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In defense of Lego Friends
So I just watched this well-done video on the new Lego Friends line, from Feminist Frequency:
Over the course of the video I went from peeved at Lego to actually really impressed with what they've done and grumpy at all the hate they've been getting for it, the exact opposite of what the video was aiming for.
I know! It's horribly gender-essentialist, all these pink and purple sets designed to help build houses instead of cities, with their human figures that look more like dolls than the iconic lego figurines.
But it's *exactly* the sort of thing that might have gotten me started playing with legos as a kid. I was never really into legos. I loved lincoln logs--I used them to build doll houses. I loved blocks--I used them to build doll houses. And I loved erector sets and chemical bond model kits (look I was the grandchild of a nano-physicist ok????) and mostly I really, really, loved cardboard, which I could cut and fold into ANY SHAPE I WANTED to build things with. (Mostly things for my dolls to live in and/or use.)
Legos always seemed horribly limiting. They only came in rectangles, for one, unlike things like erector sets and all the neat toys at my grandparents' you could use to build elaborate crystalline structures. And there were never enough vertical panels so if you wanted to build a doll house you had to build all your walls out of bricks, which just wasn't that fascinating an activity.
And those lego figures--they're pretty neat, I'll admit, with their different hair options and differently-colored shirts and stuff. But they're anonymous. They're not really people--they're just another shape of brick that you can use to decorate your scenes.
Lego friends introduces a set of distinct *characters* with names and personalities and identifiable features. That's an inroad to being able to use them to tell stories. And if there was one thing that I liked more than designing and building elaborate dollhouses out of everything I could possibly find for that purpose, it was acting out stories with my little sister and our dolls. Lego Friends would have let us do that, and hey, if we needed more pieces or wanted colors other than pink or purple we could have then turned to THE ENTIRE REST OF LEGO-KIND.
The uproar is about the fact that these are being marketed as "legos for girls", and I keep seeing this image being passed around the internet as a preferred marketing campaign:
And that's great for girls who want to play "like boys". But what about girls (and boys, and others) who want to play "like girls"? Lego Friends isn't necessarily Legos for Girls. It's Legos for Feminine Kids. And I'm sorry, but I can't be angry at Lego marketing itself to feminine kids and giving them a doorway into the broader world of playing with Legos. I created my own inroad with erector sets and the other "masculine" toys I played with, but not every kid does that on their own.
The path "forward" doesn't necessarily have to be a brave march forward into an increasingly "gender-neutral" future where masculinity is the norm. That's not gender-neutral. That's masculine. Sometimes girls don't need to be given the freedom to "act like boys". Sometimes they need the freedom to "act like girls", damnit. (This is the part where I really want to insert a pithy Julia Serano quotation but if I tried it would wind up being everything she's ever said. If you want to pause at this point and get a copy of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and read the entire thing I don't blame you--that would be an excellent life choice. But there's only one more paragraph and you can go read all the Serano after that.)
Twenty-ish years ago another toy company did the same thing--they took a toy traditionally sold in neutral colors and created a pastel version, with a set of unique characters, each with their own personality. That was My Little Pony, a toy that's increasingly in the news as it gains more fans of all genders. Can we give Lego the opportunity to do the same?
(OK GO READ ALL THE SERANO NOW. TRUST ME.)
Over the course of the video I went from peeved at Lego to actually really impressed with what they've done and grumpy at all the hate they've been getting for it, the exact opposite of what the video was aiming for.
I know! It's horribly gender-essentialist, all these pink and purple sets designed to help build houses instead of cities, with their human figures that look more like dolls than the iconic lego figurines.
But it's *exactly* the sort of thing that might have gotten me started playing with legos as a kid. I was never really into legos. I loved lincoln logs--I used them to build doll houses. I loved blocks--I used them to build doll houses. And I loved erector sets and chemical bond model kits (look I was the grandchild of a nano-physicist ok????) and mostly I really, really, loved cardboard, which I could cut and fold into ANY SHAPE I WANTED to build things with. (Mostly things for my dolls to live in and/or use.)
Legos always seemed horribly limiting. They only came in rectangles, for one, unlike things like erector sets and all the neat toys at my grandparents' you could use to build elaborate crystalline structures. And there were never enough vertical panels so if you wanted to build a doll house you had to build all your walls out of bricks, which just wasn't that fascinating an activity.
And those lego figures--they're pretty neat, I'll admit, with their different hair options and differently-colored shirts and stuff. But they're anonymous. They're not really people--they're just another shape of brick that you can use to decorate your scenes.
Lego friends introduces a set of distinct *characters* with names and personalities and identifiable features. That's an inroad to being able to use them to tell stories. And if there was one thing that I liked more than designing and building elaborate dollhouses out of everything I could possibly find for that purpose, it was acting out stories with my little sister and our dolls. Lego Friends would have let us do that, and hey, if we needed more pieces or wanted colors other than pink or purple we could have then turned to THE ENTIRE REST OF LEGO-KIND.
The uproar is about the fact that these are being marketed as "legos for girls", and I keep seeing this image being passed around the internet as a preferred marketing campaign:
And that's great for girls who want to play "like boys". But what about girls (and boys, and others) who want to play "like girls"? Lego Friends isn't necessarily Legos for Girls. It's Legos for Feminine Kids. And I'm sorry, but I can't be angry at Lego marketing itself to feminine kids and giving them a doorway into the broader world of playing with Legos. I created my own inroad with erector sets and the other "masculine" toys I played with, but not every kid does that on their own.
The path "forward" doesn't necessarily have to be a brave march forward into an increasingly "gender-neutral" future where masculinity is the norm. That's not gender-neutral. That's masculine. Sometimes girls don't need to be given the freedom to "act like boys". Sometimes they need the freedom to "act like girls", damnit. (This is the part where I really want to insert a pithy Julia Serano quotation but if I tried it would wind up being everything she's ever said. If you want to pause at this point and get a copy of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and read the entire thing I don't blame you--that would be an excellent life choice. But there's only one more paragraph and you can go read all the Serano after that.)
Twenty-ish years ago another toy company did the same thing--they took a toy traditionally sold in neutral colors and created a pastel version, with a set of unique characters, each with their own personality. That was My Little Pony, a toy that's increasingly in the news as it gains more fans of all genders. Can we give Lego the opportunity to do the same?
(OK GO READ ALL THE SERANO NOW. TRUST ME.)
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-02-09 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)This has been an interesting topic to read other opinions and viewpoints on. I discussed this with my mom recently and it brought back memories of having girl "legos" when I was a kid. My only irritation with it back then was that they were generic and couldn't be used with the regular legos because they were just off enough that they didn't match up!
But, now, as a parent, I have a different point of view. My problem isn't with Lego, or with the marketing used. It's with PARENTS who choose to only expose their children to gender-specific toys. Yes, Lego is marketing things a certain way, but it's the parents who ultimately make the decision on what toys are brought into their household for their children. In our household, we have decided to go the Waldorf route - basic, simple, open-ended toys. If we were to ever do Legos at all, I'd probably buy a set of both and mix them all together. ALL COLORS!
I don't think that the colors of Legos is going to impact a child's gender. Will it make it harder if that child is being forced into one category when they actually identify with another? Probably. But then so will everything else in the world. I agree with what others said about making things "gender-neutral" and actually making them masculine. Femininity is okay. Pink is okay. Princesses are okay. If it's the child's choice whether the child is male or female.
As a parent, I have more of an issue with the commercialization of toys. I don't care if Lego makes a boy set and a girl set. I do have a HUGE issue with STAR WARS/PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN/CARS/HARRY POTTER (etc.) Legos. We've made a choice to not expose our children to those things until later. Which is damn hard since EVERYTHING is branded.
Who knew toys could be such a political issue? My son is much more happy to play with cardboard and spoons than he is with other toys. We don't even buy him stuff! Everything he has are presents from other people.
The end. I have to stop now. I have a lot of thoughts about this topic :)
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no subject
That said, I was girly in that was I horse-crazed, and boyish in the dino/spaceship/bugs-are-fucking-awesome kind of way, and once I built a lego set, it just stayed built. I didn't have any need to create my own thing, but more to put together the exact set that was shown on the box.
Happily, back in the 80s, lego didn't sell pink bricks (I didn't like pink), but they DID have a lot of more domestic sets: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6379-1 and http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6374-1 to pick two that I had. The horse stable in particular was awesome to me. :) (I also had the monorail* and Robin Hood and a lot of other things.)
Lego is a dying art form, in that kids are trained from video games and tv shows that toys they play with should be exact replicas of what's on the screen. Legos are kind of the 8-bit, pixelized version of playmobil -- and, as such, have had to start manufacturing more 'processed' pieces as kids are no longer satisfied with just generic sets.
I don't, for the record, think that plain legos are masculine.** I do think that a lot of the sets that came out in the 80s may only have appealed to boys, and there were some sets that came out that only appealed to girls. I think the sets now are shoehorned into being for boys -- someone put the legos in the boys aisle to start, boy-themed legos started selling better, lego became a little more siloed in their manufacturing, repeat. This new launch is the way to balance it.
And, actually, let's just be honest. They're modernizing and renaming their old Belville girls line, which produced from 1999-2008. See for example: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5808-1 (Ironically belville.lego.com, which was active during Christmas, now redirects to the new Friends homepage.***
Okay, kids, enough lego history.
--
* Clearly the best set EVAR: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6990-1
** The toy store I had when I was growing up had its own lego aisle/area, so the toys weren't mixed in with either the girl or the boy toys. They also had an animatronic/robotic lego display that changed every month or so, so I might have been spoiled, but oh man did I play with and buy many many lego sets.
*** I took the Lego Friends quiz. Today, I am like Olivia. I like creating new things and sharing them with friends. And playing with my chemistry set: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3933.aspx and my treehouse: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3065.aspx ('cept, I'd have dogs, not cats) I would totally play with either of these playsets NOW. :) (Also hee: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Products/Details/3942.aspx) These sets are SO MUCH BETTER than Belville.
no subject
I'm with you on this. The strict themes mean that all the pieces are so specialised you can hardly build anything *but* what the package shows; what fun is that?! :D I'm so glad I grew up back when you could buy a bucket of basic pieces for a reasonable price.