Boy Legos and Girl Legos

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

Can we talk about how the "girl" lego figures have bobble heads and tiny waists for a minute?

We HAD female lego people when I was a kid. They were exactly the same as the male ones, you just slapped some "girl" hair on them and called it a day. Sometimes you had a head that had makeup, or (in the case of the pirates) some cleavage painted on, but they were all the same shape, totally interchangeable, and could use all the same equipment. When you're a kid THAT'S WHAT BOYS AND GIRLS ARE LIKE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT'S IN THEIR PANTS BEYOND WISHING THE BOYS ACROSS THE STREET WOULD STOP THINKING IT'S FUNNY TO PEE IN THE ROAD LIKE THAT. Excessive differences in appearance between boy and girl characters are unrealistic and totally not helping.

fucking THIS.

[Sita]

Can we talk about how the "girl" lego figures have bobble heads and tiny waists for a minute?

We HAD female lego people when I was a kid. They were exactly the same as the male ones, you just slapped some "girl" hair on them and called it a day. Sometimes you had a head that had makeup, or (in the case of the pirates) some cleavage painted on, but they were all the same shape, totally interchangeable, and could use all the same equipment. When you're a kid THAT'S WHAT BOYS AND GIRLS ARE LIKE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT'S IN THEIR PANTS BEYOND WISHING THE BOYS ACROSS THE STREET WOULD STOP THINKING IT'S FUNNY TO PEE IN THE ROAD LIKE THAT. Excessive differences in appearance between boy and girl characters are unrealistic and totally not helping.

Absolutely

[Bu🤠ns]

http://www.seejane.org/downloads/FullStudy_GenderRoles.pdf

this is an interesting study of film and tv media and how they are by and large male-centric.


only 3% of kids shows are heavily female centric, 39% are heavily male centric.

Our default narratives are not apolitical, dudes.

I was hoping you were going to go into this or at least touch on it.  Thanks for the PDF, I'll sit down with that when I have more time.

I will preface this with saying that I only read the first and last page of this thread. But wanted to throw my feeling about gender marketed toys.
It absolutely sucks! There were a great many toys I wanted as a kid, but because my parents couldn't afford them I had to rely on grandparents giving for birthday or Christmas. And if it was 'clearly' a boys toy (Castle Greyskull is an example I still remember wanting very much) there was no way I was getting it.

But oh they had no problem getting me all kinds of dolls and Barbie and makeup and clothes...

FTR I had the castle greyskull and totally would have played along with you. 

ETA: I wanted to also mention I recall that, as kids, we would play along with the girls only they preferred to use their barbies and we preferred to use are HE-Man action figures.  The divide was still there but the playing itself wasn't.

(skipping most of the thread)

Lego used to be one of the best toy companies at making toys for kids, regardless of gender. They still at least care about it, which is nice.

I remember seeing an old Lego ad somewhere (couldn't find it after 5 min of searching, gave up) which showed a little kid holding a bunch of random blocks stuck together. Caption was something along the lines of "To her, this is beautiful." and some sentences about how very young children enjoy just sticking blocks on top of each other and using lots of colors, as opposed to slightly older kids who wanted to build specific things out of Legos. Basically trying to say that even kids who just build randomly are still exercising all the their creativity bits and not too young for Legos, but their model was a four year old girl in (IIRC) overalls.

Found this old TV ad while searching. Their ads were a lot more gender-neutral when they primarily sold to the parents vs. the children, I think.
http://www.themarysue.com/old-lego-tv-advertisement/
Brother and sister playing with the same set, boy builds a really simple plane, girl builds a much more sophisticated house.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,34884.msg1274085.html#msg1274085  I know EXACTLY what you're talking about

Can we talk about how the "girl" lego figures have bobble heads and tiny waists for a minute?

We HAD female lego people when I was a kid. They were exactly the same as the male ones, you just slapped some "girl" hair on them and called it a day. Sometimes you had a head that had makeup, or (in the case of the pirates) some cleavage painted on, but they were all the same shape, totally interchangeable, and could use all the same equipment. When you're a kid THAT'S WHAT BOYS AND GIRLS ARE LIKE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT'S IN THEIR PANTS BEYOND WISHING THE BOYS ACROSS THE STREET WOULD STOP THINKING IT'S FUNNY TO PEE IN THE ROAD LIKE THAT. Excessive differences in appearance between boy and girl characters are unrealistic and totally not helping.

Also this!  The fact that they felt the NEED to reimagine the lego figurine goes right in to how girls toys focus on appearance.

[Doktor Howl]

Can we talk about how the "girl" lego figures have bobble heads and tiny waists for a minute?

We HAD female lego people when I was a kid. They were exactly the same as the male ones, you just slapped some "girl" hair on them and called it a day. Sometimes you had a head that had makeup, or (in the case of the pirates) some cleavage painted on, but they were all the same shape, totally interchangeable, and could use all the same equipment. When you're a kid THAT'S WHAT BOYS AND GIRLS ARE LIKE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT'S IN THEIR PANTS BEYOND WISHING THE BOYS ACROSS THE STREET WOULD STOP THINKING IT'S FUNNY TO PEE IN THE ROAD LIKE THAT. Excessive differences in appearance between boy and girl characters are unrealistic and totally not helping.

fucking THIS.

That's deliberate, obviously.  If the kids won't play with barbies, then they have to make the engineering toys reflect the impossible standard that the female children are expected to live up to.

It's The American Way™.

[Doktor Howl]

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Out of curiosity, assuming you had a boy, would you let your little boy play with the set in the second picture? How would you respond if he was bullied by his friends for playing with it? Would it go more like "they're jerks, play how you wanna play" or "well that's what you get for playing with girl toys" ?

I'd say that they were jerks, and I'd also get ready to tell him that over and over as he got older, because I would suspect he had some gender identity issues.  Those girly legos are REALLY girly (and they don't sell them around here)

why the fuck would you assume they had gender identity issues? I played with a lot of "boys" toys and I'm pretty much straight, cisgendered and have none of these issues.

or would you only assume that for a boy playing with "girly" toys?

Barbie dolls or raggedy ann, no.  Those legos yes.  If my daughter was heavily into guns I'd have the same concern, other than that, as you and others have said, being into boy toys is considered normal for girls, it doesn't indicate gender identity issues, being into girl stuff does for a boy.  It may not be right that society is that way, but it is that way and as a parent I need to be prepared to nurture and protect my child.  If I had a son who was playing with those legos, or some of the other excessively feminized toys that are out I'd assume he had gender issues and I'd be ready to deal with that by the time he came to terms with it enough to vocalize it.  And by deal with I mean reassure him that it is ok, that I know that he'll be facing more challenges than may of his peers and that I'll be there to support him through them.

right.

so assuming you have a trans kid if its a boy but not a girl isn't a bullshit assumption at all?

yea, right.

There's warning signs for girls but in our current society playing with boy toys isn't one of them.

What are the warning signs for girls, if I may ask?

Refusing to wear skirts or dresses (or makeup when she's a bit older) otherwise vigorously rejecting feminine traits and activities.  Because of societies sexism doing boy stuff isn't much of an indicator, actively spurning girl stuff means she might have gender issues or she might have some internalized misogyny, which is also going to make life hard for her.

Please

for the love of god

get an education.

I try, but every time I ask for help people call me sexist or an asshole, so it makes it kind of difficult.

Maybe you are confusing "society says you must have gender identity issues because of the way you act" with "you actually have gender identity issues" ?

How did "I like pink" get confused with "in 6-10 years I will like gay sex"?

Gay and trans aren't the same thing and I never said that a trans person is more (or less) likely to be gay.[/b]

"I like pink" = "trans" now?

I call

Yes, you do seem to like to troll.  Thanks for admitting it. 

Pixie read my slightly leaning toward as absolute certainty, you seem to just be reading different posts entirely, or maybe making things up.

No, Perg, see above.

I was referring to boys playing with pink, girly toys and you came out of deep, DEEP left field with the trans thing.

Kids are attracted to certain toys for a LOT of different reasons of their own. Maybe pink reminds them of grandma's house and they miss grandma, maybe they want a Bratz so GI Joe can have a girlfriend. (Kids never have enough opposite sexed toys, I've seen girls use Mighty Joe Young as Barbie's ugly boyfriend, lol). You're feeding RIGHT into the "boys playing with girl toys must be gay/trans/SOMETHING".

[Doktor Howl]

I am trying to figure out exactly what Permagos was arguing.  It isn't very clear.

[Doktor Howl]

Okay, I just went and re-read the whole thread.

Permagos has managed to piss everyone off while in the act of not actually stating anything.

Which is a skill I must learn.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sometimes boys play with girly pink sparkly toys because boys like things that are pretty and nice. They are enculturated not to, but that's TRAINING, not NATURE.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Sometimes a pink sparkley thing is just a pink sparkley thing, agree.

And, in hindsight, THIS:

Okay, I just went and re-read the whole thread.

Permagos has managed to piss everyone off while in the act of not actually stating anything.

Which is a skill I must learn.

[Golden Applesauce]

Can we talk about how the "girl" lego figures have bobble heads and tiny waists for a minute?

We HAD female lego people when I was a kid. They were exactly the same as the male ones, you just slapped some "girl" hair on them and called it a day. Sometimes you had a head that had makeup, or (in the case of the pirates) some cleavage painted on, but they were all the same shape, totally interchangeable, and could use all the same equipment. When you're a kid THAT'S WHAT BOYS AND GIRLS ARE LIKE. YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT'S IN THEIR PANTS BEYOND WISHING THE BOYS ACROSS THE STREET WOULD STOP THINKING IT'S FUNNY TO PEE IN THE ROAD LIKE THAT. Excessive differences in appearance between boy and girl characters are unrealistic and totally not helping.

I blame the rise of the SF oriented sets. I had a ton of little Lego people, but almost none of them were girls. Maybe partially because I saw the generic Lego face as male (because I'm male? Because male is the cultural default?) but mostly because all of the sets I had were from one or another space or underwater themed thingy. The primary gendering characteristic of a minifig is its hair, and you physically can't fit Lego hair under a spacesuit or underwater hardsuit or racecar helmet. So they were all male by default.

I think the various space themed things were marketed more at boys, though. Usually the new faction they phased in would be in conflict, storywise, towards the old faction while they coexisted on shelves, so you could build both kits and have a space war over the little fossil tiles between the Spyrius and the Explorians. After that they really amped up the story/theme aspects of Lego, starting with Bionicle, where the individual characters had names & personalities... which were (almost?) all male. At that point, you were really playing alien robot monster ninja frisbee war except you got to build your own vehicles.

Oddly, now all the Lego sets I see in stores are Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and more Star Wars. I'd have thought that Harry Potter Legos could be marketed to girls pretty well.

[Golden Applesauce]

(skipping most of the thread)

Lego used to be one of the best toy companies at making toys for kids, regardless of gender. They still at least care about it, which is nice.

I remember seeing an old Lego ad somewhere (couldn't find it after 5 min of searching, gave up) which showed a little kid holding a bunch of random blocks stuck together. Caption was something along the lines of "To her, this is beautiful." and some sentences about how very young children enjoy just sticking blocks on top of each other and using lots of colors, as opposed to slightly older kids who wanted to build specific things out of Legos. Basically trying to say that even kids who just build randomly are still exercising all the their creativity bits and not too young for Legos, but their model was a four year old girl in (IIRC) overalls.

Found this old TV ad while searching. Their ads were a lot more gender-neutral when they primarily sold to the parents vs. the children, I think.
http://www.themarysue.com/old-lego-tv-advertisement/
Brother and sister playing with the same set, boy builds a really simple plane, girl builds a much more sophisticated house.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,34884.msg1274085.html#msg1274085  I know EXACTLY what you're talking about

I was looking all over for that image! Thanks for going back in time and finding it for me. That'll learn me to skip threads.

[Golden Applesauce]

Your kid likes Legos? Get ALL THE LEGOS. I'd LIKE to see what kids would do with multiple sets. Maybe a beauty parlor with gun turrets or something.

That's happened. My sister got pissed at me for putting sticking laser cannons onto the flowers.

[Pergamos]

Okay, I just went and re-read the whole thread.

Permagos has managed to piss everyone off while in the act of not actually stating anything.

Which is a skill I must learn.

I think it either comes naturally or not at all.

I'm not really sure what I was trying to say myself to be honest, I just felt jumped upon and acted like an ape and screeched louder.

I'm still working on not doing that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Your kid likes Legos? Get ALL THE LEGOS. I'd LIKE to see what kids would do with multiple sets. Maybe a beauty parlor with gun turrets or something.

That's happened. My sister got pissed at me for putting sticking laser cannons onto the flowers.

But that makes them better.