Sociological Images

The splashy introduction of the new LEGO friends line earlier this year stirred up a lot of controversy. My goal with this set of posts is to provide some historical perspective for the valid concerns raised in this heated debate. 

This is Part III, see also:

• Part I: The Brick Era (1932-1977) and The Golden Era (1978-1988)
• Part II: Gender Ahoy! (1989-2003)

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2004-2011: Lean LEGO Fighting Machine

As discussed in Part II, between 1989 and 2003, LEGO had introduced a stream of lines aimed specifically at girls.  None were particularly successful and the company was in trouble.  So, what next?

Those of us who follow every move TLG makes are well familiar with the company’s near collapse in 2004 and subsequent renaissance. This is a really important moment for our story, because this is the year when TLG stopped being a family run business and brought in a non-Kristiansen CEO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp. With Knudstorp’s arrival came a change in philosophy. Quoted from the DailyMail article linked above:

Instead of “nurturing the child” – as Knudstorp puts it – [employees'] primary goal now had to be, “I am here to make money for the company.”

I, like many LEGO fans, am very grateful for what Knudstorp did to save and revitalize the company. The post-2004 era has seen a flourishing of LEGO themes and sets aimed at advanced builders. The LEGO minifig has been injected with more personality and variety than ever before. However, part of TLG’s new strategy also involved abandoning efforts the girl market and focusing exclusively on boys.

Abandoning schlock like Belville and Clikits is not a bad thing, but the push toward conflict and hyper-masculinity in classic themes (and a whole host of new ones) made LEGOLAND inhospitable for femininity.  Here are a couple more telling quotes from the Daily Mail article:

As always with Lego, this [action-oriented theme] was developed at every stage… with the help of focus groups, mostly comprising boys aged between six and 12.

In this new world focused on profit, the company sees no shame in admitting that, like it or not, what most excites little boys is conflict.

Which is to say, LEGO City is not the tranquil place LEGO Town was.

Notice the substantial hike in the m/f ratio in 2007. This ratio had been gradually approaching 1 throughout the 90s, but jumped back up to 1992 levels in 2007 (male/female ratio = 8).

Girls also disappeared from LEGO commercials and marketing collateral. Take this awesome series of commercials encouraging fathers and sons to build together (the first is embedded below). The utter lack of anything similar for girls sends a clear message about who is expected to play with LEGO, it has entirely entered the masculine domain. With girls being actively excluded from TLG’s marketing efforts it’s no surprise that we see such a low percentage playing with them now.

In the final installment of this series, I’ll offer my perspective on the controversy over the new line aimed at girls, LEGO Friends.

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David Pickett is a social media marketer by day and a LEGO animator by night.  He is fanatical about LEGO and proud to be a nerd. Read more from David at Thinking Brickly.

The splashy introduction of the new LEGO friends line earlier this year stirred up a lot of controversy. My goal with this set of posts is to provide some historical perspective for the valid concerns raised in this heated debate. 

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1989-2003: Gender Ahoy!

I discussed the introduction of LEGOs the invention of gendered minifigs, and early efforts to market separately to girls and boys in Part I of this series, covering 1932 to 1988.  The segregation of LEGO into feminine and masculine sets would escalate beginning in 1989.  That year the LEGO group introduced gender to the minifig in a big way with the new Pirates theme. The masculine figs sported copious facial hair and the lone feminine pirate had lipstick and a curved shirt that implied a busty chest.

This pioneering pirate was the first in a long line of token females in otherwise male-dominated action-centric themes. The imbalanced ratio of masculine to feminine minifigs persists today, though it has lessened over time. I have seen several different numbers for this ratio, so I decided to do my own count. I gave TLG the benefit of the doubt and counted as gender neutral any minifigs lacking definitely masculine (facial hair) or feminine (lipstick, eyelashes, cleveage) traits, even when LEGO marketing materials clearly delineate them as male or female.

The following graphs represent masculine minifigs in blue, feminine minifigs in red, and gender neutral minifigs in gray. I have also calculated the masculine to feminine ratio (m/f ratio). Ideally this should be 1, indicating that there are equal number of masculine and feminine figures. This chart shows the aggreagate across all themes for the five key years between 1989 and 1999. The m/f ratio for this data is 3.74 (which is a lot better than the initial 13.5 it starts at in 1989, but not exactly something to celebrate).

The trend to unrepresent feminine figures in the main LEGO product line is mirrored by a tendency to overrepresent them in the “girls only” lines. LEGO released four major “girls only” themes through this time period: Paradisa, Belville, Scala Dolls, and Clikits.  Here’s a quick run down of the “girls only” themes:

• Paradisa deserves props for using standard minifigs, but the building experience is simplified compared to other LEGO sets released the same year  (compare the Sand Dollar Cafe with Wolf Pack Tower). Also it represents men as active job holders (butlers, chefs, ice cream men, and life guards) while the women mostly relax, surf, and go horseback riding.

• Belville is the longest running “girls only” theme and also the pinkest and most gender stereotype reinforcing. The classic LEGO building experience is barely present; the sets favor gigantic pre-fabricated “walls” and floors, and the completed “houses” and “horse stables” don’t even look like their real-life counterparts. The figures are completely out of scale with minifgs, so while it is possible to use pieces from Belville in LEGOLAND and vice versa, it is unrealistic.

• Scala Dolls was essentially LEGO barbie. Here’s the dreamhouse. It has even less construction play than Belville.

• The Clikits jewelry line featured pieces that are barely compatible with regular LEGO bricks (some people might not even think to try.) The line also contained some Bratz-esque characters.

The message that these themes send to children about gender is clear — certain things are for girls only. Namely: fairy tales, equestrianism, the color pink, vanity, and being a homemaker. Boys shouldn’t want these things and the girls that don’t are lesser for it.

The chart below aggregates figures from the first three of those lines across all years they existed (since Clickits was a jewelry line, it didn’t really feature figures).  Beyond the inversely unbalanced the m/f ratio of 0.18 (roughly one masculine figure for every five feminine figures), it is also important to note that the percentage of neutral figs is incredibly low, so playing with these sets reinforces the either/or of gender roles:

Lest you think girls get all the special treatment, fear not, boys get their share of “boys only” themes. We’ve already discussed Trains and Technic which have long, proud, histories and exist in a blue and black anti-Belville realm (Technic even had Belville-sized masculine articulated figures for a while). In 1998 the ill-fated Znap bucked the trend of “boys only” themes being for advanced builders. It was simple to put together (like K’nex), but never caught on despite being viral. 1998 also saw the creation of a Technic subtheme with even more testosterone than usual: Competition. 2001 saw TLG try to bridge the gap between DUPLO and SYSTEM (for boys) with Jack Stone. 2001 was also the launch of TLG’s attempt to get in to the action figure market: Bionicle. This is arguably a gender-neutral theme, but considering that TLG forgot to include girl’s names for an online character creator for Bionicle’s successor, it’s clear that TLG does not think boys and girls can enjoy the same toys.

As a final note on this era, observe this graph of the m/f ratio on minifigs over time. Notice how it is on the decline (towards gender balance) before sharply increasing in the early 2000s? We’ll explore the reasons for that in the next installment.

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David Pickett is a social media marketer by day and a LEGO animator by night.  He is fanatical about LEGO and proud to be a nerd. Read more from David at Thinking Brickly.

The splashy introduction of the new LEGO friends line earlier this year stirred up a lot of controversy. My goal with this set of posts is to provide some historical perspective for the valid concerns raised in this heated debate. 

1932-1977: The Brick Era

The LEGO Group started as a family business with the motto “only the best is good enough.” The company produced primarily wooden toys for the first two decades of its existence. It wasn’t until 1958 that the iconic LEGO brick was patented as we know it today. LEGO bricks were originally marketed as toys for both boys and girls. The 60s saw the introduction of new elements to the LEGO system like wheels, windows and hinges. Marketing images from this era tend to feature boys and girls equally.

In the 70s we encounter the first LEGO theme marketed specifically at girls: Homemaker. The sets aren’t very different from the rest of the products offered at that time (there’s some bricks and you build stuff), but the pictures of smiling girls playing with the sets clearly mark them as “girls only.” Homemaker sets are clearly meant to be furniture for dolls.

Dolls are popular toys, so finding ways to integrate the LEGO experience into this existing model of play was a shrewd business strategy for TLG, but one that nevertheless perpetuated stereotypes.

The 70s also saw TLG experimenting with different types of human-like figures. The first figures (sometimes called maxifigs to contrast with their later mini brethren) were built from regular LEGO bricks and new head pieces. These appeared in a line of sets with the uninspired name “LEGO Building Sets with People.” These line as a whole was marketed at both boys and girls, but some sets were more targeted. Co-existing for a brief period with the maxifig was a proto-minifigure. The minifig we all know and love today was next.

1978-1988: The Golden Era

In 1978 the minifigure first appeared as we know it today and, after an awkward period of co-existence with the maxifigs, the “minifig” became the standard for tiny plastic people. The minifig is now as iconic as the LEGO brick and equally important in defining the LEGO brand, over the years has tried to introduce other types of figures, but none of them have the staying power of the minifig.For the next decade LEGO minifigs existed in a gender neutral utopia. One can argue that the hairstyles are slightly gendered, but keep in mind that unisex hairstyles were all the rage at the time. When people talk about wanting to get back to the “good old days” of LEGO, this is generally the decade they are referring to.

In response to the LEGO Friends launch a lot of people have been passing around these images from an early 80s ad campaign:Even at this time, however, LEGO was promoting gendered play.  The short-lived Scala Jewelry theme, for example was a major deviation from the core LEGO product line. There is virtually no building in these sets, they are completely superficial – a triumph of style over substance.

Contrast this with Technic, which is all substance and no style. These complicated sets (originally called Expert builder sets) are clearly for boys. Boys also seem to have taken over LEGO trains. It’s great that TLG provides a range of products for builders of all skill levels, but why is it that the products for girls are always on the low-skill side of the spectrum and the high-skill side always reserved for boys?

The segregation of LEGO into feminine and masculine sets would escalate in the next 15 yrs, however, and I’ll cover that development in the next installment.

Read Part II of A Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap.

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David Pickett is a social media marketer by day and a LEGO animator by night.  He is fanatical about LEGO and proud to be a nerd. Read more from David at Thinking Brickly.

In a collection of alcohol ads from the 1960s and ’70s, Retronaut included an ad that is a nice example of how marketers sometimes co-opt social movements.  In this case, the co-optation works against the movement, sending the opposite message that it intended.

“I never even thought of burning my bra until I discovered Smirnoff,” says a woman with bedroom eyes.   The message, of course, is not that a woman who drinks the vodka will become politicized; instead, it is that Smirnoff will “loosen her up” and facilitate seduction.

We’ve posted other examples of this phenomenon, including a series of Playboy illustrations that co-opted the feminist movement (“Male supremacy is all right — but I favor a different position”) as well as the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements.  We’ve also collected instances of feminist rhetoric being used to market a wide range of products and, of course, there’s always the remarkable “torches of freedom” pro-smoking campaigns.

The bra-burning story, incidentally, is a myth.  In 1968 feminists protested outside of the Miss America pageant; they threw many items deemed oppressive into a trash can: bras, yes, as well as cosmetics, high heels, etc.  They didn’t light the trash can on fire.  The idea that they burned bras was added later, in an effort to link the Women’s Movement to the Anti-War Movement (remember that draftees were burning their draft cards).  The Anti-War Movement was, at the time, being taken more seriously, so the link was meant to give feminism more credibility.  Instead, the idea of feminists burning bras became a humorous cultural trope, hence the ad above.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Lisa C. and ad industry insider Tom Megginson sent in a set of classic paintings altered by artist Anna Utopia Giordano.  Each of the paintings feature a female nude; in Giordano’s versions, the women’s bodies fit the mainstream aesthetic of today: thinner and with larger breasts.  Without criticizing either body type, I’m interested in what lessons we can take from these comparisons.

Lots more at Giordano’s website.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at Global Policy TV.

The United States is unusual among developed countries in guaranteeing exactly zero weeks of paid time-off from work upon the birth or adoption of a child. Japan offers 14 weeks of paid job-protected leave, the U.K. offers 18, Denmark 28, Norway 52, and Sweden offers 68 (yes, that’s over a year of paid time-off to take care of a new child).

The U.S. does guarantee that new parents receive 12 weeks of non-paid leave, but only for parents who work in companies that employ 50 workers or more and who have worked there at least 12 months and accrued 1,250 hours or more in that time.  These rules translate to about 1/2 of women.  The other half are guaranteed nothing.

Companies, of course, can offer more lucrative benefits if they choose to, so some parents do get paid leave.  This makes the affordability of having children and the pleasure and ease with which one can do so a class privilege.  A new report by the U.S. Census Bureau documents this class inequality, using education as a measure.  If you look at the latest data on the far right (2006-2008), you’ll see that the chances of receiving paid leave is strongly correlated with level of education:

Looking across the entire graph, however, also reveals that this class inequality only emerged in the early 1970s and has been widening ever since.  This is another piece of data revealing the way that the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening.

Just to emphasize how perverse this is:

• People with more education, who on average have higher incomes, are often able to take paid time off; but less-economically advantaged parents are more likely to have to take that time unpaid.  During the post-birth period, then, the economic gap widens.

There’s more:

• Many less-advantaged parents can’t afford to take time off un-paid, so they keep working.  But even this widens the gap because their salary is lower than the salary the richer person continues to receive during their paid time off of work.  So the rich get paid more for staying home than the poor get for going to work.

We often use the minimizing word  “just” when  describing what stay-at-home parents do.  “What are you doing these days?” asks an old friend at a class reunion.  “Oh, just staying home and taking care of my kids,” a parent might say, as if raising kids is “doing nothing.”  We trivialize what parents do.  But, in fact, raising children is a valuable contribution to the nation.  We need a next generation to keep moving forward as a country.  Unfortunately the U.S. continues to treat having kids like a hobby (something its citizens choose to do for fun, and should pay for themselves).  Without state support for early parenting, being present in those precious early months is a class-based privilege, one that ultimately exacerbates the very class disadvantage that creates unequal access to the luxury of parenting in the first place.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

You might be surprised to learn that at its inception in the mid-1800s cheerleading was an all-male sport.  Characterized by gymnastics, stunts, and crowd leadership, cheerleading was considered equivalent in prestige to an American flagship of masculinity, football.  As the editors of Nation saw it in 1911:

…the reputation of having been a valiant “cheer-leader” is one of the most valuable things a boy can take away from college.  As a title to promotion in professional or public life, it ranks hardly second to that of having been a quarterback.*

Indeed, cheerleading helped launch the political careers of three U.S. Presidents.  Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan were cheerleaders. Actor Jimmy Stewart was head cheerleader at Princeton. Republican leader Tom DeLay was a noted cheerleader at the University of Mississippi.

Women were mostly excluded from cheerleading until the 1930s. An early opportunity to join squads appeared when large numbers of men were deployed to fight World War I, leaving open spots that women were happy to fill.

When the men returned from war there was an effort to push women back out of cheerleading (some schools even banned female cheerleaders).  The battle over whether women should be cheerleaders would go on for several decades.  Argued one opponent in 1938:

[Women cheerleaders] frequently became too masculine for their own good… we find the development of loud, raucous voices… and the consequent development of slang and profanity by their necessary association with [male] squad members…**

Cheerleading was too masculine for women!  Ultimately the effort to preserve cheer as an man-only activity was unsuccessful.  With a second mass deployment of men during World War II, women cheerleaders were here to stay.

The presence of women changed how people thought about cheering.  Because women were stereotyped as cute instead of “valiant,” the reputation of cheerleaders changed.  Instead of a pursuit that “ranks hardly second” to quarterbacking, cheerleading’s association with women led to its trivialization.  By the 1950s, the ideal cheerleader was no longer a strong athlete with leadership skills, it was someone with “manners, cheerfulness, and good disposition.”  In response, boys pretty much bowed out of cheerleading altogether. By the 1960s, men and megaphones had been mostly replaced by perky co-eds and pom-poms:

Cheerleading in the sixties consisted of cutesy chants, big smiles and revealing uniforms.  There were no gymnastic tumbling runs.  No complicated stunting.  Never any injuries.  About the most athletic thing sixties cheerleaders did was a cartwheel followed by the splits.***

Cheerleading was transformed.

Of course, it’s not this way anymore.  Cultural changes in gender norms continued to affect cheerleading. Now cheerleaders, still mostly women, pride themselves in being both athletic and spirited, a blending of masculine and feminine traits that is now considered ideal for women.

See also race and the changing shape of cheerleading and the amazing disappearing cheerleading outfit.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Citations after the jump:

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