I’m not quite sure why, but Legos weren’t a particularly meaningful part of my childhood. I liked building things and liked imaginative play so it seems like it would have been something that I enjoyed, but most of what I recall from early childhood is the outdoor play–climbing trees, playing freeze tag in the neighborhood, playing sports, collecting bugs in a bug jar and going on adventures in the yards of friends and neighbors.
My husband, on the other hand, was a Lego fanatic as a kid and can tell me all kinds of stories about the hours he spent playing with them, or about how excited he would be every time he got a new set and would instantly build the whole thing. Years ago, when his mom moved out of the home where my husband grew up, toys and games were packed up for each sibling. One day, my sister in law delivered several large boxes of all of my husband’s original Legos, some of which were still constructed as he had left them 35+ years ago. They moved several times with us, most recently to our new home’s basement last August and I didn’t think much of it. My older daughter had just turned 5, and while she really liked Lego Duplos, hadn’t yet ventured into the world of “real” Legos and all their tiny parts.
Then came the Frozen Lego set and everything changed. Against all odds, I managed to track one down before Christmas and we gave it to my daughter with the expectation that she would be ecstatic and that she could grow into actually using it since it was real Lego set with lots of small pieces and was labeled of 6-12. To my surprise, she sat down with her dad on Christmas and together, they built the whole thing. The next day, she took it apart and built it again by herself. She proceeded to do this again and again until finally, we realized what a gold mine we had sitting in our basement. My husband brought up his old Legos. I admit, I wondered if they would have the same allure. The Frozen set was character driven and in all pastels and white. His Legos are old school-yellow, green, red and blue. The Lego people he had were knights and policemen, firemen, construction workers, astronauts and oh yes, a lone female who was a queen. Yet, the primary colors and the lack of girls didn’t matter one bit. My daughter rolled up her sleeves and was in heaven for weeks on end, building and taking apart towns and houses and stores, creating storyline after storyline.
Gradually, she noticed more of the Lego Friends sets at stores and at her friends’ houses and asked for some of those. While normally I sort of roll my eyes at companies that throw pink at any given toy to try and make it more appealing for girls, at this point, I really didn’t care because I loved how intently she worked building with Legos and to my delight, she actually integrated the Lego Friends in their purple mini skirts right into the old school worlds that she made with her dad’s old Legos. It didn’t even seem to occur to her that the old Legos might be “boyish”.
Then one day in March, I came across a column describing a recent Lego Friends magazine. Lego Friends, according to the Lego website, is meant for children ages 5 to 12. In the issue in question, there was a section called “Emma’s beauty tips”, featuring Lego “Friend” Emma who proclaims that little girls with square faces can get a haircut to “soften the edges of your face” while the long-faced girls — remember, ages 5 to 12 — can get a haircut to “help your face appear slightly shorter.” Um, what? Is the Lego company really wasting trees to include tips for FIVE to TWELVE year olds on how they can compensate for their apparently wrong-shaped faces? What’s next–a column for the same age group on how to choose swimsuits to accommodate their short torsos or too-curvy backsides?
I emailed Lego and unleashed a bit of my wrath because we have spent enough money on Legos in this house and frankly, I felt like I deserved an explanation though I know enough about how corporations work that I didn’t expect much of one. Within a day, I received the following reply:
We’re sorry you’re not completely satisfied with the content of the recent LEGO® Club Magazine.
The LEGO Club team is always looking for new ways to engage fans based on feedback we get. One thing readers asked us to include was an “Advice Column.” We attempted to do this by expanding on a current LEGO Friends story line.
Your feedback is valuable and valid, and has already been shared with the LEGO Club team in order to have a positive impact on future content. We want our members to be happy with the LEGO Club, so it’s important that we listen to members and their families!
Please let us know if you need anything else.
Kind regards,
Andrew
LEGO® Service
So, there’s a Lego friends storyline about girls critiquing the shapes of their faces? I wrote back and basically said that their excuse was a poor one at best. Honestly, I wish I could say that they’ll never see another dime of mine but it isn’t that simple. The problem is that I like their product and how my daughter thinks and creates with their product. I’m disappointed in them for this blunder. I’m actually stunned that presumably a group of people all approved this column without even one person thinking that it might not go over well. But in the end, the positives for Lego are too good (and really, is there another product out there quite like Lego?) to just drop.
Instead, this becomes another thing that we will talk about with my daughter in ways that make sense for her age and hopefully, she will come to see how utterly clueless some companies can be, even if they are hugely successfully. It is a similar approach that I guess we already take when it comes to some movies, TV shows and songs. I can’t keep her from being exposed to things that make me cringe as a woman but part of my job is to help open her eyes to the messages that the world tries to send about girls and about women and address it in a way that a 5 year old gets. Girls can’t play sports? Girls can’t do Math? Girls have to look a certain way? Girls can’t be President? Man, those are some silly messages! WE know that those things aren’t true! Sure, the talks will change and get more complex as she ages but for now it’s all we can do in the face of people who think that 6 year old girls should be thinking about whether they actually have the right shaped face.
