Chewbacca Goes to the Salon

Nothing too fancy, just a little off the top, please.

The other day one of Lysi's best friends came over to play. He's been coming over regularly since he was 18 months old (he's now 5), so knowing his way around, he pulled out a familiar drawer, and upon seeing a bunch of dolls, asked, "Hey, where are the blocks?"

Oh, yeah, sorry, the giant Mega Bloks, Tinkertoys, letter blocks, and generic wood building blocks got replaced with dolls because our two girls (ages 2 and 4) didn't play with them anymore.

"That's okay." He said, walking to a large storage cabinet in another part of the room, "I'll just play with Legos."

Yes, while all the other building toys have been tossed aside for stuffed animals and dollies, Lego has remained as the only building toy our girls still enjoy. But that's OK, because they really enjoy it.

I've already gone on here and here in praise of Lego's new sets which target girls, because at least for my girls, it is working. Here's what I mean:

Pet salon is busy. Not sure if Ariel is a customer or staff.

First of all, as a typically girlie girl, Lysi has something she can still do with her rough-and-tumble boy friend, and which they are both passionate about. When they were both two and three years old, almost any toy was fine for playing together. But now she's asking to play puppy and house, paint and dance ballet, while he wants to fight ninjas and make things explode. With Lego they can combine their interests and play together without either feeling as if they are totally giving in to the other.

In fact, this boy friend was so intrigued by the details in the Friends pets that he asked his parents for several for Christmas. The biggest bonus for me is perhaps getting to see things like Chewbacca going to the pet salon.

What 2 four-year-old girls made in 20 minutes.

Second, just as Jesus Diaz claims in his post Hey, Anti-Lego Feminists, "Lego for Girls" Actually Kicks Ass, Friends and Disney Princess sets can and will be broken up and made into new stuff by any typical kid, which is exactly the point and why Lego toys are so great for encouraging creativity, imagination, and early building of STEM skills. I thought about Diaz's post today when Lysi and another four-year-old girl built this awesomeness (according to them it is a fishing dock combined with a launching pad for a rocket ship - how sweet is that?)


Third, the Lego sets marketing to girls are not dumbed down in terms of their complexity or how much bang you get for your buck. In Why Lego Friends is not one of the worst toys of 2012 (and why Mega Bloks Barbie is), David Pickett reports on his comparison of construction complexity of various lines of Lego sets and Lego competitors. He writes:

If we assume that constructions sets with similar price points will result in completed models of equivalent size, then we can use the piece/dollar ratio of construction sets as a rough indication of the complexity** of one building kit relative to another. The higher the piece/dollar ratio, the more building is involved in a given set or group of sets. This is a way of quantifying the differences that are obvious to the naked eye in the above comparison of the Friends and Babrie sets. I charted these values for sets from nine different themes and found the average pc/$ ratio for each line of products. The product lines I used were LEGO Friends, Mega Bloks Barbie, LEGO City, Mega Bloks World of Warcraft, LEGO Ninjago, LEGO Paradisa, LEGO Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit, Mega Bloks Skylanders and Mega Bloks Halo. 

Much to my surprise, Friends came in second (Halo was highest) with a ratio of 9.8. 

Diaz argues that the heavily themed sets are a "back door" to hook kids on Lego and eventually interest them in other sets that are even more challenging and spark even more creativity:

Once the radioactive Lego brick bites them, they become hooked. The next time they will want one Lego set just because it seems cool or more complicated. The space shuttle. A Lego creator building. A Technic car. Both girls and boys would pick those and build whatever they want with them.

Two preschoolers concentrating for an hour and politely
taking turns following an instruction manual - just because
they wanted to build a scorpion. Lego must be magic.

When I first read that, I wanted to believe it, but I didn't know if it would be true for my kid. Now I'm watching it unfold just as Diaz described. As Lysi flips through her Lego magazine, she gasps and exclaims, "Whoa, cool! I want that!" at sets of robots, tow trucks, and airplanes. She's become such an impressive builder already, that she and her before-mentioned boy friend together built the scorpion from Lego's more challenging Creator line. It is a set geared for kids ages 7-12, and she and her friend intensely built it over an hour and 15 minutes, politely taking turns following the steps in the instruction manual.

As a parent, I must just say: Dude, that is so much cooler than watching her dress and undress fashion dolls for an hour. 

LEGO Jumps on the Princess Bandwagon

LEGO has just come out with its new line of building sets hoping to attract girl customers, and (no surprise here) the theme is none other than Disney princesses.

*Cue the groans of feminist parents everywhere*

Much has been written about the dangers of marketing separate toys to boys and girls. The concern is that by encouraging girls and boys to play with different toys, we are encouraging separate gender roles. Pushing gender roles can do all kinds of damage. It can stigmatize individuals who don't fit into those assumed roles.

One of the biggest, specific complaints today about the toy marketing directed at girls is that it can steer potential talent away from STEM fields, and this at a time when more talent is needed and men dominate those fields.

As a mother of two girls, I definitely share these concerns about assigned gender roles. However, I don't want to join the throng of people railing against all things pink and princess without looking at all the available evidence and carefully thinking it through. Especially when my young daughter (to disclose my personal bias) has become a huge clothes horse, refuses to wear anything other than a fancy dress and tights, and revels in calling herself a princess.

The most popular toys, as reported by the Washington Post, are Barbies for girls, and LEGOs for boys, and certainly that fact lends credence to the idea that toys aimed at boys encourage interest in STEM, while toys aimed at girls steer them away. Given this situation, aren't LEGO building sets aimed at girls a good thing? A way to bridge the gap?

Last year I wrote about LEGO's recent efforts to market their building sets to girls, with Appreciation for Pink and Purple Lego Bows. In that article I made the case that typical girls are turned off by traditional LEGO, and that with the new Friends line of sets, LEGO has found a way to draw typical girls to their products in droves.

The LEGO Friends minifigs are more naturalistic, having numerous accessories, some curves and more facial, clothing, and body details. The buildings in Heartlake City, too, put more emphasis on the decor than the architectural design.

Critics of the new LEGO products and marketing campaigns argue that the Friends sets are LEGO altered to the point where the drawbacks of promoting superficial and stereotypical femininity outweigh the benefits of girls playing with building sets. Basically that LEGO for girls is just another version of Barbie.

The new Disney Princess series of LEGO building sets are a continuation of this new marketing campaign targeting girls. The minifigs are based on the Friends minifigs, not the traditional yellow ones. That said, they are hardly Barbie.

Consider this side to side comparison of the LEGO version of Merida (from the film Brave) and a Barbie-like fashion doll version of Merida. Certainly LEGO Merida is pretty, but she's not nearly as glamorous as the (heavily criticized) fashion dolls. These new LEGO figures aimed at girls might be more curvy than the traditional figures, but they are still stylized in a non-sexual way. They don't depict unrealistic ideals of female beauty as super slim and busty, as do fashion dolls. The essential spirit of LEGO as toys generic enough to encourage kids to impose their own vision is still present.

I must add that I'm getting kind of tired about how much I see written against girl toys that obsess over physical beauty, yet how little I see criticizing boy toys that obsess over violence. The LEGO City series is marketing to boys the same age group that Friends is aimed at for girls, so as young as five years old. While LEGO City has many everyday happenings such as trash collection, logging, and surfing, it is apparently also a place full of criminal activity which requires a huge emphasis on law enforcement. Other LEGO lines that tend to attract boy consumers such as Chima and Ninjago are full of violent conflict, weapons, and warriors.

I am hesitant to say that all these toys for boys that glorify violence are a definite bad influence. Of course they might be. After all, they do promote dehumanizing stereotypes of "good guys" and "bad guys" and depict war and noble, exciting, and even entertaining. But is there any evidence that boys whose parents ban such toys grow up to be less violent and more compassionate because of it?

Likewise, is there any evidence that playing princess with makeup, accessories, and costumes will dissuade girls from entering STEM fields? Can girls not be interested in STEM and also glamour and glitz?

Jennifer Welsh wrote an article for Business Insider, saying These Are the 7 Things Keeping Women Out of Science Careers. Her list includes teasing of girls for studying science, and stereotypes of female scientists as weirdos. The argument is that the culture and perception of STEM fields is not friendly to typical girls and women, and so only a minority of outliers brave their way in. The only real solution is for STEM culture and perception to change.

If we apply this to toys, and consider LEGO as representative of toys which direct kids toward STEM, LEGO's marketing to girls is a step in the right direction. With these new products and marketing campaigns, they are changing the broader perception of the LEGO brand as for boys. Once girls feel that they have been invited in by Friends and Disney Princesses lines of LEGO, they are more likely to reach for the more challenging sets found in the totally gender-neutral Creator and Architecture series. Boys and girls who are friends will also be more likely to play LEGO together, as the bricks from all the sets are interchangeable.

While concerns about gender stereotypes will (and should) haunt me as a parent, at the end of the day, I must admit I'm impressed with any toy that gets my four-year-old daughter to spend several hours over a couple days following a 67 page construction manual (the result of her receiving the Friends Pet Salon for Christmas.) And when my daughter begs me for princess toys, I'm happy to have an alternative to the fashion doll.

As much as I previously hated all things Disney Princess, when I saw LEGO join the princess parade, I cheered.