This ad popped up on my Facebook newsfeed today and it caused quite a diversity of reactions in the comments. There's something about it that makes me uneasy. Take a look…
When I was little, I played with Lego and racing cars and trains. I wasn't the kind of little girl that enjoyed dolls and tea sets much (actually there's a photo somewhere of me aged 2 standing on a table with a walking, talking, blinking, crying doll I'd been given for my birthday. I'm standing at the very edge of the table, looking petrified and for all the world as if I'd happily leap off the end to avoid that terrifying monstrosity).
When I had my own children, I consciously made the effort to ensure that they had a range of toys. They had balls and bats, skateboards and scooters, tea sets and dolls, cooking pots and action figures, hammers and saws and doctor's sets. They also had a wide range of toys that would spark their creative spirit - wooden blocks, paper and crayons, Lego, pillows for forts and stuffed animals. We read books and played with mud and shells and rocks. We had animals and played dress-ups. Nothing was really off limits unless it was unsafe or just too hard for their little hands to manipulate. They both loved dressing up as spiderman or angels (we had wings) and "cooking" mud for their plastic "families".
B2 still builds space ships and forts with the Lego blocks - minus any instructions (actually even if he gets a set with instructions, after he's built it, he takes it apart and builds something out of his imagination).
So I'm a little confused about two things; why there needs to be gender-specific toys and why this new toy is so exciting.
First to the gender-specific toys (and colours). Who determined that pink and purple were girly colours? Up until the early 20th century, pink had not been gender-assigned. Parents were just as likely to dress boys in pink as girls, and it was considered a "stronger" colour and therefore more suitable to boys. Purple was the colour of royalty and religion in England. Worn equally by kings, queens and bishops. It was definitely not gender-specific. And when did being a princess become an aspirational goal? Really, how exactly does one aspire to become born into a rigid heredity? That doesn't make sense to me. Or is it marriage to a Prince that girls should be aiming for? That didn't work out very well for Princess Diana or the Duchess of York. So clearly being married to a Prince isn't sufficient to guarantee happily ever after. And by the way, who said girls were the ones who had to stay home and cook and clean and take care of frighteningly real crying, feeding, weeing baby dolls (yeah ok, they still scare me)? So why do parents feel pressure to introduce their children to only gender-specific toys? It's really none of anyone else's damn business what toys your kid likes to play with. Let them play with what makes them happy. Childhood is such a very short time in our lives. Is it really necessary to imbue it with such extraordinarily weighty drama? Should it really be spent preparing children for adult roles they may or may not assume (which incidentally, is the reason the Baby Born was invented)? Shouldn't it be a time of fun, creativity, imagination and learning how to take calculated risks?
Now onto this particular gender-specific toy. I don't get the excitement. It seems like an avenue for one manufacturer to market to a specific target audience and make a pile of money - all those parents disenchanted with the new "girlie" Lego sets and fed up of having their daughters directed to anything princess or pink or frilly will be champing at the bit to spend their hard earned cash on this cleverly marketed toy. Perhaps I'm overly sceptical, but I don't see how (apart from clever marketing) this toy is markedly different from the myriad engineering toys that already exist. You don't want to buy your daughter a Lego model of the Death Star? Ok, don't. Go buy her a bunch of Lego bricks in different colours (or if you want her to be really creative, just one colour) and tell her to build whatever her heart desires. There's nothing gender-specific about a Lego brick. Or Kinex, or Duplo or any of the other engineering/building toys that exist. To be fair, the idea behind the toy is great. It's aimed at getting girls interested in engineering and building, and ultimately any play with engineering toys will improve girls' spatial skills (which do lag behind boys' when looking at large scale studies). However, the GoldiBlox are no more creative than the Lego sets. They do not encourage imagination or risk-taking any more than existing sets, and you can't yet buy GoldieBlox bricks separate to the kits. So girls who buy this set are restricted to "building along with Goldie" rather than inventing their own machines.
Maybe parents of girls have a different take on it? What are your thoughts?
When I was little, I played with Lego and racing cars and trains. I wasn't the kind of little girl that enjoyed dolls and tea sets much (actually there's a photo somewhere of me aged 2 standing on a table with a walking, talking, blinking, crying doll I'd been given for my birthday. I'm standing at the very edge of the table, looking petrified and for all the world as if I'd happily leap off the end to avoid that terrifying monstrosity).
When I had my own children, I consciously made the effort to ensure that they had a range of toys. They had balls and bats, skateboards and scooters, tea sets and dolls, cooking pots and action figures, hammers and saws and doctor's sets. They also had a wide range of toys that would spark their creative spirit - wooden blocks, paper and crayons, Lego, pillows for forts and stuffed animals. We read books and played with mud and shells and rocks. We had animals and played dress-ups. Nothing was really off limits unless it was unsafe or just too hard for their little hands to manipulate. They both loved dressing up as spiderman or angels (we had wings) and "cooking" mud for their plastic "families".
B2 still builds space ships and forts with the Lego blocks - minus any instructions (actually even if he gets a set with instructions, after he's built it, he takes it apart and builds something out of his imagination).
So I'm a little confused about two things; why there needs to be gender-specific toys and why this new toy is so exciting.
First to the gender-specific toys (and colours). Who determined that pink and purple were girly colours? Up until the early 20th century, pink had not been gender-assigned. Parents were just as likely to dress boys in pink as girls, and it was considered a "stronger" colour and therefore more suitable to boys. Purple was the colour of royalty and religion in England. Worn equally by kings, queens and bishops. It was definitely not gender-specific. And when did being a princess become an aspirational goal? Really, how exactly does one aspire to become born into a rigid heredity? That doesn't make sense to me. Or is it marriage to a Prince that girls should be aiming for? That didn't work out very well for Princess Diana or the Duchess of York. So clearly being married to a Prince isn't sufficient to guarantee happily ever after. And by the way, who said girls were the ones who had to stay home and cook and clean and take care of frighteningly real crying, feeding, weeing baby dolls (yeah ok, they still scare me)? So why do parents feel pressure to introduce their children to only gender-specific toys? It's really none of anyone else's damn business what toys your kid likes to play with. Let them play with what makes them happy. Childhood is such a very short time in our lives. Is it really necessary to imbue it with such extraordinarily weighty drama? Should it really be spent preparing children for adult roles they may or may not assume (which incidentally, is the reason the Baby Born was invented)? Shouldn't it be a time of fun, creativity, imagination and learning how to take calculated risks?
Now onto this particular gender-specific toy. I don't get the excitement. It seems like an avenue for one manufacturer to market to a specific target audience and make a pile of money - all those parents disenchanted with the new "girlie" Lego sets and fed up of having their daughters directed to anything princess or pink or frilly will be champing at the bit to spend their hard earned cash on this cleverly marketed toy. Perhaps I'm overly sceptical, but I don't see how (apart from clever marketing) this toy is markedly different from the myriad engineering toys that already exist. You don't want to buy your daughter a Lego model of the Death Star? Ok, don't. Go buy her a bunch of Lego bricks in different colours (or if you want her to be really creative, just one colour) and tell her to build whatever her heart desires. There's nothing gender-specific about a Lego brick. Or Kinex, or Duplo or any of the other engineering/building toys that exist. To be fair, the idea behind the toy is great. It's aimed at getting girls interested in engineering and building, and ultimately any play with engineering toys will improve girls' spatial skills (which do lag behind boys' when looking at large scale studies). However, the GoldiBlox are no more creative than the Lego sets. They do not encourage imagination or risk-taking any more than existing sets, and you can't yet buy GoldieBlox bricks separate to the kits. So girls who buy this set are restricted to "building along with Goldie" rather than inventing their own machines.
Maybe parents of girls have a different take on it? What are your thoughts?
