Girl's Legos

Lego Friends ( http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx )are Legos made for girls. They are pink and purple and can be used to build things like a café, a beauty shop, a puppy house, a splash pool, and a ‘cool’ convertible. The ‘friends’ themselves are all slender girls, mostly clad in mini-skirts. The message, apparently, is that girls only like pink and purple and will only want Legos if they are pink and purple and connected to naturally feminine things like puppies and beaches and nails. The idea of showing girls playing with Legos alongside boys was apparently a non-starter. Forget about telling girls, from day one, that there is more out there for them to be interested in than Cinderella … or that pink and purple aren’t genetically predetermined to be girl’s colors any more than dolls and puppies are predetermined to be girl’s toys.

My daughter plays princess. She also plays with matchbox cars and Tonka trucks. So does her brother. It hasn’t just happened though. It has taken a deliberate effort. I have purposely played dress up with my son and cars with my daughter. My daughter has her own train set and my son has his own doll and doll stroller. When he wanted to be a princess for Halloween, his mother and I were totally down. I was actually a little disappointed when he decided he wanted to be a pirate instead, and questioned him several times to make sure he was sure about this change of heart.

Of course, not everyone in their lives has been so deliberate. She didn’t get a tool bench, although she loves playing with it. He didn’t get princess dresses, although he wears them. He also didn’t get Dora slippers, but they didn’t fit her and he liked them right away. Recently, we went to a friend’s house for dinner. Their two girls and my daughter played dress up. My son didn’t, because he was told by the older daughter that it was a girls’ activity. To be honest, we haven’t even been as consistent as I would have liked. When we gave our son our bedroom, there was no consideration that it would stay purple, even though he said he wanted it too. It is now blue and white, and strewn with cars and trucks and trains.

Now, none of this is malicious, including the marketing of pink Legos. But it is insidious. It does paint girls into a pink and purple corner … and boys into a red and blue one. It is also completely created. If we are at the place where girls can only be enticed to use cool building toys if they are pink and purple and used to make nail salons, we are in a bad place and it is a bad place we have made. That, of course, is what the uproar ought to be about. The discussion ought not to be whether the folks that make and market Legos are sexist, but whether the way most of us raise our children is.