-supporting bloggers are trying to raise Lego’s consciousness and I’m part of that. Powered by Girl – PBG – started the ball rolling and supporters include Pigtail Pals, Reel Girl, Spark Summit, Shaping Youth, Princess-Free Zone, Peggy Orenstein, Jennifer Shewmaker, and Amy Siskind. More are joining this effort every day.
My early research on what girls want from Lego was admittedly done with a small sample. My daughters loved and played with Legos constantly back in the days before there were any Lego “sets.” They built their own people from the basic red, green, blue & yellow pieces because those were all the colors there were and we didn’t have any people in our tub of pieces. This led to people with wheels for feet and people of all shapes and sizes.
Now, Lego wants us to believe that girls want only this:
Image via Lego's Facebook page
My point isn’t to be nostalgic. I welcome Legos of all colors and love the new pieces that make functioning Lego robots possible. But I’m not happy with Legos that disappointingly mimic other “girl toys” that already line the aisles with worn-out gender stereotypes.
Let’s ask Lego to expand their vision of girls and their interests in the next round of sets they design for girls.
Here’s a suggestion, Lego: Take the four girls from the 4th Motor Team of Wisconsin who won the 2011 First Lego League North American open robotics challenge (the 1st all-girl team to win)! Here’s some video of them winning the N.A. competition. All this, and a little herstory about the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, show how easy it is to encourage girls to do creative problem-solving with Legos – inspiration, pure and simple.
This winning team of girls should lead development of Lego’s next set for girls. I’m more than glad to help Lego learn how to share power with girls in developing great products for them without reducing to lowest-common-denominator stereotypes. It can be done and sustained, as we’ve done at New Moon Girls for nearly 20 years now.
What do you say Lego? I and many girls and women are longtime fans of yours – I’d love to see you step up and work to make things better for girls.
If you want to share this idea with Lego write to them and also post your letter here or on Facebook:
LEGO Systems, Inc.
555 Taylor Road
P.O. Box 1138
Enfield, CT 06083-1138
Two young Lego lovers have already done that in this letter:
Dear Legos,
We are two girls ages nine and ten and we would like to give our opinions about your new “girl” Legos. What the heck are you thinking? Your new campaign is so sexist! Yes, it’s true that some girls like this but we’re just regular people and we’re not all obsessed with beauty. We care about our education and our life and just that we have faith in ourselves, not that we have to only think about combing our hair every day and looking in the mirror!
This makes us very mad. Girls like different things. When we think of Legos, we think of building architecture and building cool things, not building something to make our hair look better. We built a whole city, with our brothers, that had restaurants and boats and an ocean surrounding it. We used to build these structures with slides and pools and not once did we think about making a bathroom with hair accessories and a mirror, with perfume next to it.
You’re probably not going to make much money from this because no one is going to buy it because it’s not really what girls like, in our opinion. We’re writing this to help you! We are just giving you constructive criticism. Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Aliyah Newman (9) & Rusha Bartlett (10)
P.S. You might want to check your research!
Nancy Gruver is founder of the groundbreaking safe social network and magazine for girls ages 8 and up, New Moon Girls, author of How To Say It® To Girls: Communicating With Your Growing Daughter (Penguin Putnam, 2004) and blogs on girls’ issues, parenting, and media. www.newmoon.com & www.daughters.com
I don’t know a whole lot about this, but as an Illinois Mechanical Engineer, Stanford Product Designer with 25 US Patents on mechanical devices, and with 3 daughters, I don’t agree.
I think these sets can be combined with other more traditional sets to create big scenes and fun stuff, including traditional building. Lego has a lot of sets geared towards boys, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with adding more parts to the kit. If you don’t like them, don’t buy them.
Kirsten
Kirsten – thanks for your comment – I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on what interests girls in STEM – that’s a critical issue for our economic future. In this piece I’m concerned about where Lego gets its ideas of “what girls want.” And about the limiting stereotypes that toys can either challenge or go along with. I want them to work with girls who love and use Legos to design girl-oriented sets for that group.
I totally agree with Kirsten here. As a mom with a boy and girl in Lego age it has infuriated me that since 2005 they have ONLY been focusing on boys (NOT gender-less sets as everyone keeps claiming: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html.) These sets are not going to stop the girls who are interested in Lego robotics from playing with them but it might provide a stepping stone for girls who think they are not interested in “boy” Legos to get started, though! And that sounds great to me!
Another Mom – thanks for commenting. I agree with you totally that Lego has been focused on marketing only to boys for the past many years, and indeed for most of its history. And that’s not a good thing. I’m also interested in stepping stones for girls who think they’re not interested in “boy” Legos. My criticism is that the new girl sets look like a dead end for girls, not a way to engage them in science, tech, engineering or math. Lego is beautifully positioned to create a stepping stone to STEM for girls but in order to do that they need to deeply engage with girls who are already showing interest in STEM and discover how those girls got interested. Instead they chose to go backwards by emphasizing only traditional gender stereotypes of what girls are interested in. Being interested in traditionally “girl things” doesn’t need to preclude interest in STEM.
I find it ironic you that you use robots as your example, but then neglect to mention the set *in* the LEGO Friends line that features a young lady who has a blackboard with equations on it, an erlenmeyer flask and microscope, and *builds her own pet robot*. A second set involves a female character with her own tree house. If you examine the ENTIRE line, your statement that they are emphasizing only traditional gender stereotypes is just wrong.
Joshua – thanks for your comment. I haven’t seen the sets you mention – they sound a lot more timely to me than the ones I saw in Lego publicity last week. I’ll check them out.
I also don’t think the “girl” Lego sets are bad. I have a 6 year old girl and and 18 month old boy. And (much to my chagrin), the girl is definitely a girly girl. I’ve worked in IT my entire career, am active in the Society of Women Engineers and volunteer once a year doing a “programming” lab with Lego Mindstorm robots at a girl’s engineering minicamp. One of the things I’ve learned from volunteering there is that girls more typically want to do things that affect them and help others. Girls don’t understand how STEM affects them, so if “girl” Legos and labs like “chocolate asphalt” and stuff can help educate girls about STEM, I think it’s a good thing. And if more girls get into Legos and other building toys because of this, that is also a good thing.
Go here if you want a properly researched version of the new Lego theme.
http://www.brothers-brick.com/2011/12/19/2012-lego-friends-sets-bring-brick-based-construction-play-to-girls-news/
They handle this news in fair manner.
This page is literally 9 sentences and then a copy of the LEGO-written press release. I do not see how it is “fair.” It regurgitates the corporate line.
Has no one realized the “anthropological” research that sounds so objective, is actually research looking into what gender lessons girls have already absorbed about what they are supposed to be interested in, with results informing the creation of a toy that – like a LEGO – locks these ideas into reality for millions of girls? As a parent, I am on the lookout for toys that help me to subvert harmful messages about sex and gender, not support them.
And on a related note, current LEGO sets need only to be marketed as aggressively to girls as to boys to make them unisex. It’s the marketing, by and large, that is separating them. And, of course, toy stores which gender segregate playthings.
You said it exactly.
My 3.5 year old regurgitates the stereotypes she sees on TV and in the toy aisles. She already knows what a girl is supposed to like and look like. If you ask her what she likes or wants for Christmas it is a long list of ‘girly’ stuff. But she also plays with dinosaurs, Lincoln Logs and other typically ‘boy’ products.
Put the regular legos in the girl aisle and she’ll be enthralled.
It’s called a press release article, where the writer does not insinuate things without having all/any of the facts in front of them.
Have you been to a toy store lately? I don’t know what Toys R Us you’ve gone to, but the building bricks aisle is typically never located by the boys or girls section of the store. They are located by the learning section.
Now, if you shop at a Walmart or Target then you need to complain to their display planners, as they decide where to place the Lego kits.
As for marketing, I spend the time with my little girl to get her toys that benefit her development, not rely on the commercials she might see to inform her.
My daughter was introducted to Legos at birth because she has two older brothers who love Legos! I’m not a huge fan of the pink and purple Legos and the stereotypical kits that were created, but maybe this will introduce girls to Legos whose parents would never buy them because they figured girls don’t play with them. Hopefully the new Legos will open up a whole new stream of imaginationers, letting them explore and build wherever their mind takes them.
BTW, your letter will be regarded with less esteem if you use the term “Legos”….it’s never “Legos”, it’s always “Lego” this or that…..Lego bricks, the Lego company, Lego fans….fyi.
Perhaps it’s due to your “goddess worship”, perhaps it’s due to your gender moralism that seems dismissive of “girly” things, when some girls actually gravitate towards that naturally.
btw, I should mention I acquired Lego Mindstorms….for my son AND my 2 daughters.
But what should I do if my daughters WANT to create Lego mosaics
http://www.flickr.com/groups/legomosaic/
instead of Lego robotics?
Wouldn’t THAT be gender typecasting them if I said “no” to the LEGO mosaics?
My son builds a few tired old rocket ships, but my daughter build THE MOST BEAUTIFUL designs I’ve seen….and an amazing Lego turkey for Thanksgiving this year!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53325190@N05/6395239187/in/photostream
Have a good New Year!
I have not bought Lego sets ever. However the local swap shop has provided my daughter and I with two sets of Duplo blocks which she loves to build towers with until they topple. Can you even get the basic blocks anymore? All I ever see are the sets, and those take no imagination, they don’t interest me. To me it’s not an issue of gender, but creativity.
When my daughter, our oldest, was younger she was constantly building with every toy she could get her hands on, and suddenly we realized…she is old enough for Lego! We hadn’t thought of it, for apparently it had been marketed to us as a ‘boy toy’ as well! So we have been acquiring lots of Lego, both pink and otherwise. She is 10 now and had a gift cert. to the Lego store, we went there and she found NOTHING she wanted! They showed her the Friends sets, and she liked the horse in the vet set, but not really the rest of it; she really just wanted the horse, to build her own barns and pens and carriages for it. Maybe we’ll look into the robotics, boyish or not!
It’s ironic that I stumbled upon this article, as I *just* finished completing an online survey from Lego regarding our latest experience at their store near my home.
I do not care for the idea of making Lego sets pink and purple and “girly” – because that is NOT what my girls want. I am the mother of two daughters, 10 and 7, and they really enjoy Legos, especially the 3-1 house/cabin/lighthouse sets and on our recent visit we purchased one of the last Winter Village sets in the store. Both sets are, in my opinion, equally appealing to boys and girls alike.
I will be curious to see how this new “girly” line of Legos does in stores.
I don’t really see a problem with a line that contains legos marketed towards girly girls. I also don’t see a problem with sets that are marketed towards kids who want to play with dinosaurs, knights, pirates, policemen, or whatever else. These things are toys, not mandated development tools. I’ve got a 20month old little girl who is playing with Duplo blocks. She has some zoo animals and a male and female zookeeper. The colors are not what you would call either girly or boyish. Personally, I don’t like how the girly Lego sets look, so i won’t ever buy them for her. I have a black pearl Lego set from the new pirates line that she’s very interested in (though the pieces are too small so I don’t really let her play with it), and I don’t expect that to change. She’ll play with so-called “boy” toys just as often as “girl” toys. Currently, she even prefers Diego over Dora if you put them side by side. If you don’t want your girl to be over fixated on girly items…don’t buy them for her. I don’t really see how lego is doing anything wrong by providing consumers additional options. Nor do I see anything wrong with a girl either being a girly girl or not.
I read this article a while back, and I just came across something really relevant on tumblr; an example of Lego advertising done right. I don’t know how recent this ad is, but it looks like advertising should go more in this direction.
http://sexistads.tumblr.com/post/2058174492/i-think-that-this-is-a-lovely-ad-and-its-nice-to
- Diana