The Lego 'Friends' range (left), compared to traditional Lego (right).
So apparently, according to the marketing team at Lego, I should probably spend this afternoon hanging out at the “returns counter” of my local toy store. It seems the Lego hospital I’ve bought my daughter for Christmas isn’t quite pink and sparkly and girl-world enough to hold her attention.
In 2012 the international toy giant is bringing out a range of Lego just for girls. What does that mean exactly? Beauty salons! Cafes! And lots of pink and love hearts!
(Really the most disturbing part of the whole thing, in my opinion, is that the characters look like they’ve wandered out of 1986 … with those big hair bodywaves and ra-ra skirts, I feel like these Lego girls should come with a free Bananarama cassette. Actually I think I saw that little Lego girl on the left on Toddlers and Tiaras last week ….)
Lego has certainly been a total boys-domain in the past. We’re talking NO girl characters in the main sets for kids aged 6 and over. But instead of creating girl-friendly Lego (what does that even mean?), couldn’t Lego just introduce female characters into Lego’s existing sets? Am I missing something?
Anyway here’s what news.com.au has to say:
TOY giant Lego is introducing “girl friendly” female characters that look more like dolls than the tiny yellow construction figures we are used to.
The “Friends” range is aimed at girls aged five and up and features ready-made characters called Stephanie, Emma, Andrea, Olivia and Mia all with different personalities and interests who live in a fictional home town called Heartlake City.
Lego senior creative director Nanna Ulrich said the range was the culmination of years of research about what girls wanted from the product.
“What Lego Friends does differently is deliver the beauty, details, accessories, real world themes and need for strong interior play that research revealed would make all the difference,” Ms Ulrich said.
“We understand that girls really want a Lego offering that mirrors what the boys experience but in a way that fulfils their unique desire for remodelling and redesign, combined with realistic themes in community and friendship.”
The collection also showcases extra colours – two blues, a lavender, two greens and a purple – to suit the new look which includes buildings like a beauty salon and splash pool.
The Lego for girls is due for release in March 2012, the same year Lego celebrates 50 years in Australia.
As the mother of a three-year-old girl I just find it exhausting fighting the fight against all the pink, sparkly, love-hearty, princessy stuff that’s marketed at her. And it’s a vicious circle, in my mind. The more our girls think they need their toys to be pink and sparkly (because they’re being taught that’s what girls play with), the more they want it. Maybe I’ll go buy Ava a kite ….
Here are some images of the Lego ‘Friends’ range:
So what do you think? Did you play with Lego growing up? Did you feel excluded? Do girls need their own girl-friendly Lego in order to play with it?
Comments
178 Comments so far
Sadly, this isn’t a new development for LEGO. For years they’ve been attempting to develop ‘girls’ LEGO as an entirely separate entity to the rest of the ‘male’ LEGO world.
This is a fantastic video from early last year regarding the ‘Friends’ launch internationally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmRxGLn0Bk
As a kidlet I would veer away from anything pink and sparkly and head straight for the LEGO section, back when it was still easy to get off-the-shelf LEGO products that were unthemed and ungendered blocks! There’s precious little opportunity for this to happen now with LEGO seemingly hellbent on the idea that there can’t possible be a single product that appeals to both sexes equally, as their original products did for so long.
As I also happen to be a LEGO-obsessed kidlet who turned out to be an architect, I find this incredibly disappointing. LEGO WAS a learning product that didn’t discriminate by gender. Now it’s just a marketing exercise in reinforcing old-fashioned notions of gender roles.
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My brother (27) and I (22) used to always play Lego together as kids. We owned one, rather feminine kit, that was a cafe/restaurant and we used it mainly for extra parts to build planes. I preferred the ‘boys’ ones. Like the ambulance, Police helicopter and ships. Those were way more fun! I enjoyed my fair share of Barbies, but in terms of building toys the ‘boys’ range was way better.
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We love lego at out house, and I have been on the lookout for some things that are more ‘neutral’. Not interested in Pirates of the Caribeen stuff – too dark more then to boyish…
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I’d prefer more gender neutral sets but I still think introducing a girl focussed range is overall a good move – lego has been focussed on boys too long. My biggest complaint with the new girls range is that it requires the barest of construction. I feel that it limits the sense of mastery and accomplishment. It also reduces the learning opportunities in relation to developing spatial, mathematical, and fine motor skills. To me that’s discriminatory and reinforces inappropriate stereotypes about the abilities of girls compared to boys. Bring back the endless possibilities of Lego!
In the interest of choice I think a number of boy focused sets could be made more accessible to girls and vice versa. Simply increasing gender diversity in the sets would make an enormous difference. For example more girl astronauts and call them astronauts not intergalactic girls! And there are loads of male vets in the real world!
Lastly I think the segregation is sad for Lego’s legacy – It’s the gender neutral Lego sets that will stand the test of time…
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Don’t worry too much about whether toys are meant for boys or girls. Your children are individuals with individual needs and preferences. Luckily, I had a sister who got barbies for Christmas when I received my Lego stuff. We usually swapped gifts after half an hour to the dismay of our parents. I was happy dressing dolls and she enjoyed building castles from plastic blocks, but to the old folks it was just sick and wrong on all accounts. I know they had sleepless nights because of our “wrong” playing habits. Thirty years later, my sister enjoys tuning her car and watching sports, while I go shoe shopping and take dance classes, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. We are both happily married and try to not impose gender stereotypes on our own kids.
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I had barbie for when I wanted to be girly. Actually I remember my brother even having his own cowboy ken doll so he could play to. It was a non issue. Lego was just another thing to play with gender specific or not.
All this has become is more money making for toy companies and the more parents buy into it the richer and greedier the companies become.
Perhaps we should be encouraging our children to get outside more or to create their own toys. My brother, again, made himself the most amazing cattle station in our old chook pen complete with a water filled dam and marbles for cattle. He made yards with paddle pop sticks and string and played quiet happily out there until he grew out of it.
Imagination seems to be a thing of the past and that is the thing kid now days are missing out on the most.
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I didn’t realize LEGO was originally for BOYS??? This is rediculous… beauty salons! really! and splash pools!! My daughters wont be getting any of these. My girls have the normal LEGO thats for EVERYONE and they play with it every second day or so (aged 6 and 3) I agree with the article everything is too pink and sparkly I now go out of my way to find “unisex”/appealing to ALL products. Let kids be kids and stop treating young girls that beauty salons/ skimpy nurse outfits/and waiting-around-for-a-man-to-save-you is Adult hood! Because its not ITS ALL A LIE!!!
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My daughter is a recent convert to Lego. In visting our local stores the sets stocked are heavily boy friendly – my daughter doesn’t want spaceships, Medieval knights or Pirates of the Carribean. This new Lego doesn’t look any better to me as it looks too girly. My daughter just wants to build towers and houses. Where have all those sets gone? Someone below mentioned mermaids – would love see them here.
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i’m a girl and i loved the old Lego style just fine! Why must they stereotype girls products so that they are “girly”? Why can’t kids just enjoy toys any more without them being specific to their gender? Nay from me.
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My 2 year old daughter loves Lego … well duplo lego.
Not sure if she needs to (or should) have lego that is particularly marketed towards girls. She just likes building stuff.
I am not sure that it is necessary … but I am sure that they paid some people alot of money to hear this.
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So let me get this straight.
Lego asked girls what they want?
They didn’t ask any grownups with, I dunno, some *wisdom* about what girls would benefit from most?
I totally agree with you, Bec. If girls want this it’s because they’ve been taught that the only toys for them are the ones with pink boxes and love hearts.
Which in itself isn’t that bad, but when girls narrow their entire existence down to that particular theme, I shudder to think what they’re missing out on.
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My little sister has some LEGO City sets and they usually include plenty of girls in them, so I really don’t see why it’s necessary. Sure, Lego may be more for boys, but they have plenty of sets that may appeal to girls already.
When my sister saw these in a catologue she said they looked “plain” and “boring” and mentioned how she could make them in 5 minutes.
In other words, this stuff is pointless and takes a boulder off my mountain of respect for Lego.
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Ah well, there was a school there..
I won’t be byuing it for my girl. I can only wish that noone else will buy it either, but what are my chances.
I grew up with fabuland, there were cars, a garage/house, an appletree and the ‘people’ I had were mainly animals. I loved it, and played with it for years. I was angry with my mum for not letting me have a ‘my little pony’, but she clearly thought the concept was ideotic, and I see her point these days. It’s sad that any toy marketed at girls has to be pink and so gender stereotypical. While it’s being displayed to me every day that my girl loves the nurturing and caring type games (i.e. putting her baby to sleep) I still do my best to offer her gender neutral toys and book, and will continue to do so for as long as I can.
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My daughter has plenty of Lego. Always seemed gender neutral to me – houses & horses and cars.
This stuff will make it impossible to buy actual lego – my daughter will always say “I want that stuff” and point at this shit.
Massive, massive fail.
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This seems to me to be the opposite of “girl friendly.” It’s just another girl’s best frenemy-type product, whereby personal ambition and substance of any kind is obsolete when accessorising is the order of the day.
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polly pockets meets lego. It will be a huge hit…
The salons etc are dissapointing, but Lego is a company out there to make money, after all.
The salons will be made once, and then the kids wil go back to making houses and towers.
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That girlie Lego is BORING. It would take about five minutes to put the kits together, so the satisfaction levels would be minimal. Get Hillside House instead! (I want Hillside House and I am a very BIG girl, lol. I requested it for Christmas, but there’s no Lego-ish parcels that I can see)
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My nearly 3 year old just saw the pics and said “I want that…pink LEGO”. An d I will probably get it for her. So what, she likes pink and sparkly things…it’s not a crime. She also likes playing with her brothers trains and his getting dirty in the sand and making sand pies etc etc. Sometimes I think we overthink all this gender stuff. Sometimes boys like blue and girls like pink…I am a girl and I certainly like pink stuff and especially the sparkly stuff (jewellery). I am sure her toys will not define her for the rest of her days…
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Actually, we had lego girls (im 30…) my sister was given a few sets that came with chicks with ponytails and girlyish outfits and they had horses and cars. there was a little too much pink for my tastes, but i thought it was pretty sweet, and my daughter now owns all that lego. Its got to be about 20 years old.
Now she is 8, she really enjoys the Harry Potter sets – not that she really needs more as she has all the lego from my brothers, sister and family friends (about 4 4litre ice-cream tubs worth – bit more i think. I am constantly finding more…).
I would completely NOT buy this stuff for my daughter. as other commenter s have said, it looks more like polly pocket than lego, and I really don’t think this gender branding is completely necessary.
However, as much as I despise this, there are possibly some girls out there who will find this lego much more engaging, so I am pretty sure it will find a very enthusiastic audience. If enough people choose not to buy it though, Lego will pull the range quite quickly.
I must say though, when we went to a lego world store in the US our minds were BLOWN at the range of lego available! lego mermaids!!! i wanted them so bad!
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just a thought!!!! anything that keeps them occupied and they genuinely like to play with should be accepted by the parent…. if they like pink they like pink, parents seem to forget what it is like when someone tries to dress you in clothes you don’t like what you wear or dressing to please some one else or what it is like when your mum comes to your house and tells you how you should have your furniture (it sounds like all these opinonated parents who like to direct their girls in a certain way are just setting the girls up for low esteem and doing things to please others rather than following what they really like and accepting the girls for what they are and what they like and it sounds like nothing has changed parents are still telling their kids what they want them to be and what they want them to like…. and that has been happening for decades!!
another thought what mother doesn’t like dressing up, puts make up on, goes to cafes, goes to beauty salons etc… are our girls just doing role play that mimicks us!!!
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It’s not about whether they dress up, or wear makeup or frequent cafe society and have manicures; It’s about not conditioning girls into thinking that those
(shallow) options are their only options.
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I grew up in the 70s/80s and had lego, a snack bar & hairdressing salon are two I remember. I was looking for lego for friend’s daughters and it seemed to be very boy specific e.g. trucks, space shuttles etc.
Unless Lego bring out some generic sets then I think there is definitely a market for girl specific lego.
My sons also have duplo and there are both males and females and it doesn’t seem so gender specific – a bus with passengers, a farm set and a house type set.
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I hate this.
why does everything have to be so gender specific!
I was looking for some snap cards a while back and asked the shop assistant if they had any: “Sure! Are they for a boy or a girl?”
What? They’re snap cards!
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Just assembled the 2-5 year old Hospital Duplo from Lego for our daughter. It has a male character with a stethoscope and a female character (with no medical instruments featuring pink cupid lips). So, the gender of the hospital personnel are pretty set here. I have told my 3 year old that the male looking one is still a woman doctor but who happens to wear no lipstick and is a bit less feminine than other women.
Girly Lego? I suppose it’s a market driven thing. I like the utilitarian feel of Lego and wouldn’t buy the girl one. I agree with just adding female characters. They could even sell them separately if they liked.
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I loved Lego as a child and I must admit I would have gone nuts for this girly version! How cute
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this release. Also, like others have said, I had “girlish” … “boy Lego” i.e. Pastel ice cream store and girl “hair” for the figures. It wasn’t belville.
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Sounds like it might be the “Paradisa” theme. Beach holiday resort-based from the 90′s. Lots of palm trees and surfing boards.
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It’s kinda funny that a lot of the posters here hate gender stereotyping and say their girls should be able to aspire to anything but come to this site and post about how important motherhood is and how the most important job in the world is staying home and raising their children.
Wait. What?
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I don’t think that’s finny at all.
Being a woman and a mother doesn’t mean I no longer have a brain or am only interested in pink and sparkles and hair salons.
It’s not one at the expense of the other and it isn’t a contradiction.
I am a mother and role model for my daughter and my son, but it’s important that they both see representations of men and women that aren’t all men are blue, builders and doctors, women are pink, princesses and fairies. That’s just silly. And as a parent, irritating.
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The point is that it is about “choice” and “freedom”. Women (and men) should have the freedom to do anything to which they aspire. These days many women choose to stay home and and that is as legitimate as any other career/lifestyle choice BUT women haven’t always had the freedom of choice. We are role models for our children and their minds should be open to all possibilities. It’s almost 2012, we shouldn’t be sinking back into 1950s ideology.
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So cliche, but aren’t all toy manufacturers guilty of the same thing? I don’t know if it was the same when I was a kid but I went shopping this week for presents and could not believe how the toys available stick so rigidly to gender stereotypes.. It’s crazy
When I was young I remember getting a Fisher Price car park from Santa and I absolutely loved it!
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Maybe I’m just really oblivious… but until reading this article, I didn’t even realise lego is generally marketed to boys! It was my favourite toy as a kid, and I intend on buying it for my nieces once they get a bit older (the twins are still in that, ‘if I get bored playing it, I’ll put it in my mouth’ phase).
It wouldn’t bother me if Lego wanted to create more ‘girly’ colours as such… or things like horse stables and cafes or whatever they think girls like… but the change of the actual lego people is silly. There’s always been lego girls… just keep it that way. The same as the male ones, but make their hair longer, or paint some bigger eyelashes or something. I just think it’s unnecessary and it’s once again pandering to this stupid obessesion marketers have with presenting little girls with a certain look. The ‘girls’ lego people remind me a bit of Bratz dolls… big heads and make up… Yuck.
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Sure, introduce cafes, beauty stores etc but do they have to be pink? And does that mean that only girls can play with them? Hate the new figures from both design and gender typecasting points of view. All of this is just reinforcing gender stereotypes (for boys as well as girls) – so last century! Original Lego (design) is cool and should stay that way.
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there is a lot of talk about this exact topic on the lego facebook page – including a push to ‘bring back beautiful’ – as per the ad below….https://www.facebook.com/LEGOGROUP?sk=wall
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I think you might have covered the story a while ago about Hamleys (UK’s most famous toy store) being phenomenally sexist in its very layout – ie, lego (and basically all the other action stuff) was on the ‘boys floors’ and the girls caring and sharing and tizzy stuff was on theirs. After a fair bit of online outrage, Hamleys has just announced it’s rearranging itself via category rather than gender. Retailers (and manufacturers) are listening….
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I don’t know what Lego you guys all played with but I’m 22 now and there was a tonne of girl Lego when I was little. The female Lego characters were the same as the males except they had longer hair and a flower or heart on the body. I owned the Lego horse ranch and the Lego boat house, both were somewhat pink and till this day I can remember them as my favourite toys.
I was extremely sad and surprised to realize that when I went to purchase some for my little cousins Christmas presents the Lego was nowhere to be found! Instead, my choices were the bratz dolls in their extremely inappropriate outfits some kind of game that encourages bimbo behviour because its ‘cool’. I say please bring back girl lego!
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Yes! thats what my sister had!!! the horse ranch. and she had a mansion. and something that had an ice-cream cart.
and my brothers had spaceships. so we used to build the spaceships and crash them into the mansion…..
all i had was star wars lego =/ (not complaining though really!)
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I’m 22 as well and played with similar lego sets- I had a resort, complete with pink windsurfer, and an icecream cart as well! But I also had similar lego to that mentioned in the article, called Belville Lego- and yes that too was pink, and featured kittens, horses and mansions! The thing is my lego dolls were generally just used as the people who lived in my brother’s car track, or who fought the lego skeleton guarding the pirates’ treasure…
I also owned undersea lego, cowboy lego, streetsweeper lego, bad guy spaceship lego, and I played with all of my lego sets equally!
So if anything- although pink, and stereotypical- I think that lego aimed at girls is infinitely better than Bratz and some of the other types of toys on offer.
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This is how to get my attention if you want me buying Lego for my daughter. Lego ad circa 1980s.
If you can’t read it, it says:
Have you ever seen anything like it? Not just what she’s made, but how proud it’s made her. It’s a look you’ll see whenever children build something themselves. No matter what they’ve created.
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YES! That’s my era & that’s how I remember playing with Lego.
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Lego was my favourite toy in the early 80s. I had Lego city sets, inthat traditional primary/bold coloured range. There were yellow faced Lego people, both girls and boys. I never considered it a ‘boy toy’, I just loved it. My sister and I played for hours.
I wouldn’t buy the new ‘friends’ collection. I will always go for the traditional sets so both my boy and girl can both play with it.
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I would have loved this as a kid – I played with my brother’s lego all the time. I don’t see anything wrong with the new Lego. It looks bright and playful and I think there will be a heap of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbours who buy this for a little girl they know and love.
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I hate to admit it but I will probably buy this for my daughter. Despite all my whole hearted attempts to encourage gender neutral play she is one of those girls who came out of the womb wearing a sparkly pink tutu clutching the latest Barbie DVD. Anything that will encourage her to build and create is OK by me. Star wars and helicopters just don’t do it for her. Horses for courses I guess…..
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You shouldn’t have to be embarrassed to admit your daughter likes the pink sparkly stuff…sometimes its just who they are. OWN IT!
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I don’t mind this new lego. Our 10 year old daughter plays lego with our 6 year old son, we have oodles of the stuff (our kids are the youngest, so along with new lego we also have the cousins hand me downs) Our 2 quite often incorporate Polly Pocket into their lego games, so this will just be another dimension of play.
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i thought the appeal behind lego is that you get to build stuff and create stuff and mash boring shapes together to make fun, new stuff?
the elaborate kitchens, beauty parlours etc seem to have less emphasis on the tangible act of building and creativity, and more emphasis on daily scenarios and social rituals.
Whilst the feminist in me likes that there’s a little girl scientist, this kind of just all seems like bratz but smaller and more build-y (but not really, because the building is in crappy little bite size pieces anyway)
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agree – the lego that is most popular round our place is the simple stuff that you use to put together anything you want (currently batcars, batcopters, and oddly, bat-tractors) rather than the single use sets, which inevitably get tossed aside after one play.
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Now Kate, you never know when a Bat-tractor will come in handy
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I haven’t had the heart to query the speed the villain would have to be travelling in order to be captured by the bat-tractor.
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Perhaps the villain is a very shallow subterranean traveller and is going to be bat-ploughed?
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Whilst we haven’t yet moved in to the Lego phase – though I am now very keen to see what all the fuss is about since reading the post below – i feel frustrated at this move my the marketers at Lego. Our son loves to play with our daughters toys and vice versa and it has been a challenge to buy gender neutral versions of their favourite items when everything out there is so “blue” and pink”. Even some things as neutral as a bubble machine come in either Blue or Pink! This year we decided on bikes for each of our kids for Xmas and trying to find a bike for our daughter that was not pink/purple, doll seat attached or covered in streamers and butterflies was extremely difficult. Even more annoying given that we had wanted to pass the bike on to our son when he was big enough for it…
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My daughter is 8 months old and I get really cranky with everything being either pink or blue. Or pastels and “strong” colours. It drives me bananas.
I’ve said to Mum I didn’t think things were as “designated” when we were little in the 70s and early 80s, and she agrees. She said that there wasn’t the colour thing with clothes – most babies wore white most of the time, and colours weren’t really around. She had colours for my brother and sister, but they wore blue and red and yellow and green, and she did it so she could tell people he was in green and she was in red or whatever.
I think everything is SO merchandised these days (which we also didn’t have anywhere near as much of), so girls get: (Pink) Disney princesses, (Pink) Dora, (Pink) Strawberry Shortcake, (Pink) Barbie, and boys get: (Red) Cars, (Blue) Thomas, (Black and green) Ben 10…
KDot wears a kind of limited wardrobe as I can’t handle all pink all the time. If I find something that will fit her in a different colour that doesn’t have “Brat in training” or “Daddy’s little princess” or some other crap on it, I buy it!
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Kris, absolutely agree on the designated & merchandise. When I was buying an outfit for my baby niece a few years ago, I was horrified by the dominance of frilly glitteriness & sheer crappiness. It took quite a bit of searching to find something nice – and would have been even more difficult if I hadn’t been okay with getting something pink.
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Yeah same, Lulu – I remember a few years ago being not the only person in Target or KMart trying to find clothes for my nieces that weren’t mini Paris Hilton “Stupid Skanky Ho” from South Park things. There were literally about 5 people at the same time all going “I just want a tshirt and shorts for a 3 year old to play in the yard in!”
I don’t mind pink, I have a couple of pink tops myself, and I don’t mind putting her in pink, but I really hate that it’s the uniform and apparently the only way that people can figure out she’s a girl! A few weeks ago, I had her in a set from Carters in America that has a navy top and stripey leggings. The top has puffy sleeves and a picture of a monkey in a dress with a handbag. Apparently because it wasn’t pink it was ambiguous!
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I had the same issue last week Kris – I had my 9 month old in a yellow top with semi-girly ruffles on the front and a blue nappy cover, also with ruffles on the back. Three people in one shop asked if it was a boy or a girl. Are people so brainwashed by (insert braindead voice) ‘pink is for girls, blue is for boys’ that they get confused by yellow ruffles? There’s a third option? No, doesn’t compute!
I’m also fighting against pink, for Christmas we bought her one of those trikes that converts from a strap her in and push her, through three stages to a trike she can ride herself when she’s three. Hubby wanted the pink one, despite knowing how I feel about pink everything. I convinced him that the pink was a shade that would look grey and dirty very quickly so we’ve gone for white/black.
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we get hand me down red or yellow bikes from our nextdoor neighbour’s boys, and put glitter sticky tape and flowery front baskets on them to girly them up for our girls, if that helps with the bike colour choice.
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I had a hand me down for my first bike, from cousins or somewhere. I remember Dad spray painting it my choice of colour. And I got to choose a new seat as well!
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All those who say “Lego is Lego” are making masculine=neutral. The sets aren’t neutral, they wipe out female figures. There’s nothing masculine about the Lego City stuff – until you realise they don’t have girls doing anything. So, yeah, girls love playing with it – but they are told each time that they do it that this is an aberration. She’s getting Harry Potter’s castle this year – but that is not a good story for girls’ role modelling. One girl sidekick just isn’t enough.
I say, champion the attempt by Lego, but go hard at them for making it so stereotypically pink and fluffy.
This will show my age, but Lego has always had sets like houses to build etc,.., and when I wasy small they had sets which were rooms from houses (i.e. a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room). I actually loved these, and preferred them over sets to make cars, cars and more cars, when I wasn’t making a truck for my brothers… But just making existing sets more gender neutral – including girl figures and stuff like a command centre as well as a gun-ship – that would be cool.
The most revealing thing is that if they added girl figure to the sets – guess what, boys don’t want them. Yet girls are expected to see sets with all-boy figures as neutral…
Overall, though, toys have taken a huge step backwards from even pre-60s-feminism days in terms of stereotyping for boys and girls. There really is very little available for girls, unless they put up with the masculine styling. My daughter is 10, and I have been unable to buy her a boogie board or wetsuit that isn’t either pink, or covered in blood-dripping skulls. Apparently we need reminders that are that blunt about what shape our flappy bits are.
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You make some excellent points there, Willaway
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There are some fantastic girls in Harry Potter! Not everyone is the star, but I’d say that Ron and Hermione are considered on par with Harry, easily.
I remember having girl people in our Lego in the 80s. We didn’t need tizzy little shops and salons for them.
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I’ve read & seen the first 4 HPs, and I’d say the girls/boys are actually pretty stereotypical. Hermione might be grand, but she’s still the girl sidekick, and the boys’ friendship with her is different than between themselves. There’s quite a bit of talk about boys/girls. I think the female teachers are well done, though, mostly. But, again, they are supports, not really the main teachers.
My huge beef about the large number of books and movies produced for children and teens at the moment is that they are very heavily gendered and in terms of numbers, there are very few girl lead characters in films for children (aside from Disney princesses). If the lead is a girl, it is seen as a girls’ movie. Even cartoons like Kung Fu Panda are very much focussed on the boy characters,with the girls (even the tough tiger) not at the centre. In books, the mass-produced stories for girls centre on fairies, babysitting, cute puppies etc. The adventures are domestic and tame, in the main, with some notable exceptions. Stories for boys are adventures, quests, struggles and victories. Where are the books that encourage girls to take the world by its shoulders and give it a good shake? The best we settle for is movies like Enchanted, that overturn some of the tropes, or Ella Enchanted, that try to attack them.
Look what’s on offer at the moment – Arthur Christmas, The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Tin Tin, Happy Feet, etc.. all stories about boys. Half of them hardly feature any female characters at all.
And then they get to the teen years and everything is about “relationships”. My daughter loves and wants to watch shows like “Stoked” (where the strong girls are twig thin beautiful people at the beach, and any other girls have glasses, larger bodies, or unattractive faces), Aaargh!!
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I grew up with Harry potter and in my opinion the characters are far from stereotypical, rather they are real. All characters, male and female, are fallible but also show extreme strength. There are male and female villains and male and female heroes.
Hermione is the best role model. Even though you see her as just a sidekick, Harry and Ron would be dead without her. She is a prime example that girls can be smart and brave and strong.
Of course her relationship with Ron and harry is different as well. Just like my relationships with my male friends are different to the ones I have with my female friends.
And who doesnt agree that mcgonagall is an absolute legend?
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Ah – I think you’ll come closer to agreeing about the girls in Harry Potter when you get through the other ones. There are some fabulous female characters, especially in the books. Order of the Phoenix is a like a breath of fresh air bringing in new characters and getting away from the somewhat formulaic stories of the first 3 and even Goblet of Fire to a lesser extent. OotP is probably my favourite for that reason – it blows the world of Harry wide open and introduces so much more history and more characters.
I just got the final movie on dvd, and I noticed it has a “Women of Harry Potter” featurette on it, I haven’t watched it yet but I’m looking forward to checking it out.
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I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the new puss in boots movie recently at just how how kick-ass a character the female ‘ Kitty’ was. I wish we saw more brilliant, strong female characters like her in all movies, but especially kids ones. Puss in Boots is one of the most gender neutral animated films I think I’ve ever seen. It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than most others.
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Princess Fiona’s pretty damn awesome, I’m not surprised they have a cool girl in Puss In Boots.
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This makes me irate. What makes something “for girls” and “for boys”? I’m naive and idealistic enough to want something more than those boxes for my children, thank you. I get that boys and girls play in different ways. But I don’t get why the new Lego range has to look this way. Boo to this. Booooooo.
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I played with Lego until I was about 12.
My favourite thing about it was a little motorbike set I had.
Chick-Lego?
SUCH a joke.
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My kids will be opening Hogwarts Castle,Hagrids Hut and the Burrow on Christmas Day. Last year it was all Star Wars Lego. We love lego!
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Do they build other things with it, or do they build what is on the box and only what is on the box?
My nephews and nieces all love Lego, but I’ve noticed that they really don’t seem to be interested in making anything that isn’t ON THE BOX. Mum and I have both had arguments with my niece about it – her brother isn’t as rigid and will happily make up scenarios with all his toys, but she will berate him for putting it together one peg off from the picture on the box. To the point where after Mum pleaded with her to “Use her imagination” the next time Mum looked after them, she made a point of telling Mum “I’m using my imagination, Nan”.
Their cousins are similar – build what’s in the instructions, following the instructions. No digression.
I think maybe it comes from everything being merchandised nowadays – You don’t just get a doll, you get a Disney princess, and you know what her story is, so you don’t have to come up with one. Same with cars – you don’t just get cars, you get Lightning McQueen and Mater. They already have stories – why make up your own?
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I’ve read so many articles talking about the importance of kids using their imagination and it being dulled by the one-use toy. IE the Talking Buzz which can only be Buzz, as opposed to a cardboard box (ok, something perhaps maybe slightly more exciting than that) that can be turned into so many things using imagination. Every mother will have a story of their baby being entertained more by wrapping than the present, but to some extent I think this continues – as much as my 4 year old loved the idea of that stupid Talking Buzz – does he actually play with it? Or does he run around with the handmade ‘lightsavers’ pretending he is spiderman? (got his stories all slightly mixed up, but who am I to argue)….
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Kate in London we must have twin souled four year olds – our talking buzz is gathering dust, and today’s adventures were batman and his lightsavers dueling it out… I love that despite never seeing spiderman, batman or even star wars, he can still entertain himself for hours with them.
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I have read there are 2 distinct lego personalities – the ones who rip it apart and create their own and the ones who build them and keep them on a shelf. I have both. One of my boys builds them and then pulls them apart after a while. He has made Lego reindeers this week from bits of lego lying around. They have moving legs, antlers and red noses – amazing!
The other one builds his elaborate star wars ships and they sit in his room. He plays with them but they are in perfect condition. Considering some of them are for ages up to 16 and he was only 8 when her built them they are pretty complex and took hours so I do understand his dedication to keeping them in perfect condition. He actually had a stiff neck last Christmas from sitting in the one position for so long building the republic cruiser last year.
My girls use my old stuff and love to build houses, cities and cars. Today we have a new spaceship.
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I noticed this too. Everything is packaged up, leaving nothing for their imaginations. I was buying presents for nieces and nephews last week and had to leave the toy area, it was giving me a headache. I did notice that you can still buy a big box of random lego shapes (again, pink for girls, blue for boys and a third set which was supposed to be neutral), so they can do their own thing. When the time comes I’ll be buying those for my little girl.
I’m sure that’s what I had when I was little (early 80s), and I played with matchbox cars which didn’t have names other than the real cars they were modelled on (mini cooper, beetle etc). They were my favourite things ever!
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there are a few girl characters in lego – the movie stuff has characters, and the alien fighting lego has a girl or two, or maybe they are the space police..i get a bit mixed up..but i am dissapointed to see new lego figures – keep up the minifigures as they are… the standalone mini figures have a lot of girls…much to my son’s horror..i always tell him they are the coolest ones, but he doesnt really see it that way!!
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I’m positive we had female lego people when we were kids, largely before the movie stuff. I remember their hair being able to be popped on and off, and they had different middle blocks for dresses and stuff.
That girls range looks crap.
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Ugh. I will flat-out refuse to buy this, and continue building up Miss 4′s pirate ship lego set.
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look at any of these set and tell me they arent the same as above.. minus the sparkle maybe
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Town&subtheme=Paradisa
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This is what many of us are remembering as Lego from the 80s:
http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?year=1981&theme=Town
Nice site, by the way – I’m not THAT into Lego, but wow, amazing info!
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This brings back memories. I loved the trees and flowers and that was my version of ‘girling up’ the petrol station.
Can you imagine what would happen these days if Shell or another other oil company ‘sponsored’ children’s toys?
But my brothers and I had the whole set of that era.
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Ooohhhhhh, I was so disappointed when I saw this in the paper today. As a girl I saved $70 in the 80s for my first Lego castle. My daughter is HANGING OUT for the Lego Hogwarts for Christmas and has two shelves of Lego she has either asked for for gifts or saved for herself. Whenever her friends come over they love playing with her Lego, because their brothers hog it at their homes. There is so no need for this..
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I am a 27yo female and I still carry around the disappointment of never owning the lego pirate ship set as a child.
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My daughter loves Lego, building sets and cars. She has just turned 7. The thing that is starting to creep in now is comments from her friends that she “plays with boy’s toys”. I hate hearing this and try to correct them where possible. We embrace whatever her interests are and hope she grows up confidently and believing in herself. I recently bought this book for her http://www.princessfreezone.com/super-tool-lula/ in the hope that she reads it and knows she doesn’t have to conform to what some people “think” she should play with.
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I find this a little annoying because my daughter LOVES Duplo (Lego’s range for under 5′s with bigger pieces). She also LOVES Barbie, Dress-up’s and Disney Princesses and it has pleased me that she has at least one toy passion that is gender neutral. As soon as she sees this pink sparkly stuff with cafes and salons, that is all she will want. Whereas she has previously been completely happy with her basic Duplo set + 2 additional gender neutral ‘kits’ (airplane and pet store).
I’m not against the Barbie and Princesses per se. My daughter plays some really imaginative games with her Barbies and accessories. However, I was enjoying that there was a little balance brought by the Duplo (and we were hoping she would continue on to Lego).
I will definitely try to avoid her finding out about ‘girls’ Lego!
I’ve also noticed a lot of Lego these days seems to be Star Wars themed or linked to various movie franchises. That also annoys me! I just want plain old Lego!
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i still love my lego. while i dont like the look of the new dolls. (did anyone notice they look like the disney princesses? ) i do like the little science set that look’s like fun i’ll just pull out my 90′s leggo people!
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