Seven-Year-Old Girl Accuses LEGO of Sexism

[WeepingAngels]

You know what else is sexist? My boner.

I reported this post yesterday. I can't believe there was no warning issued. On this forum you can get a warning for agreeing with another poster without going into detail about it but this gets through? At the very least, this a no content post.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeah, I am sure my 7 year old self would have been much happier thinking about sexism while playing with my toys.

Who said anything about happy? I certainly didn't. Why change the argument up?

The post you're referring to was about raising a point of cultural oversensitivity. The business practices are hardly comparable. If LEGO held back a set that was distasteful in another country, there might be a point to make, however, this is a different market and age group.

So it's only wrong to censor a market because you personally have an issue with it.

I know, fuck, I used to get creative with this shit, and I swear this is before the pony hype of recent year, but I had my beanie babies go to war with my pony toys.

Complex political nightmares of epic proportions.

And definitely 'adventures' aplenty, through no pushing from anyone (hell DISCOURAGEMENT was more common).

That seems to be more common. It's funny, a comic appeared on my Facebook feed today, and made me think about this thread.

Spoiler: Hidden For Size

I mean, it talks about things from the flip-side, but the same mentality is fairly common the other way around. It seems like all it takes to be accused of indoctrinating your kids is not teaching them rigid gender roles (and othe rthings, like homophobia). As I said before, my brother played with She-Rah and Popples and had a Strawberry Shortcake doll. My parents were apparently indoctrinating him simply because they didn't tell him he must have boy stuff. And I like to joke about it because he's the normal one, but there should be nothing wrong with any of his behaviour. But the norm is discouragement. This is learned behaviour, yet the absence of it is what is considered wrong.

Me? I felt no gender enforcement myself. I just though transforming robots and fantasy characters were cool.. I just wish there had been more female characters in those toy lines.

But my parents must have forced that on me, eh?

On second thought I think you understood my point but wanted to try and bend it to fit your own narrative.

See, this is exactly what I mean. You're the one trying to present a narrative, but you're accusing me of trying to twist things to fit yours because of the problems with internal consistency. The only thing I did was present it in a glib fashion, because I think the argument is absurd.

So even kids are throwing the word "sexism" around now?

Civilization has failed.

The kid didn't say "sexism." However, I'm not sure why civilisation has failed one way or the other.

Do you really think children are that stupid?
When I was 6 I wrote a letter to Mauno Koivisto (the president of Finland at the time) telling him how he should deal with European union and communism.
I was also upset at there not being enough girl characters in Donald Duck and sent letters to them telling this.

My mum didn't in any way tell me to.

I'm curious: did your parents teach you about any of this?

I was politically aware in the single digits. However, I'd already forged a political ideology different from the rest of my family. One of the reasons behind this is that my parents taught me to think, to learn, to investigate, not what to think. When I asked questions, my parents gave me the tools to answer instead of the answers themselves.

And I'm wondering how common that is. Maybe kids really are too stupid to be able to notice that there's a ton of Legos marketed at boys and a small line marketed at girls (but I doubt it)

.... I am afraid to ask but, how exactly do can you tell what a lego's gender is?

Have you looked at the thread? There have been quite a few examples, including the post right above yours.

 

[faefrost]

Cut for brevity

I think that breakdown is a few years old. For example the Collectable Minifigs are nearing 200 figs, and the male to female ratio is much closer to balanced. Not quite 50/50, but far closer. Maybe 50 male/35 female/15 completely irrelevant or indeterminate (grey aliens etc). It probably dates back to 2010 or 2011?

Also looking at it as just raw numbers doesn't get the full picture. As an example "City" while their largest and most common theme, can actually be broken into differing sub themes. Which in turn have wildly different breakdowns or gender distributions. Police and Fire are the two almost constant sub themes, and they tend to be heavily male weighted. (typically only 2 female firefighters per year, maybe one or two female police and no female crooks until this year). Whereas other common and recurring subthemes like Airport, or Great Vehicles tend to be much closer to 50/50. Construction was a sausage fest until this year, etc.

It also goes the other way as he is looking at other themes. Atlantis, Pharoah's Quest and Ninjago are all technically what falls under the Blanket of "Action" theme. Which more than anything is Lego's specific Boy Targeted branch that is designed to specifically be crack for 6-11 year old boys. They have the same basic ratio because they are just more or less the same formula. Also the reviewer is ignoring what could be viewed as neutral or nun human characters and is simply classifying anything not specifically identified as male. Cases in point. "Ninjago 30 male 3 female" Ummm. No Ninjago has 7 male, 3 female, and 20 non human villains. Skeletons, Snakes, Stone Warriors, etc. the same with Atlantis. and Pharoah's Quest. They each had 3 male protagonists, 1 female, and all the rest were mummies, weird sexless fish creatures and similar.

Only 3 girls in Harry Potter? I can't imagine what sets he was looking at? The only even mildly recent male only set I can think of is the Night Bus? The male ratio may get padded a bit because every set has Harry Potter in it. But Hermione is the second most common figure across the line. While Harry is in every set. Hermione is in every other or every 2 out of 3. And once again the reviewer is counting sexless or indeterminate creature figs, such as Dementors as male. For the Harry Potter line as a whole the breakdown of male characters depicted vs female ones was probably in the nature of 2 to 1. Which covered most of the major named female characters (at least those with real dialog).

So as in most things be careful of statistics and always keep things in context and recognize them as a specific moment in time.

 

[Lieju]

Do you really think children are that stupid?
When I was 6 I wrote a letter to Mauno Koivisto (the president of Finland at the time) telling him how he should deal with European union and communism.
I was also upset at there not being enough girl characters in Donald Duck and sent letters to them telling this.

My mum didn't in any way tell me to.

I'm curious: did your parents teach you about any of this?

I was politically aware in the single digits. However, I'd already forged a political ideology different from the rest of my family. One of the reasons behind this is that my parents taught me to think, to learn, to investigate, not what to think. When I asked questions, my parents gave me the tools to answer instead of the answers themselves.

And I'm wondering how common that is. Maybe kids really are too stupid to be able to notice that there's a ton of Legos marketed at boys and a small line marketed at girls (but I doubt it)

My mum who raised me was never active in politics, and I don't think she ever talked to me about that stuff.
I think I complained to her about it, and it's possible she told me to send feedback to magazines or something, but not necessarily. My mum is a journalist, and I'm pretty sure I've heard stuff around the house about people sending complaints and suggestions to her workplace.

My political ideas certainly weren't the same as hers. I wrote to Koivisto to tell him he should try staying the president because he had been such a good president until then and I was worried that something bad would happen if he left.

Also I wrote to him that communism was a good idea because if everyone had as much stuff no-one would be jealous, but I was unsure how it would work in practise.
'
My mum was happy to let me play with any toys, though, and told me there were no "boys' toys" and "girl's toys" when I went to her crying when I've been told I shouldn't play with scary-looking monsters because I was a girl.

 

[Something Amyss]

My mum who raised me was never active in politics, and I don't think she ever talked to me about that stuff.
I think I complained to her about it, and it's possible she told me to send feedback to magazines or something, but not necessarily. My mum is a journalist, and I'm pretty sure I've heard stuff around the house about people sending complaints and suggestions to her workplace.

My political ideas certainly weren't the same as hers. I wrote to Koivisto to tell him he should try staying the president because he had been such a good president until then and I was worried that something bad would happen if he left.

Also I wrote to him that communism was a good idea because if everyone had as much stuff no-one would be jealous, but I was unsure how it would work in practise.
'
My mum was happy to let me play with any toys, though, and told me there were no "boys' toys" and "girl's toys" when I went to her crying when I've been told I shouldn't play with scary-looking monsters because I was a girl.

I was just curious. My mom was very outspoken about standing up for one's self, and my father made sure my brother and I had educational tools. For example, there was a magazine when I was young called Penny Power (It later became Zillions) which actually taught kids about the way things are marketed to them and the like. The idea to actually write to people may have come from there.

My parents didn't exactly go hardcore on their ideologies, either. My mom burned her bra and both my parents were arrested during Civil Rights demonstrations, and my dad fought the draft in Vietnam because he's a hardcore pacifist. Okay, the pacifism thing was impressed on me, but you'd never particularly know it from my household that my parents had both fervently stood up for black rights. I learned this stuff years later.

I was raised to speak my mind, even if those views were contrary to those of my parents. And so, as a kid, I spoke my mind against all sorts of things. The end result is a mind that seems to horrify most of my family. Hopefully, though, my parents appreciate the monster they created. Especially since I keep educating them.

But this may be an Americentric view, still. The reason I say that is the frequency with which I see other American families pissed off that schools are teaching things contrary to their dogma, or see people outraged that their kids are exposed to the real world in...The real world (See: "how am I going to explain homosexuality to my kids?" and similar questions).

Also, screw the rules. Scary monsters are awesome.

 

[Smeatza]

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).

Considering that traditionally female orientated sets have been in production since 1971 (Lego Bevelle), they have to be selling well enough somewhere. I've read places that since Lego Friends was released Lego have seen a 25% increase in sales. These weren't official figures from the company though so they could be inaccurate.

*Harry Potter, which has a notably diverse cast (and reader/viewership) in both books and films, was 20 male to 3 female.

I have to disagree with you here. Both the Harry Potter films and books were dominated by male characters.

*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.

Lego do a booster pack type thing now? That's disappointing.
Meh, when it comes to collectables (aka. stuff that's meant to be kept and not played with) I don't really care about gender distribution.

That's pretty bad.

Depends how you define bad, I don't throw the term around so easily.

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.

I wouldn't call the gender-weighted children's toys market a niche market. If anything gender-neutral children's toys are the niche market.
And like I say above it's because the gender-weighted sets, (both male and female) sell well enough to justify their continuation. Likewise they don't sell poorly enough to justify excluding a certain market.
Like I say above, the existence of Lego Friends sets is no problem. The alternative is to simply exclude potential female buyers who fit traditional gender roles and want their toys to reflect that.
I also wonder if you're aware that aeroplane, magician and karate sets all feature as part of Lego Friends.
It's not a question of one or the other (gender brands or diversified core brand), it's a question of "why not both?"

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.

No the sets that are geared towards them have mostly male characters.
The fact Lego produce sets for girls that fit traditional gender roles doesn't mean they believe all girls should play with those sets and those sets only. Or even that only girls should play with said sets.

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):

Spoiler

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.

See this is what I mean. When it comes to throwing off the confines of gender roles (within the field of children's toys) Lego are way ahead of the curve.
Traditional male gender roles? Got that covered.
Traditional female gender roles? They got that covered.
And with the tiniest bit of effort from the customer everything in between is covered as well.

That's not to say there's no progress to be made, or room for improvement. But marketing is bullshit, it's all smoke and mirrors. Let's look at the actual product, rather than a field that's inherently exclusive by nature.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm sorry. The poor little feller is stuck in the '50s.

He shouldn't have blinked.

Actually, the kid doesn't say "sexism", the OP added that. The letter is also most probably coached by the parent, it has an odd, non-childlike syntax. It also has been tweeted 3000 times, so phenomenon is something of a stretch. All in all, it's not really much of a story.

Apparently, it's enough to make people cry about the doom of humanity. And they're probably right. I mean, think about it. Girls have attained self-awareness: how are we going to sell them off now?[footnote]Yes, that's tongue in cheek. Keep in mind that a lot of the cultural norms people are upset about being challenged have roots in women as property. Obedient property it was okay to smack around[/footnote]

But, more to the point, the OP didn't add it so much as described her statement. Even if she doesn't particularly know what "sexism" means, she's addressing sexism in society. There's nothing wrong with the author of the article saying so. It's just a shame people can't see the word "sexism" without getting set off.

 

[Something Amyss]

See this is what I mean. When it comes to throwing off the confines of gender roles (within the field of children's toys) Lego are way ahead of the curve.
Traditional male gender roles? Got that covered.
Traditional female gender roles? They got that covered.
And with the tiniest bit of effort from the customer everything in between is covered as well.

That's not "ahead of the curve." That's Model T thinking. That's like saying there's no problem with a game that won't run because if you're a modder you can patch it yourself.

Not to mention Lego Friends, which are the ones that cover the "traditional gender roles" for girls, can't swap heads with the mainstream figures.

That's deliberately moving behind the curve. Considering Lego used to be an androgynous toy and now is heavily gendered and concerned with "gender roles" and makes statements about the fundamentally different way girls play, they actually went from progressive and moved backwards.

Why is this praiseworthy again? I mean, if you like gender disparity, fair enough and I can't really change your mind. But you're arguing they're a progressive company when theyvé done the opposite.

 

[Something Amyss]

If you want to keep that discussion going, take it to the other thread.

Except it's relevant. If you were to apply the same logic equally (that people should feel insulted by the assumption of cultural standards), then you would have to take issue with Lego as well. The reason you don't is because applying the same logic is inconvenient. You're not providing reason, you're providing justification as to why it's okay to speak to a market's sensibilities in one case, but why it's wrong in another.

Saying that Americans are prudes is not significantly different to saying women want to bake cookies. And given your sudden free market argument, there's no rational reason to conclude it's different for Bravely Default.

Seriously, though, I think you may have been on to something:

Well, we all need to have something to ***** and complain about and I don't see any serious questions being raised here, more than indulging in a pet peeve.

Your words apply to your own Bravely Default statements. You're only bothered because this one isn't YOUR "pet peeve."

 

[Smeatza]

That's not "ahead of the curve." That's Model T thinking. That's like saying there's no problem with a game that won't run because if you're a modder you can patch it yourself.

No no no that's not a fair comparison at all. This is a construction set we're talking about. Not a consistent, solid product. Lego is an SDK, not a game.

Not to mention Lego Friends, which are the ones that cover the "traditional gender roles" for girls, can't swap heads with the mainstream figures.

And if they were the only source of female characters that would be a problem but they're not so it's not.

That's deliberately moving behind the curve. Considering Lego used to be an androgynous toy and now is heavily gendered and concerned with "gender roles"

That's entirely untrue. I suggest you educate yourself on the history of Lego.
Lego was an androgynous toy for no more than a decade or two after first release. From the 1970's onwards Lego was thought of as an almost exclusively male toy and the marketing reflected that. This was mostly due to the renaissance of marketing that occurred around that time. If you take a look you'll realise that the "Lego Homemaker" sets were released in 1971.
This marketing trend endured right up until the early nineties, at which point they started incorporating token female characters into their male sets. And better embracing the gender-neutrality of their product in their marketing.

Notice how the word "marketing" keeps coming up here. I'll address why that's important below.

and makes statements about the fundamentally different way girls play, they actually went from progressive and moved backwards.

Well ignoring the fact such statements are pure perception. You're not taking into account history here. What was progressive 40 years ago is not progressive today. And what was regressive 40 years ago could be progressive today.

Why is this praiseworthy again? I mean, if you like gender disparity, fair enough and I can't really change your mind. But you're arguing they're a progressive company when theyvé done the opposite.

Because (and I'll copy and paste from my previous post) "Marketing is bullshit, it's all smoke and mirrors. Let's look at the actual product, rather than a field that's inherently exclusive by nature."

Lego allows young girls to be Ninja's, Astronauts, Queens, Warriors, Wizards, Scientists etc. It allows them to create and tailor whole worlds to their every whim. It shows them that their imagination is their only real limit and things like gender are nothing but a meaningless formality.

I don't give a shit if a 30 second TV spot or the picture on the box don't adequately represent this. And I certainly wont hold and entire company and its products responsible for the inherent flaws of marketing.


So yeah, if we want to ignore almost everything about Lego and it's core product and concentrate exclusively on the marketing we can make things seems much worse than they are.
But I don't think that kind of sensationalism and dishonesty is acceptable.

 

[Scorpid]

Are they boys? Or are they genderless?
Oooooh.

They're square framed,flat chested, and bald unless you put hair on them. Soooo all gender clues point to male. I understand her issue though, as kid and a huge lego fan I'd of been sad if all my Lego's (wo)men were modeled after female characteristics.

 

[blackrave]

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.

How about we get rid of "girl sets" at all?
Because my assumption is that most girls who want to play with LEGO want to build vehicles and buildings too, not play with ponies and tiny kitchen utensils (or whatever themes of those pink sets are)
And if you want to play with dolls and domestic crap, maybe LEGO isn't for you
What we need is just more diverse minifig selection

If you disagree then I would like to hear what themes would you suggest for "girl sets"

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.

That is the saddest thing I have read today

 

[sageoftruth]

If she was accusing them of being sexist, I don't think she was aware of it. I think she was just saying, "More girl legos please."

 

[Atmos Duality]

*glances at huge collection of LEGOs*
*notices the bevvy of male and female specific accessories*
*shakes head and sighs at how ridiculously political and knee-jerk the world has become*

This just looks like someone took a little girl's request and plastered it all over the internet tagged "SHE THINKS ITS SEXIST!"

Honestly, this is just shameful.

 

[Phasmal]

Jesus christ on a bike these comments can be depressing.

1- Kids are not stupid. I am beginning to think that not a lot of people commenting here spend a lot of time around children as an adult and only remember children from when they were children. Children are not as dumb as many of you seem to think.

2- Kids learn very early on that girls and boys are treated differently and things are expected differently of them. They may not know about `gender roles` or `sexism`, but they can experience these things and feel they are unfair.

3- Bloody hell she just said she wanted girls to have adventures in Lego and people are invoking the ghost of the evil feminist mother brainwashing her child. Please get a grip on yourselves here. `I want girls to have adventures` is not a radical thing to say.

*Explodes*