Lego - it's more than just a toy...

A Lego Ad from the early 1980's with the tag line "What it is is beautiful"





I don't know why the new Lego Friends set "for girls" bothers me so much. It makes me feel better, though, that it bothers a lot of people - you can read about some of them here...

Shaping Youth
Pigtail Pals
The world that has been pulled over your eyes
Jezebel
Business Week

This quote is from the Businessweek article:
"Among the “10 characteristics for Lego” set forth in 1963 by the founder’s son, Godtfred, is: “For girls and for boys.” Today, girls and boys play equally with Duplo, Lego’s bigger bricks for toddlers. But starting at the princess phase, Lego’s smaller, more intricate kits skew “boy.”"

One thing that crops up and bothers me are the "Lego phase" and "Princess phase" that are mentioned - as if they are phases like babbling, rolling over, etc., that happen to all children, everywhere. Kids like Legos (or princesses for that matter) because we buy the stuff for them, promote it as "really, really fun" and play with it.

Or maybe, because a peer or sibling has already been introduced to them and then shares them with an uninitiated child - what could be more engaging for our child than playing with the same toy as their older sibling, or loving the same thing that their newest best friend loves?

It isn't born in boys to love Lego and girls to love princesses - and I speak from experience here.

By wrapping marketing in psycho-babble, toy companies are trying to convince us that all kids do (or should do) the same thing at the same time - without saying why. Why should my daughter (or anyone's daughter) like to play with curvy, pink figurines? Because she's a girl? If all that is offered to girls, all that is marketed to them, is pink and curvy, then they'll start to think that is what they should like. That's what girls play with - I'm a girl, so I should play with it. It's a tautological approach - and it has more than just kids going around in circles... did you catch the Today Show coverage of the Lego friends?

It's not that pink things are bad - or that activities traditionally associated with girls and women are bad - I see no virtue in choosing to play with a toy truck over a toy doll, for a little girl or a little boy. It's the thinking that is behind the gender apartheid that we see in virtually every big toy shop - except maybe for Hamley's in London ( Hamley's ).

It's confining children to predetermined interested based on their gender - and how many of our preschoolers are strong enough in their sense of self to not want to choose the toy that they see as identifying them as a boy or a girl?

Especially when there is no in between - you have to choose.
It's a vicious choice and sometimes it seems that everyone has drunk the pink Kool-Aid - it's only a toy.
It's only a color.
Calm down.

Last night, I posted on Lego's Facebook wall - there hadn't been much mention of the new Friends (girls) Lego lately and I was wondering if anyone out there was still as angry about it as I am. Of course, I had some people responding to my post with defensive comments along the lines that the toy companies use: if you don't like it, don't buy it. What's the big deal? IT'S ONLY A TOY!

And that's just it. No. No, it's not Only A Toy. It's an attempt from a huge toy company to reach into my child's life and convince her that the normal Legos she's been loving for a while now aren't good enough. She needs to have "Stephanie's Cool Convertible" - I just hope she doesn't share a cocktail with curvy Ladyfig Emma at her splash pool first! (And while we on the topic of figures... Why do Lego figurines aimed at preschool girls need to have breasts? It seems to me that unless they are going to be breastfeeding Lego babies, they don't!)

It's not enough for me to "just not buy it" - someone out there is teaching children that girls play with pink things and boys don't. Then I, as a parent, have to deal with the suggestion that some toys are better (all toys are equal but some are more equal than others?) The question: do girls "trade up" when they play with "boy toys" - raises a disturbing corollary (especially looking ahead to the time that our sons will be husbands and fathers themselves) do boys "trade down" with they concede to play with "girl toys"? Lessons are being taught with every toy - and the kids are learning them.

It's more than just a toy - it is clicking another brick in the wall of stereotypes that our kids already face. And you know how hard it is to unclick those little Lego bricks.