LEGO and Gender

Jessica Quach

An old advertisement from LEGO. Why can't it come back to this?

LEGO has been around for decades, successfully catering to the vast majority of children and the younger generations.  The company flaunts its reputation for promoting imagination, creativity, and spatial recognition in children. Sounds like an awesome way for fun and education to be lumped together, doesn’t it?

However, it appears that LEGO has been targeting one gender of the population: boys. I’d like to make my last blog into something that will get anyone who reads this thinking about how the things we buy children can affect them when they grow up.

Do you see the difference? Why the lipstick and why the obvious cleavage?

            Back in the old days, LEGO started out as a uni-gender toy—it was even advertised as something families should do together. However, LEGO began to make its toys exclusively for boys. The main characters of the sets were boys and there were hardly any girl figures. If there were female figures, they were often portrayed as curvy, wearing skimpy outfits and heavy makeup.¹

When people began mentioning this huge gap between boys and girls, LEGO reassured the public that they were putting together something for girls, too. They were investing millions of dollars and time in research to develop a toy that would be beneficial to the development of young girls. However, their attempt at bringing fairness into the LEGO world was little to none. They basically copied a generic doll house toy and called that their attempt at bringing girls into the picture. The set for girls was called, “Friends”, featuring a city covered in pink and purple pastels with five main female characters. These characters were meant to go to salons, back pastries, be homemakers, and take care of pets. I have nothing against these things, but when you compare “Friends” to the now generic LEGO toys, “Friends” pales in comparison.²

An example of a girl's LEGO toy.

While LEGO boys get to go out and fight crime, go on adventures, and race LEGO girls were expected to bake, dress up, and socialize. This completely reflects the gender binary that revolves around our society. Women are meant to be nurturing, caring, and love gossip while men are meant to “save the day” and do all of the physical work.³

A fireMAN saving the day with his truck.

Not only that, LEGO even takes away the “imagination and creativity” component of its toys in “Friends”, making it blatantly clear that the fun starts after the shops are set up. For boys, television advertisements promote the excitement of building and rebuilding. For girls, there isn’t much you can do with the bricks but make the suggested building. Some of the accessories are already made and cannot be taken apart. A chair is a chair in the world of “Friends” where as a table can be anything in the world of “Lego city”.⁴

Although I had hoped that maybe the idea of gender roles and stereotypes has watered down in today’s world, it doesn’t seem to be the case. When I went around the toy department at the store the other day, I was slapped in the face with the reality of our culture. You could easily tell which side had the girls’ toys and which side had the boys. One aisle was filled with pastels, pinks, and purples. There were teacups and makeup stands and dolls. In the adjacent aisle, there were blues and blacks. There were guns, ropes, daggers, swords, cars, and trucks. If that isn’t separating genders into two categories, I don’t know what is.

These male figures have scowls, angry faces, and smirks. They have tattoos and appear aggressive. What are we trying to tell kids?

On that note, LEGO also seems to be using violence to cater to boys.⁵ This reminded me of the double standard present in our society. Boys were meant to be aggressive and violent. This is promoting the “tough guise” that surrounds men and boys.⁶ Women had to be nurturing and passive. It’s sad to think that even the toys our children play with define who they are and what people expect them to be. I remember looking through my brother’s LEGO set when I was a child, asking him if he had a girl figure so that I could play with him.

My hope is that one day when we look down they toy aisle, we might not see two segregated sections. Although I don’t think it’s a bad idea for girls to play dress up and boys to play cops and robbers, I’d think it would be nice for there to be a section where the lines are a little blurred. Where girls who want a taste of adventure can play and where boys who want to lounge and cook can play. However, with the way toys are advertised now, it appears that this gender binary will continue to exist because I think the toys we play with as children play a part in our development into adults.

Citations

¹Pickett, David, “Part II: Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap,” The Society Pages, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/15/part-ii-historical-perspective-on-the-lego-gender-gap/, (accessed April 26, 2014).

²Anita Sarkeesian, "LEGO & Gender Part 1: LEGO Friends," Feminist Frequency (blog), January 30, 2012, http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/01/lego-gender-part-1-lego-friends/.

³ Moore, Crystal, “The Role of Sex and Gender in Sexual History,” Charlotte: The History of Sexuality in America from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Accessed April 26, 2014.

⁴Sarkessian, Anita, “LEGO & Gender Part 2: The Boys Club,” Feminist Frequency (blog), February 6, 2012, http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/02/lego-gender-part-2-the-boys-club/ (accessed April 26, 2014).

⁵Ibid.

⁶ Katz, Jackson, "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, & the Crisis in Masculinity," Web, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xwu5r3_tough-guise-violence-media-and-the-crisis-in-masculinity_tech.