Q5

[butterflydreaming]

5. pastel Legos marketed at girls - good or evil?

Pastel Legos, good. Marketed at girls, not so good.

I strongly dislike the defining of gender roles. Perpetuating the idea that girls like girly things and boys like rough-and-tough things really is evil, I think, and maybe even Evil. Why can't kids just be kids? Why, when you aren't even using it yet, should your plumbing determine your wiring? Boys should be "allowed" to like pastel colors and play with dolls -- hell, they should be "allowed" to wear dresses and ribbons! And kiss boys! Girls should... be "allowed" to play soccer! And build things with tools! And kiss girls! Our gender role definitions are arbitrary, anyway, and differ from culture to culture and historic time period to historic time period.

Marketing in general also makes me itch. Don't think for me. I can think for myself. And don't encourage people to be sheep.

Comments

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

That's so retarded. Maybe I was a weird girl, but I loved Lego. I played with Medieval legos, Pirate Legos... all involving swords and cannons and bows and horses and spears... er, yeah, maybe I *was* a weird girl since I played more Lego than Barbie dolls. However, I did have a Californian pinkish beach house set with a pool that looked like a Barbie dread house. So there, there were female-targeted sets after all.

And for the record: I don't think I'd have liked a bucket full of pastel blocks. Just no.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

*dream, not dread ^^;;;;

[butterflydrming.livejournal.com]

That's a funny Freudian slip, though: Barbie dread house

With most "girl" toys, it's not like we had a choice. And a lot of the houses in California actually are pink -- not *usually* Barbie pink, LOL -- it's a realistic representation.

[cygna-hime.livejournal.com]

*nods,twitches* Me, I always played (still play) with Legos and Barbies. It's the same thing; creativity and imagination. Why guys are supposed to like one and girls the other, I don't know. (On the other hand, I was the kind of child who dressed up like a princess and climbed a tree, so I'm inherently flawed. Or something.)

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only tree-climbing princess out there. ^_^

Seriously, though, I don't like the whole girls' toys vs. boys' toys thing. What about kids with siblings? I played all the time with my sister and my brother. It was all about the stories, and it didn't matter if we used Pirate Playmobils or Little Ponies. Usually it was both.

The worst thing? It's not only about children. Why do card decks and backgammon boards get showed off for Father's Day, but not for Mother's Day? Hmmm?

[ghostly-watcher.livejournal.com]

Hey, I must weird too- I made houses for my action figures (all my Barbies were defective- their heads fell off after two days) out of Legos and Barbie accessories. Barbies were fun. So were Legos and K'Nex.

Gender stereotyping is annoying. I don't think even the most "girly" of girls would like pastel legos, but that's just me.

[stormflare.livejournal.com]

It makes me sad, really...

I'm on a Robotics team, and last year I was one of the few girls on the team. This year, when more girls joined, that made me really happy, because it meant that girls were getting over their whole thing with dirt. Well, it turns out that some of them do it to get at the guys, some joined for some bizarre reason, but are afraid to touch anything lest they get dirty, and some feel that they automatically have to take a marketing role, since they are female, which leaves me as STILL one of the most functional girls on the team. Not only that, but there's a lot of sexism on the mentor's part, since they won't let us *puny* girls lift anything heavy.

Then there's the shock my little cousin felt when she discovered that I don't know if I'll ever get married. Or the things people say about my mom (and sometimes about me, because I'm related to her) because her hair's often shorter than most guys', and she's an engineer who supports, alone, a fleet of 17-20 satellites.

So pastel legos? Great that they're marketing to girls, but since when did a girl become such a different person than a boy? Can't you market to children uniformly, since it's society that instills those images on them, or are we so depraved that we have made our girls and boys feel fundamentally different since birth?

Personally, I STILL won't get rid of my legos, but my parents would never let me get a barbie. I had a doll house for a while, before I gave it to my little BOY cousins. And I HATE pastel colors.