{"id":12901,"date":"2012-12-11T10:04:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T10:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=12901"},"modified":"2012-12-12T11:41:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T11:41:33","slug":"guest-post-lego-friends-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/12\/11\/guest-post-lego-friends-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"[Guest Post] Lego Friends Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we have a guest post from Ruth Coustick<\/strong>, who blogs at Origami Girl<\/strong><\/a>. If you have a guest post brewing in your brain, email us on badrepeditors@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
$\"Lego$ <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about the joy of creation…\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… is the song that Lego use on their website to showcase their Friends series<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not what you were expecting? Perhaps you thought Stand By Your Man<\/strong><\/a> or some other such\u00a0cringeworthy song might be more appropriate for a series so blatantly gendered. Well, so did I, but\u00a0one happy little girl at a time, the Friends range has swayed my feelings.<\/p>\n
Let me backtrack and give it some history.<\/p>\n

The Lego Friends series was released earlier this year.<\/p>\n

When the toys (and adverts) were unleashed, the internet seemingly exploded with outrage. (I am,
\nof course, referring to my<\/em> internet – the one with feminist twitter feeds, blogs about toys and sexy pictures of Neil Gaiman. Your internet might be a bit different.)<\/p>\n
In particular I watched Feminist Frequency<\/a>\u2019s videos on<\/a> the series<\/a>, but I also read blogposts from dads who want their girls to work in Silicon Valley and study at MIT.<\/p>\n

The first few toys released were a bakery, a caf\u00e9, a beauty shop, a house and an inventor\u2019s
\nworkshop. These initial toys are made up of pastel pink and purple bricks, they only feature girls and
\nthose roles present are mainly gendered home-keeping roles.<\/p>\n

My blood was boiling, like many other people’s, at the narrow roles I could see girls being pushed into. At my local Toys R Us there is a vast collection of Lego from the Creator series<\/a> to Cars<\/a>. In fact I have never seen so much in one retailer.<\/p>\n

However, the Friends series is not placed in their giant Lego selection. It is in a (very clearly labelled) \u2018Girlz\u2019 aisle,nowhere near the Lego corner, which has so much sparkle and glitter I thought cupcakes were
\ngoing to spontaneously erupt from the walls.<\/p>\n

Friends is not like the rest of Lego: it\u2019s for girls, and must be segregated.<\/p>\n

So far, so sexist.<\/p>\n

However, I\u2019m slowly putting the guns down. Across the various worlds of Lego, equality is growing. As someone who has an obsessive love of toys, I frequently visit their website. Every time I find
\nmyself riled up about Lego, I go on the site and find that a far greater balance of characters is presented there than we see in the shops.<\/p>\n

$\"Nya$ <\/a>For example, they have little character bios for nearly every mini-figure. I was angry about the lack of girl characters in Spinjitzu<\/a>. But Nya (pictured right) has a \u00a0 token girl description<\/a>\u00a0which does include phrases like “she\u2019s no damsel in distress” and “Nya is fed up with the ninjas\u2019 boy\u2019s club syndrome”.<\/p>\n

Here, the minority female mini figures I have collected become role models. Still a token, but a valuable one at that, and the question remains why we don\u2019t see more of this outside of the website.<\/p>\n

I recently decided to explore the Friends section of the website<\/a> and was pleasantly surprised\u00a0and then genuinely excited about what it offers. I believe that Lego listened to t he petition from Change.org<\/a> (the one that got over 50,000 signatures, the one I signed) back in April 2012, and have turned something that was completely sexist into a city of steps toward empowerment.<\/p>\n

First of all, they have toned down the overwhelming pink tones of the bricks, and gone for more brown tones, like the riding camp<\/a>. There is also a greater range of sets, including a treehouse<\/a>, design
\nstudio, bedroom set with a drum kit and the Heartlake Flying Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n
$\"Lego$ <\/a><\/p>\n

This last set was definitely the swing vote for me. It has the least amount of pink; mere touches of it on the plane. Furthermore, the stereotyped role for women in a plane is Air Hostess, and Lego didn\u2019t go there. Stephanie is the pilot of her own seaplane, looking more Amelia Earhart than Pan Am.<\/p>\n

The Friends themselves might enjoy traditionally feminine roles, but they also have jobs, varied interests and detailed characters that allow for diverse roleplaying. The key with Lego is that it can be as many things as you can imagine. Emma\u2019s Design Studio<\/a>, for instance, has one piece which suggests this is for fashion – but with the large desk, the ruler and the laptop Emma could just as easily be an architect or an engineer.<\/p>\n

We also shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that enjoying balloons or sweets makes you weak. It’s more that giving girls only<\/em> that which is sugary-sweet which is the issue. Although Lego still have a long way to go, I think there are at least positive conversations being had at Lego HQ.<\/p>\n
In her second Lego video<\/a> Anita Sarkeseesian says that the emphasis with the Lego Friends series is on traditional home-keeping play. She cites the adverts, comparing the Friends advert slogan \u201cDrive to the newly built caf\u00e9\u201d to the \u201cYou can build the castle\u201d of another Lego advert featuring some classic father-son bonding.<\/p>\n

She draws the reasonable conclusion that boys are offered a more active play experience that encourages them to use maths and motor skills.<\/p>\n

However, if we look on the Lego website the section for Friends has the theme song I quoted at the beginning of this post, which accompanies all their videos:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do it, we can dream a whole new way
\nWe can do it, you can build with me today
\nIt\u2019s all about the joy of creation\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this new emphasis on building<\/em> which is subtly surrounding you the whole time you shop is part of a change that encourages girls to gain all the skills and experiences that Lego has to offer.<\/p>\n
They may not have it all, but the newer Lego Friends sets and marketing are a step in the right direction, and with these steps being echoed in other areas of the Lego Universe\u2026 watch this space.<\/p>\n
\n
Ruth Coustick<\/strong> has yet to understand the concept of ‘growing up’. She spends her hard-earned cash on Playmobil pirates and building Lego versions of Samus, and wants to see the childish books and toys she loves become more diverse and inclusive. She works in digital rights and has a host of other nerdy interests like comics, board games and First World War poetry. She blogs about her life and fashion at Origami Girl<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Reddit<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/li>
More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul>

LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Email<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li>
Print<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friends is not like the rest of Lego: it\u2019s for girls, and must be segregated. So far, so sexist. However, I\u2019m slowly putting the guns down. <\/p>\n

Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Reddit<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Tumblr<\/span><\/a><\/li>
More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul>

LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li>
Email<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li>
Print<\/span><\/a><\/li>
<\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[1033,1156,4000,1709,3999,3997,1855,4001,2593,3998,3146],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xLWb-3m5","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}