A while back readers absolutely fell in love with a vintage Lego ad from 1981, featuring a red-headed befreckled girl in pigtails and overalls. It, and two more in the series, reminded us that advertising doesn’t have to impose rigid gender stereotypes the way that most advertising today and the newest Lego marketing strategy certainly does.
Joanne M. dug up two more examples, both from Family Circle in 1978. Feast your eyes on these happy children:
David Pickett, by the way, wrote us an amazing four part history of Lego’s (failed) efforts — or lack thereof — to reach out to girls. It’s a truly comprehensive and fascinating story.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 26
JamieC — July 29, 2012
I LOVE these -- I mean LOVE them. But I'm not so sure if they are GENDER neutral. These girls seem rather masculine -- or perhaps more accurately, not at all feminine. Now I am the first to hope that we don't assume all females are feminine -- but I would also love to see femininity a bit more praised in our culture. What would feminine legos look like? I don't know, and I'm beginning to think I should delete this. But I'll keep it! (ha.) Just because maybe this is something we should be thinking about. Masculinity does not equal neutrality, and it shouldn't equal greater success for women. Right? I'd love to hear thoughts on this. I'm grappling with it as you can see...
JacquelynJoan — July 29, 2012
Good point. "Gender neutral" was probably the wrong word choice. It is good to see girls get to be something other than "pretty" and passive though. Unfortunately, in our society active play, science, trains, clothes that are comfortable for play, etc. are coded as masculine.
The route that Lego has gone with hair salons and combs and shopping is not a great one for girls. It would be good to have more femininity embedded into the Lego world, seamlessly with the rest of the world they've created and not sectioned off into a girl's world. Pink and flowers and social interaction should be made available in this world for boys & girls to learn and enjoy alongside visuo-spacial skills and science, etc.
Thecrankylibrarian — July 29, 2012
It's interesting that most of these ads from the 70s and 80s show much younger children than the gender stratified ads we;re seeing today. Perhaps that is part of the problem.
Casey — July 29, 2012
Those aren't gender neutral, those are girls.
Jussayin'
molochmachine — July 29, 2012
This is nice and all, but all of these ads ran in media aimed at parents. They're not a real alternative to Lego's other advertising, because they don't address children as subjects, but as 'others' who need protection and education. Though more gender-equal than current lego ads, they can't really be compared to contemporary ad campaigns because the target audience is completely different.
If you want an example of more gender-inclusive lego advertising that does actually speak to kids and not just about them, you have to go all the way back to the original 1950s US television ads, and even they were stereotypical in their treatment of the kids, with boys building machines and girls building doll houses.
Lola — July 30, 2012
Wow. I came here to leave a comment about how I thought it was cool that you really can't tell that the first ad is a boy...that one could just as easily think that a girl was depicted.
Only to discover that the first child is, in fact, a girl.
FAIL....or is it great success?
Guest — August 1, 2012
The Gendered Lego Advertising Remixer allows you to swap the video and audio tracks from Lego commercials targeting boys versus girls. Fascinating!
http://www.genderremixer.com/lego/
first time home buyer programs — May 15, 2019
Very Nice post sir.