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Lego and Girls – Twitter Chat Jan 12 #girlsnow

January 11, 2012 By

Join me and other girl advocates for a chat about Lego and their new “Friends” set for girls. I love Lego but I don’t love this new set. More than 30,000 other people have signed petitions saying they agree.

Find out why and share your opinions.

Join the chat on January 12 – 8 pm Central, 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern.  Just log onto twitter and search the hashtag #girlsnow.

See you there!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1378486417 Helen Stergius

    I have to say I think this is a lot of to-do over a lot of nothing. My girls have lots of Lego products. Their toys are purchased almost equally from “boy” and “girl” sections of the store. If you told them they couldn’t do something just because they are girls they would deliver a scorn-filled look that would leave you with no doubt that you were wrong. 

    They LOVE the new Lego Friends products. They have the tree house, the house, and something else.  I asked them if they were too girly. Nope. I asked them if the pink bothered them (they do NOT wear pink – picture scorn-filled look again). Nope. Are the little figures too girly? Nope.

    They like that they took Playmobil’s best aspects – tiny accessories, slightly more realistic people, real-life scenes, and combined them with Lego’s re-usability. The treehouse has already been customized. A tiny head ended up in a tiny blender. (macabre, but very funny). Pieces have been shared between the sets and walls have been moved.

    Their comments are that the sets are cool, it’s stuff they like to play with, and they like them better than the “boyish” ones that are all about spaceships and fighting and cars. They do play with those and it’s not because they are “boyish” that they prefer the Friends sets – it is because they like real life in miniature, with its cuteness and coolness and, now, thanks to Lego, its malleability, which they couldn’t get with Playmobil.

    We compared the breast sizes on Playmobil girls and Lego girls. No different. I asked them if the Lego girls were offensively girly. Nope.

    For reference, my girls recognize skank and inappropriately hoochie clothing when they see it. They choose classy and modest clothing (or just lots of colors, for the little one). Like mud, the outdoors, and rock and roll.  Like cute clips in their hair and can spend hours in Claire’s trying to spend $8 on lipgloss and hair accessories. Don’t like Justin Bieber.

    What in the heck is all this furor over? Tell me? Have you bought the Lego Friends? Played with them? How about your girls? Really – what in the world is the problem? Go use your indignation to fight hunger, poverty, illiteracy, or animal cruelty.

    • Nancy Gruver

      Helen – thanks for your thoughtful response and sharing your daughters’ thoughts, too. I’m really glad that you and your daughters don’t feel limited by the Friends sets. My concern is about girls who don’t have the perspective and support that your daughters do. It’s not a very big step from Lego Friends to the exploitation of Toddlers & Tiaras or Monster High. Girls are bombarded with society’s mixed messages about who they should be and what they should be interested in from every direction. And the negative stereotypes do limit many girls in their creativity and aspirations for themselves. It’s called “stereotype threat” and a large body of research shows that it affects human achievement in many ways. I’m personally disappointed that the Lego I love and played many hours of with my daughters and their friends has bought into limited stereotypes for girls’ interests and futures. Lego isn’t living up to their own vision and mission:

      Mission:
      ‘Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow’
      Our ultimate purpose is to inspire and develop children to think creatively, reason systematically and release their potential to shape their own future – experiencing the endless human possibility.

      Vision:
      ‘Inventing the future of play’
      We want to pioneer new ways of playing, play materials and the business models of play – leveraging globalisation and digitalisation…it is not just about products, it is about realising the human possibility.

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