81–90 of 113 posts
All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
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There is girls themed lego and duplo these days.
And their sales numbers have been abysmal. I haven't heard how the new "Lego Friends" line has been doing, though.
Can't hate, I love it. Even the pink and cuddly bits. If this product instead had a blue ribbon and alien figurines with the title "Cyber Drivetrain Blast Kit" it wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a gendered or pandering toy. Legos are for boys when 95% of what's on the Lego shelf is boy pirates, boy laserbros, boy Batman, boy bio-alien-robots tearing the shit out of boy bio-dino-robots, etc.
My girls LOVE legos. They have a few of the new 'pink' ones but mostly play with our 20 year old lego collection. They don't think of the girly legos as 'real legos', for whatever reason. It _is_ disheartening to go into a lego store and see almost solely boy-oriented sets, though. I note kids in Lego stores are roughly 60/40 boys / girls, but the sets are boyish.
I can't figure out if this is a good idea because it encourages girls to explore traditionally male-dominated activities, or a bad thing because it reinforces the idea that traditional construction toys are intended for boys.
I'm somewhat reminded of an ill-fated attempt by the European Commission to attract girls to science with a music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA
All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
Buy Lego friends. They're pretty good 'girlie' sets.
I initially made a more crass comment, and then deleted to it, but what I'll say is that this got my feminist heckles up, and it seems like a pragmatic approach. However, in this case the pragmatic approach seems like building a castle on a swamp, as opposed to making any attempt to deal with said swamp. Give girls lego.
All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
To this point there seems to be strong and widespread anecdotal evidence that many boys don't want to seem to much like girls by playing with "girly" toys and many girls feel the same way towards "boys" toys. There is perhaps (or perhaps not) a problem with this phenomenon that, over time, needs to be addressed. In the meantime things like this seem to be a great way to spread interest in science and engineering amon…
NPR had several interesting discussions regarding the controversy over girl-themed Legos, and gender in toys [2][3].
1: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1457051...
2: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1603654...
3: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/18/145397007/gender-controversy-s...
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Buy Lego friends. They're pretty good 'girlie' sets.
A friend's niece reports "LEGO Friends are too easy," but she's the kind of kid who builds the Grand Emporium all by herself.
Really fun to build.
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Have you thought about writing to the Lego corp and suggesting inch-high dolls? You could give them things like interchangeable heads and hair, or even legs. Maybe even tiny little hands that can grip on to things? I guess you could even do them themed ... pirates, knights, soldiers. Amazed Lego have never considered doing miniature dress up dolls for boys before. You could call them ... Hrm ... Lego Men? But I guess…
Dressup dolls != action figures or LEGO figs. By dressup dolls I thought I clearly conveyed the idea of dolls whose design and accessories are all about dressing them up with clothing, makeup and fashion accessories. Not guns. Not tools. Not Batman-like gadgets/vehicles. Dressup dolls. Think Barbie dolls. The point being that dressup dolls and babies appeals to a large percentage of (but not necessarily all) actual r…
Boys play competitive games where they either compete against each other or work together to overcome an objective. That's how my brother and I played back in the day. And growing up in the UK, we played with Action Men rather than GI Joe's.
Now, I have two daughters and they play cooperative games. The best description of girls playing that I've heard is "lets". I've heard my daughters playing together and they say "let's ..." all the time. They role-play scenarios with their Barbie dolls. And before they had Barbies, they did it with their stuffed animals. I'm a pastor and they often re-enact church and family stuff. They get details exactly right, including the pastor (me) working on his sermon on his laptop.
I have not forced this behavior on my daughters. And they like a few activities not normally associated with girls. My oldest likes shooting, has her own .22 rifle and is a pretty good shot. They both like wearing camo much to my wife's distress. They do play with lego and mega-blocks. My oldest has an Ubuntu laptop and loves it. But most of the time, they play traditional girls stuff.