February 20, 2012 • 30 mins
The launch of a new Lego line specifically for girls brings up the question of gender neutral toys. Should there be different toys for boys and girls?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to
stuff Mom never told you? From House top Works dot Com. Hello,
(00:21):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we are talking about boys toys and girls toys,
especially because of a much beloved toy brand named Legos.
Legos hash has stir up some controversy with a new
(00:42):
line they're putting out called Lego Friends, and it is
targeted one toward girls, right, And it kind of looks
like if your barbies got it on with your Legos,
like your maybe your brother's Legos. I don't know if
we're playing along gender stereotype lines and things, or if
you blew up a Polly pocket exactly. It has it
(01:03):
has that look. Um. I first heard about Lego Friends
a couple of months ago in NPR did a story.
This was before the product was actually released, and you
can now find Lego Friends in your your local giant
box store. Um. And the thing that caught my ear,
I remember I was I was getting ready for work
listening to Morning Edition and they're talking about Legos process
(01:26):
of how they've been researching, you know, the types of
toys and Legos that girls would really like. And they
mentioned that the mini figs, those little figurines are bigger
with Lego friends to quote make it easier for girls
to put hair brushes and handbags into their mini figurines hands.
(01:48):
And I nearly spat out my coffee. Yeah, they have done.
You would think that the way that Lego is backing
this up, this effort to market two young girls, that
this is like the end all be all of toys
that they have figured out girls and women and that's it.
It's just little tiny figures and pink blocks for the
(02:09):
rest of our lives. And according to Lego friends, if
that is in fact the case, we love pink and
purple go figure, we really like baking, and we all
either want to be vets or hairstylists, and there's something
wrong with being I'm sure at some point as a
child I thought about being a vet and a hair stylist.
(02:30):
Don't if you look at my hair now, you can
tell at least one of those was off the table
from an early age. Um and it's people are not
too happy with what Lego has come up with. Right,
well there, I mean, this is not the first time
that Lego has attempted to mess with the formula of
a very successful toy. Um, this is what the fifth
(02:50):
or sixth attempt. There have been things called the Paradisa sets,
which I had as a child, and they were awesome.
And I don't know what's wrong with with palm trees. Okay,
look it's pink. The Para Desis that was pretty cool.
But if you go back to nineteen seventy nine, which
was when Lego first try to reach out specifically to girls,
(03:12):
they came up with something called these Stala bricks, which
were essentially legos decorated with birds and flowers, but you
could only make jewelry with them, because that's all girls
do though, right, yeah, we just want jewelry. And then
in two thousand three tried to make a comeback again
for girls with click It, which was more jewelry building
and legos you could stick on picture frames. Well again,
(03:37):
I mean, girls don't do much of anything else except
when I was a kid, I was playing with legos exactly.
I have tubs and my dad is constantly I'm going
to get rid of them, but my mother's like, we've
spent too much money on that, we're not getting rid
of it. Um. Yeah, I have tubs of of the
regular primary color boil Legos. But I mean as a kid,
(03:58):
I I mean, I could get into it about my childhood,
but I played with just as many boy toys as
I did with girl toys. I think since I have
two older brothers and two older sisters, the play closet
was just a hodgepodge of g I Joes and these
little animal figurines called Maple Towns, which were obviously more
(04:18):
targeted to girls, and I played with them equally, although
sometimes my brother didn't like it when I played with
his Gi Joes my monster trucks played with my Barbie
dolls in the same setting. I mean, what are they
gonna how are they going to get to the veterinary
clinic and the bakery exactly? Well, I want to talk
about the research that Lego did, um, because they keep
harping on this and every piece of every article about Lego. UM.
(04:42):
They did years of research, four years of research that
involved actually having researchers infiltrate families homes and shadow the children,
which sounds creepy, but they spent a lot of money
putting these researchers and homes to basically figure out how
children play. And they determined that um, while boys when
they played with Legos would put them together from start
(05:03):
to finish, like quickly, go through it, make it look exactly,
make it look exactly like it did on the box,
and then start playing, girls were more into role playing
as they went, you know, making up characters and storylines
as they built. And so they use this information to
not only create the Lego Friends line, but to package
(05:23):
it differently. So according to this research, they have packaged
Lego Friends so that girls can start playing before the
building is complete. And it looks like from I haven't
gotten my hands on an actual Lego Friends set, but
it looks like from the commercials. There are pre assembled
houses and little places in in the village or the city,
(05:46):
the Heartlake heart Lake City. I think it's yeah, I
think it's heart Lake City, so completely separate from the
Lego city, which is where all the other people live,
all the guys. I guess it's very gender segregated that
Lego town. And we haven't mentioned just the general stats
of heart Lake, which is predominated by not by primary
colors with normal lego towns, but it's a lot of pink,
(06:10):
purple and bright blue pastel and like living in Key
West a time or in what was it called Paradisa,
your paradise the beach kid there you go, bring my
horses from Paradisa over to heart Lake City, to the
veterinary clinic um. And it's dominated by five main characters, Emma, Stephanie, Mia, Olivia,
(06:31):
and Andrea. I wonder what your opinion of those characters is, Kristen.
I mean, they're probably a lot of fun. Well, there
is Olivia, who is the as the writer and Wired
said in his article about this, she's the proto nerd
or proto geeks. She has a great little um science
lab and all of her tools are purple. But you know,
(06:53):
maybe maybe she likes that there are people who like
purple tools. They sell emit stores. But again, all of
this this is a Lego just pulling these gender stereotypes
out of thin air. They insist that this is the
result of their multi year anthropological in home studies. And
(07:13):
I think it's interesting to point out though, and and
several other researchers and writers have brought this point up.
Is Lego supporting existing gender divisions or are they creating them?
Because they've marketed to boys so heavily in the past.
And you know, Legos definitely started out way back in
the thirties and forties fifties as a gender neutral toy.
(07:37):
Boys and girls were expected to play with them equally.
The parents would get in on the action sometimes. But
over the past couple of maybe decades, or at least
the last ten years, I would say that my Lego
marketing has really focused more strongly on boys. You know,
in the ads, it's all like, oh yeah, shoot them up,
create the missiles, fire the missiles, you know, build a
(07:58):
fire truck and go save people. It also markets Legos
as a father's son activity. It's something that groups of
boys can do together or just a loan in your room.
It's pretty cool. Um. And as a result of them
focusing exclusively on boys, Bloomberg business Week magazine reports that
revenue has increased a hundred and five percent since two
(08:20):
thousand and six, and in they topped one billion dollars
in US sales for the first time. So from a
marketing standpoint, they're there, you know, all boys all the time.
Strategy seems to have paid off, right, and the company's CEO,
Organ noodstorp Um actually brought the company back from the brink.
(08:43):
It was losing so much money, and so those sales
figures are are great for him, and it's his his
motivation for all of this research into getting the girls
back into the Lego. I don't like it. He says,
we want to reach the other fifty percent of the
world's children. And my response is, Organ, you already had
(09:04):
them before you split the Legos into pink and purple
and then primary colors. And it's so true. Among the
ten characteristics for Lego, these are official characteristics set forth
by the founder's son in nineteen sixty three four Girls
and Boys and the And there's this ad Lego ad
(09:26):
from night one that has been circulating all around Facebook
and Twitter and blogs, and it shows this adorable redheaded
girl in jeans and tennis shoes like proudly holding up
this bizarre Lego creation that you know, the types that
you and I probably both made, that really doesn't look
like much of anything um And the tagline reads what
it is is beautiful and everyone's saying, look, what are
(09:49):
you talking about. You had girls, we've been using this.
Why do you need to know? Recreate these mini figs
and with with tiny skirts and and they have boobs,
they have little boobs. I don't know about the little
contoured plastic boots. I don't like it. But again, that
supposedly goes back to research saying that girls tend to
(10:09):
endow their toys with personalities, that they would see the
mini figs as avatars of themselves, so it needed to
the you know, the the redesign needed to reflect more realistically,
you know, the beauty that little girls appreciate more than
anything else. Yeah, that's that's a drag, that's I mean.
(10:30):
And that's not that's what not what I'm saying. That's
what one of the lead researchers from Lego is saying. Yeah.
And they talk a lot about the Lego phase and
boys versus the princess phase and girls. And I'm not
saying that, um, boys shouldn't build structures and girls shouldn't
dress up as princesses. What I think, uh, and this
is this has come up over and over again. Our
(10:51):
advertisers just exploiting this though I mean our our girls
wanting to play with contour little lady figs and which
sounds horrific, um and pink and purple houses and puppies
and cupcakes and stuff. Because that's something inherent or is
it something that's created that they just think, Well, I'm
(11:12):
a little girl, I'm gonna do this. I don't want
to be like those dirty boys. Well, all of this
reminds me of my how old is she now? Probably
seven or eight year old niece. Who is she? She
has three brothers and she is if you walk into
a room, it looks like, you know, like a princess
castle exploded in there. But her favorite toy right now
(11:32):
is her pink rifle that she goes out hunting with
her brothers. So it's you know, I don't I don't know.
I think it a real rifle. No, I don't know
what's going on in your family. She's a pretty extreme
little lady. That's what I'm saying, is she doesn't need Lego's.
She's moved on. No, it's a fake rifle. Um. Legos
(11:55):
have been shown to have a lot of benefits for kids. Um,
it really increased bill ding. All of those those structures
and spaceships and things really develop spatial, mathematical and fine
motor skills, and uh As Least Elliott, a neuroscientist and
author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, says, Hey,
if it takes color coding or ponies and hairdressers to
(12:16):
get girls playing with Lego, I'll put up with it
at least for now, because it's just so good for
little girls brains. And that's true. They need to get
more girls, you know, developing their spatial skills, maybe eventually
leading to interests in science, engineering, physics. But other women,
such as Stephanie Cole, who is one of the leaders
(12:38):
behind an online petition on change dot org to get
Lego to commit to gender equity in marketing, their response
to LESA. Elliott might be, Hey, you know what, they
don't need to change the product. The product already appeals
to both boys and girls. They need to change what
kids are seeing in those commercials, because if little girls
are watching those Lego commercials and it's just boys playing
(13:00):
with them, they get the message that they can. And
I just want to point out that as of February,
more than fifty two thousand people had signed Stephanie Cole's
petition to get Lego to be more equitable in their marketing.
People are really upset about this issue, and uh and
listeners might be wondering why we have been devoting so
much of this episode so far exclusively to this Legos controversy.
(13:26):
But I think it's a perfect case study for UM
maybe how toymakers approached this gender issue, how it's used
in marketing, and you know, in whether or not it
matters at all, you know, in kids lives, I mean
does it you know, does it really matter if your
child just wants to, you know, play cupcake time versus
(13:47):
airplane building. Maybe give them the option of both and
the real world application of that option for both the
math ea versus the more creative, softer skills that are
associated with more female targeted toys. Is this extension to
(14:10):
stem jobs and careers and education as these kids age, because,
like you mentioned earlier, Legos have been shown to really
foster those spatial skills, the mathematical, fine motor skills, and
in doing so, UM it might help boys later in
(14:30):
life as they grapple with math and science in school.
Research from the American Association of University Women it did
it throughout there that boys and men consistently outperformed girls
and women in the area of spatial skills, but that
taking simple classes on these spatial skills really level the
playing field. And so if girls grow up in an
(14:51):
environment that provide spatial skills training, they're more likely to
develop their skills and confidence and consider a future in
stem jobs and a the end of the study, they
had a bunch of recommendations for how to level continue
to level the playing field, encourage girls to participate as
they get older, and they really encourage children and students
to play with construction toys. Legos take things apart and
(15:13):
put them back together again, Legos, play games that involved
fitting objects into different places. Legos and draw and work
with their hands. And um, this is something that's called tinkering,
which I thought was an interesting concept. Uh. This was
from an article by Dana Goldstein, And uh, tinkering is
just this idea of, like you said, like playing with
(15:34):
your hands, having to use those different parts of your
brain which get toys like legos, erector sets, connects really
really exercised very well, which is why it's not a
thing of uh, you know, not wanting girls to play
with dolls, but just wanting to make sure that other
options are open. Like you mentioned earlier, um And there
(15:54):
was a pretty good example of how stark gender differences
are in UH in boys and girls toys even today.
There was an article in Good Magazine in December two
thousand eleven written by Christopher Mems and he was looking
at the hot toys from last year. And this was
(16:15):
judged by the Toy Industry Association's Toy of the Year awards,
and the Toy Industry Association divides toys into girls toys
versus boys toys, and the winner for two thousand eleven
for boys was the Hot Wheels Wall Track, which basically
is this crazy UH track that boys can build that
(16:35):
can go up a wall and around and again. It's
like a lot of those building skills, the spatial skills.
The number one girl toy that won the award from
the Toy Industry Association was Fidget Friends Interactive Figurines and
basically it looks like a strange kind of tellytubby ish
(16:56):
plush squeeze it that says things like you look fabulous
and my favorite, I live for the weekends. What a
what a little kids know about living for the weekends.
I ask you that a lot. Uh. Christopher MEM's wrote,
it's hard not to see the extreme gender polarization of
this year's best selling children's toys as the festering roots
(17:19):
stock of so much of the baggage men and women
are forced to overcome as adults. Because it was true.
If you look at all the girls toys, it's a
lot of the cooking stuff. It's bizarre, squishable figurines. You
look fabulous, and whereas the boys toys are more interactive,
sometimes more violent, and they look at least a little
(17:42):
bit more fun. Yeah. The one, the one that I
rolled my eyes at so hard they almost fell out
of my head, was Monster High. These are these are
young ladies. The figurines, the dolls are are the daughters,
the teen daughters of monsters, and so you know, they
look all hale and kind of gross like monsters do,
but they're still like stretched out, almost Barbie like, and
(18:06):
they're they're really into fashion. That's like the makeover for
troll dolls. Troll dolls now have a tween set with
the carrier around sassy handbags, as does Strawberry Shortcake and
what's the other one, Rainbow bright, rainbow bright. They've all
been sexualized. Their eyes have gotten bigger, their hips have
gotten curvier. Yeah, I don't understand what's wrong with having
(18:28):
a toy look like a little girl, like a little
round toy who cares like a little a little squish
it that I apparently don't like. But it's just because
it says things like I live for the weekends. But
it's it's not just us picking up us intelligent adults
picking up on these gender stereotypes and these these problematic
issues that arise when you change how children see toys.
(18:51):
Children themselves are picking up on this, and several studies
point out that children as young as three can apply
gender stereotypes and directly quote unquote identify toys as being
either for girls, are or boys. Both boys and girls
end up showing a stronger preference for boy toys as
they get older, and that sort of leads into something,
(19:13):
you know, the whole topic of it's okay for girls
to like boy related things, but if boys show an
interesting girl related things, they're called sissies. Well, yeah, you
think about it. Girls can be tomboys, but boys can't
be tom girls. You know, Yeah, what's the term for
I don't know, I don't know. And not only do
children from a very early age internalize those gender norms.
(19:36):
A two thousand seven study published in the journal Early
Childhood Education found that three year olds and five year
old kids expected parents to judge their play choices based
on gender roles, even though when the parents were surveyed,
they'd say, no, no, no, we're not big into gender stereotypes.
Susie can play with whatever she wants, or Harry can
(19:58):
play with whatever he wants. But when you ask Susie
and Harry whether or not their parents would be okay
with them, you know, playing princess or hammering something, they
they expected to be judged negatively if they broke those
gender norms. These are children to these are three and
five year olds, Well, they pick up on it really quickly.
And anybody who's looked into all of this lego business
(20:21):
out there has probably seen the YouTube video of that
adorable little girl throwing up a fit in the toy
aisle because she, you know, she's basically saying, you know,
why do girls have to like paying princess stuff? Boys
can like it to girls can like superheroes, and you know, well,
and the thing is we're we've talked so much about
how uh you know, this marketing might be harmful towards girls,
(20:43):
but really all of this UM, these psychological studies reflect
on the fact that those the gender schemas are more
rigid for boys. So we're doing a disservice to both
boys and girls by by restricting, you know, what they
can and can't play with in a lot ways and
speaking of what they can and can't play with. UM
In the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology UH
(21:06):
study out of the Netherlands showed that they talked to
a couple of girls, I think it was like nine
or ten girls, and the handful of girls that they
interviewed felt free to play with masculine connoted games. But
on the other hand, they also spend time and effort
trying to justify their choices. So, you know, they were
really excited to play violent video games and they thought
like shoot them up games are really cool, but they
(21:27):
made sure to say things like, oh, well, you know,
I mean, I don't like it that much. And they
made sure too to depict other girls who really liked
it as being weird and out of the ordinary. And
the same study that you reference cited other studies that
associated the toys that kids play with with their career
preferences and spatial versus verbal abilities. So they do seem
(21:50):
to be real world implications of the kind of toy
marketing and development that is being catered to these kids. Um,
and we we do have to reference this one study
that has been it's often touted as a scientific basis
for gendering toys, and this was came out in two
thousand eight, and this was a study led by psychologist
(22:11):
Kim Wallen at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center here
in Atlanta, Georgia, and they the researchers gave toys an
option of wheeled toys such as dump trucks and then
plush dolls to a set of eleven male and twenty
three female Reesus monkeys, and they found that the young
male Reesus monkeys spent more time playing with those wheeled
(22:34):
toys versus the plush dolls, whereas the female Reesist monkeys
played with both equally. So they're saying, hey, you know what,
it's it's okay because boys, you know, are naturally our
primate instincts say that boys are just naturally drawn to
these different kinds of toys, So so we should that
that should be fine, build your lego friends, no big deal.
(22:56):
I'm skeptical. Yeah, the Cyberrows says that I'm skeptical, Kristen.
A lot of people are skeptical. But one thing that
primate study did not confirm at all is this whole
gender of the color wheel. And adults looking at the
normal pictures of toys marketed for girls judge the toys
to be feminine, passive, and uninteresting, while they judge the
(23:19):
toys for boys to be masculine, active and interesting. And
part of this study did include legos and talk about
the color of legos and the fact that toys targeted
for both boys and girls tend to be rated on
the masculine side of neutral suggests that for example, they
say pink legos would be considered to be for girls
(23:41):
and not for boys, but the yellow, white, orange, and
red legos would be considered for either boys or girls.
So he established these these notions very early in childhood,
as early as age three, and they are carried with
us into adulthood. But to end things, maybe on a
can we offer a positive note, please, because we have
(24:03):
been we've been uh, really hammering home the more negative
side of things, but Hamley's. This is coming from reported
by Peggy Orenstein in The New York Times. She points
out that Hamley's, which is the London equivalent of Fao Schwartz,
recently dismantled it's pink girls and blue boys sections in
favor of a gender neutral store with red and white signage.
(24:27):
So some people are paying attention to this. Obviously that
that fifty strong change dot org petition to Legos indicates
that people are paying attention. Um And again, this isn't
an issue of saying that the girls should not want
to play with dolls and princesses. I had tons of
dolls and enjoyed that, you know, the baking and the
(24:50):
pretending that I was a horse farm owner, and you know,
all of those kind of gendered gender norm activities. But
it's more what what these companies are promoting. Yeah, I
really think that it would do quite a service to
kids if maybe the marketers took the lead. And I know,
I know marketers and advertisers are only responding to what
(25:12):
people say they want, so you know, they're creating these
products and marketing these products that are super pink and
sparkly for girls, super violent and you know, scary for boys?
Um or scary I don't know, um, but maybe if
they took the lead and just try to market and
create plane gender news not playing, but you know, gender
(25:33):
neutral toys that everybody could enjoy. Bring back the wooden blocks,
Lincoln logs for all. Thank you, hey stem stem jobs
creating things with their hands. But parents out there curious
to know what you've done in terms of this whole
gendered toy issue. I mean, is it something that you
(25:54):
even think about, especially if you have little girls. It
seems like this is often thought of a lot more
in terms of like how it's affecting little girls rather
than how it's affecting boys. So we want to hear
from from folks out there and also people's own experiences
with toys and when you were a child, did you
stick to your your blue aisle or your pink aisle?
(26:15):
Let us know, mom stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send your letters. You can also let
us know what's happening on Facebook, and we have a
couple of emails here just to shift gears in a
major way. We have a couple of emails here in
response to our episode on Volvadinia. I've got an email
(26:37):
here from Nancy and she writes, I just listened to
your podcast about this awful disorder and it needs a
lot of publicity. I would want to help any woman
who suffers from this and gets to run around from
her doctors who tells her there's nothing wrong and look
at her like she is neurotic or hysteric. I was
at my wits end until one gui In happened to
read about interstitial to side us and also volvadinia am
(27:00):
for six years, I've suffered in agony and I'm now cured.
And she writes, I had it all of us to
be elitis vaginitus and an imbalancing vaginal bacteria, a pelvic
floor prolapse, and intense anxiety and weight loss from the
NonStop burning torture. Some women are given paxxel and I
happen to have Xanix for anxiety, and those meds do
something good with the prudendal nerve which is otherwise fired
(27:23):
up in this disorder. I'm cured with no recurrence for
about nine years, and it had come on suddenly, and
like so many I was treated for yeast infections, which
this was not. Let me know how I can help.
I've written to all the women's magazines to have articles
on this, and few have done so. And uh, Nancy
story is like a lot that we ever received from
(27:44):
women saying a thanks for finally talking about this and
also their extreme frustration with getting a diagnosis. Okay, this
is from Niche. I am twenty three and I have
had volvedenius since I was thirteen. I could never use
a tampon, have sex, or have a paps near. In fact,
doctors wouldn't give me full examinations because I would be
in too much pain. When I was twenty, I tried
(28:06):
to have intercourse for the first time, and it was painful,
but I just thought it was supposed to be painful.
After trying a few more times and never being able
to successfully have sex, I started to seek out an answer.
I went to several kind of colleges who treated me
for a yeast infection and repeatedly asked if I was
sexually abused. Finally, I started to find the answers on
the wall of a bathroom stall U c l A. Coincidentally,
during my sophomore year at u c l A to
(28:27):
kind of coologists were connecting a study on volviginia and
had posted flyers in the ladies restroom. I took partner
study that involved four very painful injections in places women
should never have to get injections every other week for
twelve weeks. The injections had nerve blockers that were supposed
to eventually train the nerves to not respond with pain
and sensitivity to any stimuli. It helped, but didn't cure
(28:48):
it entirely. I then went to a magnificent physical therapist
who specializes in internal pelvic floor physical therapy. Finally I
was able to use tampons and as of three months ago,
successfully have intercourse for the first time. I still have pain,
and I find that intercourse is more painful at some
weeks my minstrual cycle than others. My latest kind of
colleges wants me to have a himan ectomy, in which
(29:08):
they cut out all or some of a woman's time
and in the hopes that it will make intercourse less painful.
To say, the leaves full of dinny is extremely inconvenient.
I've lost and avoided relationships over it, and I think
the worst part is that, like you said, the desire
for sex is there, but there is no relief on
the up side. However, I've come a long way and
I have faith that if I keep seeking out experienced professionals,
I will find my answer. So thanks to everybody who
(29:31):
has written in and again, if you have any thoughts
to send our way. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
is email address you can write to us um and again.
You can find us on Facebook, slash stuff one Ever
Told You, on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and you
can check out the blog during the week It's stuff
Mom Never told You at how Stuff works dot com.
(29:56):
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stuff Mom never told you? From House top Works dot Com. Hello,
(00:21):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and today we are talking about boys toys and girls toys,
especially because of a much beloved toy brand named Legos.
Legos hash has stir up some controversy with a new
(00:42):
line they're putting out called Lego Friends, and it is
targeted one toward girls, right, And it kind of looks
like if your barbies got it on with your Legos,
like your maybe your brother's Legos. I don't know if
we're playing along gender stereotype lines and things, or if
you blew up a Polly pocket exactly. It has it
(01:03):
has that look. Um. I first heard about Lego Friends
a couple of months ago in NPR did a story.
This was before the product was actually released, and you
can now find Lego Friends in your your local giant
box store. Um. And the thing that caught my ear,
I remember I was I was getting ready for work
listening to Morning Edition and they're talking about Legos process
(01:26):
of how they've been researching, you know, the types of
toys and Legos that girls would really like. And they
mentioned that the mini figs, those little figurines are bigger
with Lego friends to quote make it easier for girls
to put hair brushes and handbags into their mini figurines hands.
(01:48):
And I nearly spat out my coffee. Yeah, they have done.
You would think that the way that Lego is backing
this up, this effort to market two young girls, that
this is like the end all be all of toys
that they have figured out girls and women and that's it.
It's just little tiny figures and pink blocks for the
(02:09):
rest of our lives. And according to Lego friends, if
that is in fact the case, we love pink and
purple go figure, we really like baking, and we all
either want to be vets or hairstylists, and there's something
wrong with being I'm sure at some point as a
child I thought about being a vet and a hair stylist.
(02:30):
Don't if you look at my hair now, you can
tell at least one of those was off the table
from an early age. Um and it's people are not
too happy with what Lego has come up with. Right,
well there, I mean, this is not the first time
that Lego has attempted to mess with the formula of
a very successful toy. Um, this is what the fifth
(02:50):
or sixth attempt. There have been things called the Paradisa sets,
which I had as a child, and they were awesome.
And I don't know what's wrong with with palm trees. Okay,
look it's pink. The Para Desis that was pretty cool.
But if you go back to nineteen seventy nine, which
was when Lego first try to reach out specifically to girls,
(03:12):
they came up with something called these Stala bricks, which
were essentially legos decorated with birds and flowers, but you
could only make jewelry with them, because that's all girls
do though, right, yeah, we just want jewelry. And then
in two thousand three tried to make a comeback again
for girls with click It, which was more jewelry building
and legos you could stick on picture frames. Well again,
(03:37):
I mean, girls don't do much of anything else except
when I was a kid, I was playing with legos exactly.
I have tubs and my dad is constantly I'm going
to get rid of them, but my mother's like, we've
spent too much money on that, we're not getting rid
of it. Um. Yeah, I have tubs of of the
regular primary color boil Legos. But I mean as a kid,
(03:58):
I I mean, I could get into it about my childhood,
but I played with just as many boy toys as
I did with girl toys. I think since I have
two older brothers and two older sisters, the play closet
was just a hodgepodge of g I Joes and these
little animal figurines called Maple Towns, which were obviously more
(04:18):
targeted to girls, and I played with them equally, although
sometimes my brother didn't like it when I played with
his Gi Joes my monster trucks played with my Barbie
dolls in the same setting. I mean, what are they
gonna how are they going to get to the veterinary
clinic and the bakery exactly? Well, I want to talk
about the research that Lego did, um, because they keep
harping on this and every piece of every article about Lego. UM.
(04:42):
They did years of research, four years of research that
involved actually having researchers infiltrate families homes and shadow the children,
which sounds creepy, but they spent a lot of money
putting these researchers and homes to basically figure out how
children play. And they determined that um, while boys when
they played with Legos would put them together from start
(05:03):
to finish, like quickly, go through it, make it look exactly,
make it look exactly like it did on the box,
and then start playing, girls were more into role playing
as they went, you know, making up characters and storylines
as they built. And so they use this information to
not only create the Lego Friends line, but to package
(05:23):
it differently. So according to this research, they have packaged
Lego Friends so that girls can start playing before the
building is complete. And it looks like from I haven't
gotten my hands on an actual Lego Friends set, but
it looks like from the commercials. There are pre assembled
houses and little places in in the village or the city,
(05:46):
the Heartlake heart Lake City. I think it's yeah, I
think it's heart Lake City, so completely separate from the
Lego city, which is where all the other people live,
all the guys. I guess it's very gender segregated that
Lego town. And we haven't mentioned just the general stats
of heart Lake, which is predominated by not by primary
colors with normal lego towns, but it's a lot of pink,
(06:10):
purple and bright blue pastel and like living in Key
West a time or in what was it called Paradisa,
your paradise the beach kid there you go, bring my
horses from Paradisa over to heart Lake City, to the
veterinary clinic um. And it's dominated by five main characters, Emma, Stephanie, Mia, Olivia,
(06:31):
and Andrea. I wonder what your opinion of those characters is, Kristen.
I mean, they're probably a lot of fun. Well, there
is Olivia, who is the as the writer and Wired
said in his article about this, she's the proto nerd
or proto geeks. She has a great little um science
lab and all of her tools are purple. But you know,
(06:53):
maybe maybe she likes that there are people who like
purple tools. They sell emit stores. But again, all of
this this is a Lego just pulling these gender stereotypes
out of thin air. They insist that this is the
result of their multi year anthropological in home studies. And
(07:13):
I think it's interesting to point out though, and and
several other researchers and writers have brought this point up.
Is Lego supporting existing gender divisions or are they creating them?
Because they've marketed to boys so heavily in the past.
And you know, Legos definitely started out way back in
the thirties and forties fifties as a gender neutral toy.
(07:37):
Boys and girls were expected to play with them equally.
The parents would get in on the action sometimes. But
over the past couple of maybe decades, or at least
the last ten years, I would say that my Lego
marketing has really focused more strongly on boys. You know,
in the ads, it's all like, oh yeah, shoot them up,
create the missiles, fire the missiles, you know, build a
(07:58):
fire truck and go save people. It also markets Legos
as a father's son activity. It's something that groups of
boys can do together or just a loan in your room.
It's pretty cool. Um. And as a result of them
focusing exclusively on boys, Bloomberg business Week magazine reports that
revenue has increased a hundred and five percent since two
(08:20):
thousand and six, and in they topped one billion dollars
in US sales for the first time. So from a
marketing standpoint, they're there, you know, all boys all the time.
Strategy seems to have paid off, right, and the company's CEO,
Organ noodstorp Um actually brought the company back from the brink.
(08:43):
It was losing so much money, and so those sales
figures are are great for him, and it's his his
motivation for all of this research into getting the girls
back into the Lego. I don't like it. He says,
we want to reach the other fifty percent of the
world's children. And my response is, Organ, you already had
(09:04):
them before you split the Legos into pink and purple
and then primary colors. And it's so true. Among the
ten characteristics for Lego, these are official characteristics set forth
by the founder's son in nineteen sixty three four Girls
and Boys and the And there's this ad Lego ad
(09:26):
from night one that has been circulating all around Facebook
and Twitter and blogs, and it shows this adorable redheaded
girl in jeans and tennis shoes like proudly holding up
this bizarre Lego creation that you know, the types that
you and I probably both made, that really doesn't look
like much of anything um And the tagline reads what
it is is beautiful and everyone's saying, look, what are
(09:49):
you talking about. You had girls, we've been using this.
Why do you need to know? Recreate these mini figs
and with with tiny skirts and and they have boobs,
they have little boobs. I don't know about the little
contoured plastic boots. I don't like it. But again, that
supposedly goes back to research saying that girls tend to
(10:09):
endow their toys with personalities, that they would see the
mini figs as avatars of themselves, so it needed to
the you know, the the redesign needed to reflect more realistically,
you know, the beauty that little girls appreciate more than
anything else. Yeah, that's that's a drag, that's I mean.
(10:30):
And that's not that's what not what I'm saying. That's
what one of the lead researchers from Lego is saying. Yeah.
And they talk a lot about the Lego phase and
boys versus the princess phase and girls. And I'm not
saying that, um, boys shouldn't build structures and girls shouldn't
dress up as princesses. What I think, uh, and this
is this has come up over and over again. Our
(10:51):
advertisers just exploiting this though I mean our our girls
wanting to play with contour little lady figs and which
sounds horrific, um and pink and purple houses and puppies
and cupcakes and stuff. Because that's something inherent or is
it something that's created that they just think, Well, I'm
(11:12):
a little girl, I'm gonna do this. I don't want
to be like those dirty boys. Well, all of this
reminds me of my how old is she now? Probably
seven or eight year old niece. Who is she? She
has three brothers and she is if you walk into
a room, it looks like, you know, like a princess
castle exploded in there. But her favorite toy right now
(11:32):
is her pink rifle that she goes out hunting with
her brothers. So it's you know, I don't I don't know.
I think it a real rifle. No, I don't know
what's going on in your family. She's a pretty extreme
little lady. That's what I'm saying, is she doesn't need Lego's.
She's moved on. No, it's a fake rifle. Um. Legos
(11:55):
have been shown to have a lot of benefits for kids. Um,
it really increased bill ding. All of those those structures
and spaceships and things really develop spatial, mathematical and fine
motor skills, and uh As Least Elliott, a neuroscientist and
author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain, says, Hey,
if it takes color coding or ponies and hairdressers to
(12:16):
get girls playing with Lego, I'll put up with it
at least for now, because it's just so good for
little girls brains. And that's true. They need to get
more girls, you know, developing their spatial skills, maybe eventually
leading to interests in science, engineering, physics. But other women,
such as Stephanie Cole, who is one of the leaders
(12:38):
behind an online petition on change dot org to get
Lego to commit to gender equity in marketing, their response
to LESA. Elliott might be, Hey, you know what, they
don't need to change the product. The product already appeals
to both boys and girls. They need to change what
kids are seeing in those commercials, because if little girls
are watching those Lego commercials and it's just boys playing
(13:00):
with them, they get the message that they can. And
I just want to point out that as of February,
more than fifty two thousand people had signed Stephanie Cole's
petition to get Lego to be more equitable in their marketing.
People are really upset about this issue, and uh and
listeners might be wondering why we have been devoting so
much of this episode so far exclusively to this Legos controversy.
(13:26):
But I think it's a perfect case study for UM
maybe how toymakers approached this gender issue, how it's used
in marketing, and you know, in whether or not it
matters at all, you know, in kids lives, I mean
does it you know, does it really matter if your
child just wants to, you know, play cupcake time versus
(13:47):
airplane building. Maybe give them the option of both and
the real world application of that option for both the
math ea versus the more creative, softer skills that are
associated with more female targeted toys. Is this extension to
(14:10):
stem jobs and careers and education as these kids age, because,
like you mentioned earlier, Legos have been shown to really
foster those spatial skills, the mathematical, fine motor skills, and
in doing so, UM it might help boys later in
(14:30):
life as they grapple with math and science in school.
Research from the American Association of University Women it did
it throughout there that boys and men consistently outperformed girls
and women in the area of spatial skills, but that
taking simple classes on these spatial skills really level the
playing field. And so if girls grow up in an
(14:51):
environment that provide spatial skills training, they're more likely to
develop their skills and confidence and consider a future in
stem jobs and a the end of the study, they
had a bunch of recommendations for how to level continue
to level the playing field, encourage girls to participate as
they get older, and they really encourage children and students
to play with construction toys. Legos take things apart and
(15:13):
put them back together again, Legos, play games that involved
fitting objects into different places. Legos and draw and work
with their hands. And um, this is something that's called tinkering,
which I thought was an interesting concept. Uh. This was
from an article by Dana Goldstein, And uh, tinkering is
just this idea of, like you said, like playing with
(15:34):
your hands, having to use those different parts of your
brain which get toys like legos, erector sets, connects really
really exercised very well, which is why it's not a
thing of uh, you know, not wanting girls to play
with dolls, but just wanting to make sure that other
options are open. Like you mentioned earlier, um And there
(15:54):
was a pretty good example of how stark gender differences
are in UH in boys and girls toys even today.
There was an article in Good Magazine in December two
thousand eleven written by Christopher Mems and he was looking
at the hot toys from last year. And this was
(16:15):
judged by the Toy Industry Association's Toy of the Year awards,
and the Toy Industry Association divides toys into girls toys
versus boys toys, and the winner for two thousand eleven
for boys was the Hot Wheels Wall Track, which basically
is this crazy UH track that boys can build that
(16:35):
can go up a wall and around and again. It's
like a lot of those building skills, the spatial skills.
The number one girl toy that won the award from
the Toy Industry Association was Fidget Friends Interactive Figurines and
basically it looks like a strange kind of tellytubby ish
(16:56):
plush squeeze it that says things like you look fabulous
and my favorite, I live for the weekends. What a
what a little kids know about living for the weekends.
I ask you that a lot. Uh. Christopher MEM's wrote,
it's hard not to see the extreme gender polarization of
this year's best selling children's toys as the festering roots
(17:19):
stock of so much of the baggage men and women
are forced to overcome as adults. Because it was true.
If you look at all the girls toys, it's a
lot of the cooking stuff. It's bizarre, squishable figurines. You
look fabulous, and whereas the boys toys are more interactive,
sometimes more violent, and they look at least a little
(17:42):
bit more fun. Yeah. The one, the one that I
rolled my eyes at so hard they almost fell out
of my head, was Monster High. These are these are
young ladies. The figurines, the dolls are are the daughters,
the teen daughters of monsters, and so you know, they
look all hale and kind of gross like monsters do,
but they're still like stretched out, almost Barbie like, and
(18:06):
they're they're really into fashion. That's like the makeover for
troll dolls. Troll dolls now have a tween set with
the carrier around sassy handbags, as does Strawberry Shortcake and
what's the other one, Rainbow bright, rainbow bright. They've all
been sexualized. Their eyes have gotten bigger, their hips have
gotten curvier. Yeah, I don't understand what's wrong with having
(18:28):
a toy look like a little girl, like a little
round toy who cares like a little a little squish
it that I apparently don't like. But it's just because
it says things like I live for the weekends. But
it's it's not just us picking up us intelligent adults
picking up on these gender stereotypes and these these problematic
issues that arise when you change how children see toys.
(18:51):
Children themselves are picking up on this, and several studies
point out that children as young as three can apply
gender stereotypes and directly quote unquote identify toys as being
either for girls, are or boys. Both boys and girls
end up showing a stronger preference for boy toys as
they get older, and that sort of leads into something,
(19:13):
you know, the whole topic of it's okay for girls
to like boy related things, but if boys show an
interesting girl related things, they're called sissies. Well, yeah, you
think about it. Girls can be tomboys, but boys can't
be tom girls. You know, Yeah, what's the term for
I don't know, I don't know. And not only do
children from a very early age internalize those gender norms.
(19:36):
A two thousand seven study published in the journal Early
Childhood Education found that three year olds and five year
old kids expected parents to judge their play choices based
on gender roles, even though when the parents were surveyed,
they'd say, no, no, no, we're not big into gender stereotypes.
Susie can play with whatever she wants, or Harry can
(19:58):
play with whatever he wants. But when you ask Susie
and Harry whether or not their parents would be okay
with them, you know, playing princess or hammering something, they
they expected to be judged negatively if they broke those
gender norms. These are children to these are three and
five year olds, Well, they pick up on it really quickly.
And anybody who's looked into all of this lego business
(20:21):
out there has probably seen the YouTube video of that
adorable little girl throwing up a fit in the toy
aisle because she, you know, she's basically saying, you know,
why do girls have to like paying princess stuff? Boys
can like it to girls can like superheroes, and you know, well,
and the thing is we're we've talked so much about
how uh you know, this marketing might be harmful towards girls,
(20:43):
but really all of this UM, these psychological studies reflect
on the fact that those the gender schemas are more
rigid for boys. So we're doing a disservice to both
boys and girls by by restricting, you know, what they
can and can't play with in a lot ways and
speaking of what they can and can't play with. UM
In the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology UH
(21:06):
study out of the Netherlands showed that they talked to
a couple of girls, I think it was like nine
or ten girls, and the handful of girls that they
interviewed felt free to play with masculine connoted games. But
on the other hand, they also spend time and effort
trying to justify their choices. So, you know, they were
really excited to play violent video games and they thought
like shoot them up games are really cool, but they
(21:27):
made sure to say things like, oh, well, you know,
I mean, I don't like it that much. And they
made sure too to depict other girls who really liked
it as being weird and out of the ordinary. And
the same study that you reference cited other studies that
associated the toys that kids play with with their career
preferences and spatial versus verbal abilities. So they do seem
(21:50):
to be real world implications of the kind of toy
marketing and development that is being catered to these kids. Um,
and we we do have to reference this one study
that has been it's often touted as a scientific basis
for gendering toys, and this was came out in two
thousand eight, and this was a study led by psychologist
(22:11):
Kim Wallen at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center here
in Atlanta, Georgia, and they the researchers gave toys an
option of wheeled toys such as dump trucks and then
plush dolls to a set of eleven male and twenty
three female Reesus monkeys, and they found that the young
male Reesus monkeys spent more time playing with those wheeled
(22:34):
toys versus the plush dolls, whereas the female Reesist monkeys
played with both equally. So they're saying, hey, you know what,
it's it's okay because boys, you know, are naturally our
primate instincts say that boys are just naturally drawn to
these different kinds of toys, So so we should that
that should be fine, build your lego friends, no big deal.
(22:56):
I'm skeptical. Yeah, the Cyberrows says that I'm skeptical, Kristen.
A lot of people are skeptical. But one thing that
primate study did not confirm at all is this whole
gender of the color wheel. And adults looking at the
normal pictures of toys marketed for girls judge the toys
to be feminine, passive, and uninteresting, while they judge the
(23:19):
toys for boys to be masculine, active and interesting. And
part of this study did include legos and talk about
the color of legos and the fact that toys targeted
for both boys and girls tend to be rated on
the masculine side of neutral suggests that for example, they
say pink legos would be considered to be for girls
(23:41):
and not for boys, but the yellow, white, orange, and
red legos would be considered for either boys or girls.
So he established these these notions very early in childhood,
as early as age three, and they are carried with
us into adulthood. But to end things, maybe on a
can we offer a positive note, please, because we have
(24:03):
been we've been uh, really hammering home the more negative
side of things, but Hamley's. This is coming from reported
by Peggy Orenstein in The New York Times. She points
out that Hamley's, which is the London equivalent of Fao Schwartz,
recently dismantled it's pink girls and blue boys sections in
favor of a gender neutral store with red and white signage.
(24:27):
So some people are paying attention to this. Obviously that
that fifty strong change dot org petition to Legos indicates
that people are paying attention. Um And again, this isn't
an issue of saying that the girls should not want
to play with dolls and princesses. I had tons of
dolls and enjoyed that, you know, the baking and the
(24:50):
pretending that I was a horse farm owner, and you know,
all of those kind of gendered gender norm activities. But
it's more what what these companies are promoting. Yeah, I
really think that it would do quite a service to
kids if maybe the marketers took the lead. And I know,
I know marketers and advertisers are only responding to what
(25:12):
people say they want, so you know, they're creating these
products and marketing these products that are super pink and
sparkly for girls, super violent and you know, scary for boys?
Um or scary I don't know, um, but maybe if
they took the lead and just try to market and
create plane gender news not playing, but you know, gender
(25:33):
neutral toys that everybody could enjoy. Bring back the wooden blocks,
Lincoln logs for all. Thank you, hey stem stem jobs
creating things with their hands. But parents out there curious
to know what you've done in terms of this whole
gendered toy issue. I mean, is it something that you
(25:54):
even think about, especially if you have little girls. It
seems like this is often thought of a lot more
in terms of like how it's affecting little girls rather
than how it's affecting boys. So we want to hear
from from folks out there and also people's own experiences
with toys and when you were a child, did you
stick to your your blue aisle or your pink aisle?
(26:15):
Let us know, mom stuff at Discovery dot com is
where you can send your letters. You can also let
us know what's happening on Facebook, and we have a
couple of emails here just to shift gears in a
major way. We have a couple of emails here in
response to our episode on Volvadinia. I've got an email
(26:37):
here from Nancy and she writes, I just listened to
your podcast about this awful disorder and it needs a
lot of publicity. I would want to help any woman
who suffers from this and gets to run around from
her doctors who tells her there's nothing wrong and look
at her like she is neurotic or hysteric. I was
at my wits end until one gui In happened to
read about interstitial to side us and also volvadinia am
(27:00):
for six years, I've suffered in agony and I'm now cured.
And she writes, I had it all of us to
be elitis vaginitus and an imbalancing vaginal bacteria, a pelvic
floor prolapse, and intense anxiety and weight loss from the
NonStop burning torture. Some women are given paxxel and I
happen to have Xanix for anxiety, and those meds do
something good with the prudendal nerve which is otherwise fired
(27:23):
up in this disorder. I'm cured with no recurrence for
about nine years, and it had come on suddenly, and
like so many I was treated for yeast infections, which
this was not. Let me know how I can help.
I've written to all the women's magazines to have articles
on this, and few have done so. And uh, Nancy
story is like a lot that we ever received from
(27:44):
women saying a thanks for finally talking about this and
also their extreme frustration with getting a diagnosis. Okay, this
is from Niche. I am twenty three and I have
had volvedenius since I was thirteen. I could never use
a tampon, have sex, or have a paps near. In fact,
doctors wouldn't give me full examinations because I would be
in too much pain. When I was twenty, I tried
(28:06):
to have intercourse for the first time, and it was painful,
but I just thought it was supposed to be painful.
After trying a few more times and never being able
to successfully have sex, I started to seek out an answer.
I went to several kind of colleges who treated me
for a yeast infection and repeatedly asked if I was
sexually abused. Finally, I started to find the answers on
the wall of a bathroom stall U c l A. Coincidentally,
during my sophomore year at u c l A to
(28:27):
kind of coologists were connecting a study on volviginia and
had posted flyers in the ladies restroom. I took partner
study that involved four very painful injections in places women
should never have to get injections every other week for
twelve weeks. The injections had nerve blockers that were supposed
to eventually train the nerves to not respond with pain
and sensitivity to any stimuli. It helped, but didn't cure
(28:48):
it entirely. I then went to a magnificent physical therapist
who specializes in internal pelvic floor physical therapy. Finally I
was able to use tampons and as of three months ago,
successfully have intercourse for the first time. I still have pain,
and I find that intercourse is more painful at some
weeks my minstrual cycle than others. My latest kind of
colleges wants me to have a himan ectomy, in which
(29:08):
they cut out all or some of a woman's time
and in the hopes that it will make intercourse less painful.
To say, the leaves full of dinny is extremely inconvenient.
I've lost and avoided relationships over it, and I think
the worst part is that, like you said, the desire
for sex is there, but there is no relief on
the up side. However, I've come a long way and
I have faith that if I keep seeking out experienced professionals,
I will find my answer. So thanks to everybody who
(29:31):
has written in and again, if you have any thoughts
to send our way. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com
is email address you can write to us um and again.
You can find us on Facebook, slash stuff one Ever
Told You, on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast, and you
can check out the blog during the week It's stuff
Mom Never told You at how Stuff works dot com.
(29:56):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stup Work staff as we
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.