Let's beat this dead horse again: Friends called sexist in Cracked

[badbob001]

A dead horse called cracked?

Now you're going to inspire an article about LEGO and PETA.

[fred67]

I like the friends sets. I just don't like the minidolls. But TLG is a capitalist company operating in mostly capitalist countries, and they are not FORCING their product on anyone, they are SELLING people what they want. Now the complainers can go feel free to berate all the young girls who like Friends for following a stereotype. Can you picture someone in the LEGO Store chastising a girl there for wanting a Friends set and insisting she get Technic? No? Neither can I, so the point is moot... Take a girl to the LEGO Store and let her pick. There's NOTHING wrong with that.

[pugmom]

I, as a 30 something woman who played with a ton a space and castle lego as a young girl have a hard time trying to put into words how I feel about the friends line. I don't mind that it is there, if it draws more girls to lego that might not have played with it anyway, then great!

I guess my gripe that it is marked so girly that the typical boy (thinking my 5 and 9 year old sons) would not go anywhere near it. I would love it if they did, and would support, but they won't. I guess I don't like that so many themes are now squarely in the girly domain, I wish they were a little more neutral so everyone could enjoy them. Let me use for example the heartlake vet set. My 9 year old loves animals, he would have loved a vet set a year ago. Looking at the set, I think a couple of minor changes and it could be very neutral. But seeing that purple box with the 5 girls lined up across the top pretty much says "nope, not for boys". Same with heartlake high. I know, I probably am coming across as a whiner because there are so many "boy" sets, but I guess I am not sure why the city sets have to pretty much be police and construction workers, and other city like themes are only available in the friends version (vet/school etc).

I guess I would have like to have seen more "in the middle" stuff like the bike shop and cafe and the upcoming toy and grocery shop, but obviously they did their research and it is working for them!

[Sarah]

I know, I probably am coming across as a whiner because there are so many "boy" sets, but I guess I am not sure why the city sets have to pretty much be police and construction workers, and other city like themes are only available in the friends version (vet/school etc).

Before Friends, those other city like themes were not available in City sets either. Not for decades anyway. There was a farm set when I got into Legos -- back in the 70s and it had Homemaker figures. Not minifigures or minidolls.

[pugmom]

Before Friends, those other city like themes were not available in City sets either. Not for decades anyway. There was a farm set when I got into Legos -- back in the 70s and it had Homemaker figures. Not minifigures or minidolls.

oh I know. It was just wishful thinking that they could have incorporated more "feminine (?)" themes in a gender neutral way.

[ShaydDeGrai]

I'm about as far removed from the target Friends audience as one can get while remaining within the same species and even I can see that the only thing Friends is "guilty" of is offering an alternative with specific appeal to a certain audience. If you want to address sexism, ask why little girls are drawn to pinks and pastels in the first place or why a seven year old thinks an anorexic waistline is more appealing than a purely abstract form. Don't blame TLG for meeting people's expectations, take issue with a society that indoctrinates kids to those expectations from a very early age.

It's true that prior Lego Group efforts to appeal to "girls" have ranged from blatant pandering to borderline insulting, but by comparison Friends, Princesses and the upcoming Elves lines are really good offerings. Now, personally, I'm not really a fan of the mini-doll, but then I'm not moved to tears by mini-figures either so I'll leave that debate aside; if some children find the big-foot Barbie design easier to relate to then the tubbie-townie, fine, at least _something_ is engaging their imaginations.

The color palette of Friends, while bright and pastel, is far less "pink-centric" than prior lines. The kits have a genuine design aesthetic to them that justifies the palette well beyond simply pandering to some long held societal stereotype. Does anyone look at Picasso's blue period and say the works are "intended" just for boys because it's blue and his rose period was sexist and promoting stereotypes of girls because he used a lot of pink? No, he used cool and warm colors to convey mood and highlight contrast, just as any artist is trained to do. Now Picasso was a Master and we're just talking about toys here, but the role of palette selection in design dates back to cave paintings when man first discovered pigments, so I'm not sure under what rock anyone who can only see sexism when encountering the color pink has been living.

Heartlake City, as a whole, is a clean, bright, happy place and sets depicting it are rendered in clean bright colors, where is the sexism in that? Gotham City is dark and gritty and it gets rendered in blacks and grays, almost an homage to Film Noir. Each is an ideal setting for imagining a certain type of story for a particular audience, and that audience is self-selecting: no one is telling a little girl she can't like Batman or telling a little boy he can't play with a cabin cruiser because it's "the wrong" color and it's the leisurely "dolphin cruiser" model rather than the "sharks with lasers strapped to their heads amphibious assault" craft.

Most of all, though, I think the really win for both the Friends line and the kids who receive them is that it's finally a Lego offering that plays well with the rest of the system. Unlike prior attempts, these kits offer a real building experience using fully compatible parts at roughly the same scale as "traditional" Lego offerings. They may pander a bit to a particular audience in order to get noticed, but once the (mostly) girls get their hands on them, they offer that audience the same mental challenges, tactile feedback and rewards in confidence and sense of achievement as any comparable (by piece count and build complexity) Lego kit.

I used to work in engineering education and when _I_ think of expressions sexism I think back to all the times supposedly smart people used to say things along the lines of "girls can't build stuff because they have a poor sense of spatial relations and don't know how subsystems fit together." The truth (at least as far as published research goes) is more along the lines of girls often have a retarded sense of spatial relations because they aren't given sufficient play opportunities to exercise that part of their brain in early childhood and this leads to frustration and avoidance behavior with respect to technical challenges later in life. I've known a fair number of talented female engineers and nearly all of them were fans of Lego growing up. I've also seen my fair share of college age kids (male and female) struggling to learn engineering skills and concepts and it seems like it was always the ones who didn't do crafts, or play with construction toys or, in general, make an effort to wrap their heads around a creative process and then realize a vision with their hands as a child, who end up switching to other majors.

So, I'm of the opinion that if Friends gets a child who might not otherwise be interested in Lego to start building, thinking and creating, then who cares if it's pastel in color and has happy ponies prancing about. By encouraging girls to embrace this supposedly "sexist" toy as a child, we might actually be helping them the sharpen the very skills that will help them to stamp out sexist attitudes towards women in science and engineering in the future.

[DPrime]

I dunno. As the father of two girls, I don't think I'd have a problem with them having a few Friends sets... but I think I'd still rather have the majority of their collection be "regular" Lego. I don't want them to be inundated with "girls' toys", which admittedly ARE a bit sexist - including the Friends line. It's all good in moderation, though.

Also, I think everyone needs to remember that this is a Cracked article - nothing to get too worked up over, here. :)

[Duchessa]

I'm a woman, and 40+. If I tell someone that I have a Lego city collection, I wouldn't get the same reaction as if my husband told someone that he had a Lego Friends collection. That, IMO, is the core of the problem. A girl who plays with things aimed for boys is cool. A boy who plays with things aimed for girls is.. not.

I hope that male AFOL's of all ages show their daughters/girlfriends/other females close to them that Friends isn't just for girls, and that it's okay - and actually fun - to own and build.

[DPrime]

I'm a woman, and 40+. If I tell someone that I have a Lego city collection, I wouldn't get the same reaction as if my husband told someone that he had a Lego Friends collection. That, IMO, is the core of the problem. A girl who plays with things aimed for boys is cool. A boy who plays with things aimed for girls is.. not.

I hope that male AFOL's of all ages show their daughters/girlfriends/other females close to them that Friends isn't just for girls, and that it's okay - and actually fun - to own and build.

That's a really good point, actually. Maybe the real solution here is just to let boys play with what they want - which sometimes includes Barbies and what not! There is still a HUGE stigma attached to that sort of thing.

Heck, I keep eyeing that Friends yacht... ;)

[Gnac]

I hope that male AFOL's of all ages show their daughters/girlfriends/other females close to them that Friends isn't just for girls, and that it's okay - and actually fun - to own and build.

Oh definitely. I bought extras of those small Creator sets because my nieces enjoy building them so much. The extras were needed because the "quiet" one likes to wait and see what the "bossy" one wants to build, then she wants to do the same thing and throws a wobbly when she can't. Hah! Foiled!

*twirls brick-built moustache*

EDIT: Whoops read that a bit wrong, didn't I. Well, I have load of Friends' animals polybags and I am NOT ASHAMED (the nieces don't get to mess with these). I'd have more of the sets for the ace colour range if not for being into far too may other money-draining things.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Gnac

[dr_spock]

That's a really good point, actually. Maybe the real solution here is just to let boys play with what they want - which sometimes includes Barbies and what not! There is still a HUGE stigma attached to that sort of thing.

Heck, I keep eyeing that Friends yacht... ;)

Get the Dolphin Cruiser. It's a fun build.

[Duchessa]

That's a really good point, actually. Maybe the real solution here is just to let boys play with what they want - which sometimes includes Barbies and what not! There is still a HUGE stigma attached to that sort of thing.

Heck, I keep eyeing that Friends yacht... ;)

Get the yacht! :) And yes, I think that the best thing to do is to show kids that it's okay to play with whatever they like at the moment, no matter if it's aimed at boys or girls. And the Friends theme has lots of great features, especially if you're a city builder like me.

[Bornin1980something]

The dead mare must have a lot of extra stripes by now! Anyway, I looked up the Cracked article. I then followed its link to the Chicago Tribune, and from there a link to the New York Times. In the NYTimes article, it is stated that the limited edition Ideas Research Institute was

"Lego’s first offering to feature women in a professional setting rather than at play or partying."

This is not true! For instance, the current CITY Fire line includes several fire women (I actually created one as a child, despite myself being male!). As for the actual first such set, the earliest I could find was 555 Hospital (363 in Europe).

This included a static nurse figure, faceless, but with a distinctly feminine pigtail hairpiece. The release date? 1975, 40 years ago Tomorrow! In 1978, the first-ever female articulated minifigures were two paramedics and a garage attendant. While nursing and catering may be stereotypically feminine professions, they are vital professions, and I like to see Lego celebrate the mundane. Everything is indeed awesome! Having said that, I would love to see more Lego science minifigure sets sold to the public. Normally, similar sets seem to be restricted to schools only lines.

Even the friends line is branching out into more exciting stuff, like devoting several sets to animal rescue (again, not to be scoffed at). I am seriously thinking of buying the Animal Ambulance for minifig customisation. Such vehicles really do exist.

Animals at Home Ambulance by kenjonbro, on Flickr

If you're only interested in rescuing humans, there is Emma's lifeguard post, though if they give Emma any more of the exciting jobs she will become Heartlake's Jack Stone. Here is one girl who is not satisfied with just playing and partying!

In other news, my CITY playmat has just been disturbed by an all-female car chase...

... But the men had to deal with this incident.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Bornin1980something