Awww, I really liked LEGO growing up, too... I guess I'll have to now look back on my life of enjoying LEGO and realize that I was assisting in enabling a corportaion in sexism, and thus was sexist!
No, I think I'll just remember that LEGO had female figures and parts like hair, costumes and faces that you could order through their catalogues. And the swapping-heads part is so very valid for the original figurine lines, because quite honestly those new, specialized figurine sets are atrocious and, in my perhaps purist opinion, are not LEGO.
Sorry, I don't want to come off as jaded. And it couldn't hurt to make more female LEGO parts. But if the market is mainly boys, then you mainly market to boys.
Wow. I'm happy LEGO didn't apologize. I feel like not a single person ever intended for that kind of a message to come across. Heck, a lot of their products are based off movies/books like star wars, lord of the rings, etc. Ugh.
Y'know what, I had a long, 4 paragraph response to this. I've decided, however, that you don't want to see it, and nothing I say will change your mind (plus 2 of those paragraphs were sarcastic basic English lessons and probably would've been construed as a personal attack).
So I'll leave you with a metaphor.
You've missed the point. I've tried to bring you on target, you refused to change your point of aim. So fuck it. You win. Who cares.
No, please. I insist. Give me some direct quotations from the article to help show me the light. It is true that I am no English major, but I do have a couple University-level English courses under my belt. So, please, give me some basic English lessons.
No. I think you missed my point. My point is the girl likly didn't see sexism - her parents did. Her parents also likely put her up to writing the letter, the were sure to post it online to get some attention for themselves. Girls love adventures just like boys do.
On second thought I think you understood my point but wanted to try and bend it to fit your own narrative.
The girl didn't accuse anyone of anything, she just want's some better girl Lego, it says so right there in the letter. There's plenty of other crap out there for you sad, lonely Feminists/MRAs to pointlessly ***** about on your respective forums, no need to project all over this little kid.
This should read : "7 year old girl's PARENTS accuse lego of being sexist." Kids don't see these distinctions unless their parents put those thoughts into their heads. Every modern theme has male and female minifigs. This whole thing smacks of a busy-body parent with time on their hands and their nose out of joint.
Those were my thoughts exactly, this doesn't seem like something a 7 year old would care about unless it was depicted to them as something to worry about.
This should read : "7 year old girl's PARENTS accuse lego of being sexist." Kids don't see these distinctions unless their parents put those thoughts into their heads. Every modern theme has male and female minifigs. This whole thing smacks of a busy-body parent with time on their hands and their nose out of joint.
Those were my thoughts exactly, this doesn't seem like something a 7 year old would care about unless it was depicted to them as something to worry about.
As I'm sure you're aware though, the Lego Friends sets represent only a small subsection of the full Lego product range.
Their existence is hardly problematic. It's a market that exists so they have every right to cater to it. It's not like potential female buyers or female minifigs are outright excluded from other sets.
Well when working in toy store I was amused that, in the run up to christmas, we never once had to restock on Pink sets, but we had frequent orders out for Blue sets. Though this is purely anecdotal, this at least reaffirms that notion. Pink sets don't sell well (at least here).
There's no doubt though that female characters are significantly less common, especially when it comes to the more traditionally male sets (space sets, ninja sets, castle sets, etc.). That's certainly worth addressing.
Now there's no doubt that marketing will be a primary influence on this but part of me wonders if it's the consequence of a financial decision as well. One will often find that individual heads for female minifigs sell a hell of a lot more in Lego stores than individual heads for male minifigs.
I imagine Lego get better profit margins from selling individual minifig parts, than selling full minifigs as part of sets.
I read somewhere that it's something like 1:5 female figs to male figs in the playsets on average, with some sets having no female figs at all (and others having more then that average).
Just checked, it's not an official count, but someone took some of the more popular playsets (both classic lego and duplo range) and counted the numbers of male figs to female figs and he arrived at 5:1. I'll quote the comment:
I did a count of male and female mini-figures by theme in the 2011 releases for which we have visual evidence. The modular house line always tends to be more balanced so there?s still potential there but the City theme is particularly bad this year. Here?s the results (aliens/creatures are excluded except where male-female differentiation exists:
That?s greater than a 5:1 ratio and if you remove the Dacta and Collectible Mini-figure sets from the equation, you get a pathetic 8:1 ratio (245 male, 30 female). I?ll say it again. If Lego wants girls to take interest in their products, they should make a better effort to include figures through which girls can identify.
Source: http://amodularlife.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/legos-female-oriented-products/#comment-2259
The list part the way down, but it's a decent read anyway.
The ratio is bad enough on it's own, but when you look at the individual sets...
*City, which is meant to be gender neutral, was 59 male to 5 female.
*Harry Potter, which has a notably diverse cast (and reader/viewership) in both books and films, was 20 male to 3 female.
*Collectible Mini Figs were 37 unique males vs 10 unique females. You collect these ones at random, since each pack you buy is based on luck, meaning you have a much higher chance of getting a male minifig then a female minifig.
That's pretty bad.
The only major caveat to this is that the person doing the research didn't exactly open up each box and count. From what I gather he counted out what was depicted on the box (back and front), but considering that the boxes often have a figure count, I'd say it would be easy to deduce how close or off you are.
So, take it with a grain of salt, but ultimately it does fit with other observations.
Yeah it does come down to marketing. It always does. But ask yourself, is the disparity in the sets influencing the buyers? Or are the Buyers influencing the disparity of the sets? Then consider that the pink sets sell pretty bad anyway (at least here) and ask yourself, why even bother making gendered distinctions? They tried to tap a niche market by creating a gendered brand, rather then diversifying the core brands.
There is little for young adventurous girls to identify with in Lego these days. The sets geared towards them are highly domestically or casually themed, not adventurous. And then consider that it's the parents who make the purchases and they are way more likely to be gender biased (this varies from parent to parent, but many parents are "hardcoded" to view the world in binary still... Boys like Boy things and Girls like Girl things).
Why isn't there a straight up adventure sets geared toward girls, without the hilariously outmoded gendered pandering? I mean, look at what NERF did (only recently):
While the marketing is clearly meant to tap into the "girly" motifs, the end product is still a nerf gun (and a pretty bad ass looking one if you were to take away the (imo) cluttered graphic paint). It doesn't have a mirror built in so you can do your makeup, or a brush attachment to make yourself look fabulous in battle. It's JUST a Nerf gun and you shoot people with it... preferably other people with nerf guns.
EDIT: Further inspection on the Nerf Gun paints a slightly less positive picture. Again forgetting the advertisement, we are led to believe that these are equivalent to the boys in terms of power and performance, but testing them out has shown they under perform in comparison and they tried to manipulate "accessorizing" trends by selling overpriced ammo packs with pretty colors and patterns. One step forward 2 steps back.
EDIT EDIT: Underperformance was measured by the lower ammo stocks in the Rebelle range. This was likely to encourage people to buy the overpriced glamor ammo. Looks like they started going forward, but got turned around and went backward instead.
What exactly screams 'gender indoctrination' about 'I want you to make more products where girls go on adventures'? Moreover, what's wrong with that?
The claim that the parents are behind it because a child aged 7 would be too innocent to know about sexism ignores the more simple explanation that the girl herself doesn't see it as sexism because she has no concept of such a thing. She just wants to be able to do the same thing the boys are doing.
Not all sets are compatible. especially when it comes to minifigs. for example you cannot interchange the heads of minifigs for most sets. there are plenty of "unique" parts in the sets, and you dont want to be forced to buy 20 sets of "unique to beach stuff" legos just to get the minifigs that you could cram into, say, a rocketship.
my little sister loves legos and its a natural birthday gift for her. she has something like 20 or more sets, and the amount of "interchangable ones" are always at 2/3 per type of blocks.
i too remember when in my childhood i could mix all the legos as i see fit, and she inherited my lego collection which is still the largest interchangible collection she has. sadly, interchangibility is no longer important to them.
Political correctness has made it's way down even our children's throats, there's nothing we can have these days without being claimed that (Example) has enough blacks, enough women, etc. This is sad. LEGO can make whatever they want.
BUT, that's just my opinion. Take it for how you will but whether this situation is related or not, political correctness is running everyone's lives now-a-days.
This should read : "7 year old girl's PARENTS accuse lego of being sexist." Kids don't see these distinctions unless their parents put those thoughts into their heads. Every modern theme has male and female minifigs. This whole thing smacks of a busy-body parent with time on their hands and their nose out of joint.
You know what? I'm with you on this. At seven years old, if your kid even understands what something being sexist MEANS, you are raising your kid wrong. I can understand teaching racism to curb racism at that age in case there's a problem with other kids, but seven is not the age in which you go accusing a TOY COMPANY of being sexist with its largely interchangeable-parts people! Yeah, that sounds like parents TELLING the kid what to write AND helping with the spelling out of some misplaced venture into equality that is unimportant insofar as Lego is concerned.
Actually, this smacks of feminist mom. You know the kind. The one who's also a soccer mom with the minivan who takes the kids in a minivan, gets overwhelmingly protective, and then overwhelmingly defensive over every action she does, and then gets really bitchy and violent whenever a perceived threat is nearby. I hate bad parents, but god damn the overzealous soccer mom and all the horrid behavior that comes from them and maybe gets transferred into their kids!
For some reason I remember legos being genderless bodies and all it took was a hair swap to make it a boy or girl. Am I missing something or have legos changed? Regardless I really have to jump into the "mom put her up to it" group. Maybe she didn't actually sit her down with a piece of paper but this seems like a result of her constantly drilling her daughter with ideological views when she should be just enjoying childhood. When I was 7 if a toy was not what I wanted it to be I found something else to play with. I didn't write a letter that looks like little Timmy just took his first gender studies class. We need to let kids be kids again. You know why I have never had a discussion with my brothers on sexism or racism or any other ism? Because they are little kids. When they need to know they will know about it I'm not going to try to mold them into perfect little politically correct soldiers. Nothing is more upsetting to me then seeing parents trying to teach their kids absurd PC rules because they are so worried about somebody judging THEM. That is the thing with parents like that. Its not about them wanting their kids to be good its about them not wanting other people to think their kids are bad and by association think they are bad. Its the white guilt, social justice warrior, uber politically correct crowd and god help us because now they are breeding.
Agreed, it doesn't read like something a seven year old would write without some severe prompting and poking. For one thing seven year olds just don't think like this.
EDIT: "Something a seven year old would right?" That's fucking heinous.
Don't worry, LEGO is slowly changing. More and more female figures are appearing, we aren't at a 50/50 rate yet but if we keep whining (and buying) we'll get there eventually.
We also need a little less pink in the girl sets. And normal LEGO figures in girl sets, not the unholy spawns that they have now.
There is actually almost no "pink" anywhere in the girl targeted Lego "Friends" line. It does have a bit more pastel tones such as teals or violets and less earth tones than some of the male targeted lines. But really virtually no pink. Except for the new Disney Princess stuff. I think Ariel has a pink rowboat for some bizarre reason? Actually the Friends colors aren't that far removed from their older Harry Potter stuff.
It's Megabloks that has the horrid pink Barbie stuff. (And on a side note Outside of that Barbie line, Megabloks does not make any female Minifigs at all. Even their World of Warcraft line lacked any trace of females.)
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