Girlie Legos. I'm ambivalent.

My sister, Kristen, and I spent hours playing with Legos when we were little girls.  We had the red, hard plastic suitcase with the standard smaller pieces in primary colors.  Those were the Legos we used to build houses for our hermit crab bought from Myrtle Beach whose crabby, skeletal remains can probably be found in some crevice in our parents' house.  We also had a Medieval period castle-themed set with horses, knights, jousts, king, one fair maiden (poor girl), and other since forgotten pieces.  There was the jungle-themed set with palm fronds and Indiana Jones style roped, slatted bridges, and the pirate-themed set with treaure chests holding gold coins and Lego men with 5 o'clock shadows, bandanas, cutlasses, and eye patches. 

Hours were spent playing with these Legos, and, at the time, I never wanted a more girlie set.  It never crossed either of our minds as we were perfectly content to have our pirates battle it out on the open seas; joust until our opponents fell off their horses; or construct random houses and buildings.  We never even introduced a female non-Lego toy into our Lego arsenal as to have a female prescence.  We played with Polly Pocket, and she could've easily crossed over into Lego Land, but we didn't see the need to import her into our Lego land just to add a girl.

This brings me to my current state of ambivalence about the new line of girlie Legos.  I feel like it is about damn time for Lego to consider the interests of girls, but I also feel like we don't need some of the themes they're marketing for girls. I also feel like Legos can be made to be more gender neutral by simply introducing more Lego girl people into their repertoire.  I made out fine without girlie themes.  Should there be a division between girl and boy legos?

Here's Olivia's Tree House.  I like that it's a tree house and not a play house where Olivia tinkers around in a kitchen with an apron holding a cupcake tin.  HOWEVER, maybe there is nothing wrong with an apron and a cupcake tin.  Men bake cupcakes too.  It could just as easily be for a boy.  I've joked that my dream job would be to have a cupcake food truck.  I guess I just want girls to have choices and boys too for that matter.  There should be a balance between tomboy girl and girlie girl Legos, so girls are given options suited to their own personal interests.

 

My main complaint is that I don't like that Olivia and her friends look like the Lego version of Bratz dolls.  Notice their posture in the upper-right hand corner.  I'm pissed about Lego thinking it's okay to make strumpets and trollops.  They have a brand to protect.  Bratz is what it is, and it has always ho-ed up dolls with blue eye shadow and extensions (Bratz to the left as if you couldn't tell).  Lego, bring back girl Lego people who don't have bouncy hair and pink lips and look like my maiden Lego girl with her The Simpsons yellow skin and conical maiden hat that was detachable, so I could put it on my pirate Lego man if I needed to.



Here we have a beauty shop, and I love a beauty shop.  I love to get manicures, pedicures, get my hair cut, colored, and styled.  It makes me so happy.  I truly have no problem with this one except once again we have the Bratz look-a-like Legos.  Well, then again, maybe it shouldn't be so pink and purple, but I had a purple room with pink carpet when I was four, and I went to go college with the intentions of getting a BS and not an MRS, so I turned out okay.  This set could even be a barber/beauty shop.  Did Lego ever think of that?  This could have been a gender neutral set.

There's the princess line, which I unambiguously hate.  I hate this whole princess culture, and it makes me hurl the Nachos I had for lunch.  Disney is the worst offender, and I blame them for the larger part of little girls thinking they're princesses.  Can we get a Joan of Arc Lego?  That'd be the antithesis that they'd never consider.

The jury is still out on how I feel about all this.  The more I type though the more pissed off I get, and I think Lego has a responsibility to carefully think about what they are selling little girls.  Toys do in some way define who they might become or who they are at that moment.

At your own risk, here's the Disney Sleeping Beauty set.