On the subject of girls, math, and people sending unintentional messages

[conuly]

Girls are, of course, less likely to be given mathy toys like blocks or legos as presents. (Boys are less likely to get books. I'm sure that all these gift-givers know the children intimately and are only following the kids' interests, interests which were formed devoid of any outside input, straight out of the ether.)

At any rate, you've probably already seen these two videos on Lego's pointlessly gendered advertising, but just in case, there you go! (They even have transcriptions.)

And here's a bonus lego-related entry on... well, influencing how other people build with them, basically.

Comments

[dragonwolf]

That last link is cool.

As for the "Lego Friends" thing, I was rather sickened and saddened by the commercials when I first saw them. Because, you know, as a girl, all I ever wanted to do with Legos was play like Barbie. *eyeroll*

[erisiansaint]

I yelled a lot when I saw the new girl-oriented Lego sets. I don't understand why they aren't just putting girls in the commercials. I mean, I loved loved loved them when I was a kid.

The funny thing is that my SO does a /lot/ of LEGO builds of original things. (One of his most famous is his LEGO GLaDos from Portal.) And he and most of the other male builders that he associates with were delighted at the new sets. Not only did they get purple blocks, but he was able to turn one of the girl figurines into a really good version of Samantha Carter from Stargate: SG-1. His only kvetch about the girl figurines is that the hands don't move, and he figured out how to alter them so that they did.

It actually made me rethink my position on the girl sets.

[conuly]

I can't stand that all the newer commercials are so... product-oriented. Why does it all have to be movie or TV tie-ins?

[erisiansaint]

They're not. They still have regular castle and city sets, which include things like Paris houses and medieval villages, and the Space Shuttle. And the stores have Pick-a-Brick walls, where you can take one of two size cups and fill it with whatever they have at the wall.

However, the easy answer for why everything is product-oriented is money. They make more money on it.

There are organizations that do things, though, called 'drafting', where once a month, everyone picks out a single set to buy. Everyone gets together and separates all the pieces into piles, and then they get to pick the pieces they want.

And I know in Seattle, in October, they have a convention, to show off all the interesting things people have made with Legos that have nothing to do with the sets. (Last year, my favorite was the 5 foot tall Sauruman's tower, complete with tiny Ents and orcs at the bottom, fighting. But the steampunk pieces were my next favorite.)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

The "girls'" colors of those type of bricks have been around a long time. In the early 80s, we bought a big barrel of the competitors' brand in "girl" colors. They also had them in "military" colors and we got those. Why? Because the original sets came in red, white, blue, yellow (if you were lucky) and clear -- and that's not enough colors.

[rantinan.livejournal.com]

*scratches head at ranting about advertising videos* so the gender equal euro lego advertising we got when I was a youth didn't happen? (thumbs old back catalouges and ideas and expo books) Nope they did. Hey this one dating back to the early 80's has an awesome space station made of a combination of fabiland and space lego, featuring an animal headed spaceman and a woman spaceman (back from the days when you could only tell the gender of a lego minifig by the hair.)

I guess the moral of the story is "it sucks to be in a country where every toy has a gender?" Or possibly (since lego never really TV advertised here at all) "it sucks to have advertising alter your perception of toys that much"

I guess my perception is for lego being pritty genderless, between myself and my two sisters we had 3 big tubs full of many themes that we shared. Yes, most of hte space lego was brought at my request or with my pocket money, but my sisters were responsible for the pile o pirates.