Lady Business

➝ A letter from a 14-year-old to Lego:

Quite honestly, I don’t have that much of a problem with you painting your new Legos pink. Lots of girls like pink, and while that fact is an incitement of our popular culture in itself, it’s not your fault. In addition, adding pink might encourage some girls to try Legos. My problem is with the theme of the collection, and the ideas it enshrines. You are telling girls that they can do, or should do, nothing more than sit and prink. You are telling girls that the boys get to have all the fun, while they have to stay home and be bored. You are saying that all girls care about is makeup and how they look, when in reality there is so much more.


Yes, more. I always worry this kind of thing will turn into "even girls have girl cooties because girl things just suck", but she's too smart to do that.

I have to admit that the last two sidetracks where Ana comments about Lego is one of the rare instances where I fervently disagree with the ladybusiness ladies--and the general gestalt of the feminist interwebs about such things. As a long time lego fan, and one who owned a girly Paradisa set in the 90s, this is Lego's first real step in the right direction of creating toys for young girls. And not just girly girls, not just girls interested in make-up and appearances. In fact, the debut line includes a robot workshop, a tree house, an ATV, and several sets that include women as business owners. They're not even pink (they're mostly purple and pastel blue). Having looked into the line extensively at its announcement, I can't help but feel like the response has been knee-jerk. Many Lego fans are terribly offended by the new minifigs, and while I understand some of their complaints (the non-jointed legs and hands), the actual figures themselves are not sexualized, but rather very much made to look like your average tween girl. They're not all wearing pink, or dresses (most wear pants!). In fact, the older Paradisa series heavily featured very made-up women, all dressed in pink bikinis and posed passively on the boxes. Many fans of traditional Lego have gotten very up in arms about the emphasis on relationship-play with the new line, of the fact that these are as much "dolls" as "building toys," but there seems to be a hearty disdain for traditional girls' play buried under the surface there, and that saddens me.

It's a bit frustrating, you know? For example, the letter from the 14-year-old says this: "I promise you, girls are do more. Girls ARE more. As a kid, my favorite things to do were read and write (incidentally, I’m not seeing any library Lego sets coming out lately), but what I loved almost as much were building forts and climbing trees. There is nothing as nice as sitting in the crook of a big green tree with your book and listening as the leaves flutter in the passing breeze on a quieter day, or scaling the heights and climbing out far past what your parents would be okay with on an an adventurous one. And, of course, there is always the fun of piling up the pillows for a fort, figuring out a way to hold the sheets up (I devised a complicated system involving three of my dad’s spring clips, our yard stick, and the space between the headboard and the wall, which worked fantastically), and then settling down with a book, bowl of popcorn, or even a set of Legos to relax after my labors." But it's clear if you look at the actual toys that Lego has very much taken these interests into account. Beause they've actually made a treehouse for young lego fans to play with.

Is the line perfect? No, it's not. There should be more boy friend figurines, and we'd all like to see an even greater emphasis on science than what's already there. And I'd be the first to say that we need more female figs in the main lines, too. But I wish there was more acknowledgement of the many things that lego did right here. Like include tiny robots. Tiny robots!