The Blood is The Life 23-05-2012

[miss_s_b]

• New Statesman - Labour’s unending spite towards the Lib Dems is self-defeating
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• FactCheck: Is regulation to blame for unemployment? | The FactCheck Blog
  You go, factcheck :)
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• Born poor, stay poor: the scandal of social immobility
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• The sky's the limit: an extraordinary group of sky diving servicemen
  Inspiring!
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• The Potter Blogger: The corruption at the heart of our political system
  This is a wonderful, wonderful post and you should all read it. And then get very very angry.
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• Social Mobility, Public Schools and Oxbridge « Jazz Hands, Serious Business
  Like Dave, I went to a fee-paying school on the hard work of my parents. I fully agree with this: "I think that the public school environment had a lot to do with my liberalism. Being surrounded by kids who largely had very few concerns about their future life in term-time, then going home to my rural village and drinking cheap lager on the Scout Hut roof with council house kids who were struggling to get menial employment gave me a sense of perspective. Seeing some of the biggest vindictive bullies appointed to authority positions like Prefect and Head Boy, giving them more undeserved power to torment, made me very wary of unearned power."
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• Caron's Musings: Lib Dems see off Beecroft Report
  Not just linking this because of what she says about me
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• CIA, FBI Spy Gear Declassified For Public In New, Short Exhibition (PHOTOS)
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• Factcheck: Have 1 in 5 households really never worked?
  Short answer? This is bullshit
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• Legos, spaceships, breasts. « Kate Bachus
  Another post in the ongoing debate about girly lego. Which reminds me, need to get more Lego for Holly.
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• BBC News - Q&A;: Anti-social behaviour powers
  YAY They're getting rid of ASBOs! Oh SHIT look what they're replacing them with... Somebody light the LibDemSignal!
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• BBC News - More than 87,000 racist incidents recorded in schools
  :(
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• BBC News - Vince Cable a socialist, says No 10 adviser Beecroft
  Bwaaaahahahahahahaha
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Comments

[purplecat]

Pink Lego *sigh*

I totally get the objections but, despite having been bequeathed vast boxes full of lego, the little one exhibited absolutely zero interest until presented with the option to collect a range of girl figures who had pets. I'm hoping I can somehow progress her from that to castle lego or something.

But I go into an average toy shop (e.g., John Lewis) and it isn't just the "girl" lego that is gendered - most of the other lego is in the "boys" aisle and is predominantly blue with go faster stripes and she simply isn't interested. I want to know why I can't get her ungendered lego - she'd love the kind of basic town lego I recall from my youth where you can build the police station as well as the bakery, but there doesn't seem to be much of it any more - instead I have to choose between girls with cupcakes or boys with cars.

I dunno, getting rid of the pink lego will just mean more girls don't play with lego at all. There needs to be a big high profile lego range that isn't clearly targeted at one gender or the other.

[boxcarwilly]

I had the same experience with my daughter. I gave her all my old Castle LEGO and she only played with the fifteen zillion horses that came with. Her eyes lit up when we walked past LEGO Friends, though.

LEGO Friends isn't that overly pink, really. I bought the City Park Cafe for my daughter (okay, it was more for me, I admit, haha) and it really has very little pink. It's more red, white, and blue, to be honest. And the Friends summer sets have some promising stuff: a speedboat, airplane, drum kit, a really cool camper. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the sets because they're getting kids who *would not normally play with LEGO* playing with LEGO. Let's face it: not everyone is into castles, aliens, cops and robbers, and superheroes.

I have to admit that I get a little grumpy when people reduce the Friends theme down to ~pink~ or they call it "shopping themed" or say it's "simplified," "dumbed down," and "pre-fab" (not true). The other thing that drives me nuts is when people like the author at the link above are scandalized by the so-called "boobs" on the new minidolls. Have these people even seen the painted on cleavage on some of these female minifigs? C'mon. It's also curious to me that folks focus so heavily on the hair salon set just sort of look past the musician, the veterinarian, and the scientist in her inventor's lab with her robot.

I dunno. In the end, I don't think you have to choose between girls with cupcakes and boys with cars (Stephanie from Friends has her own car, anyway). Choose both! My daughter served a whole line of inherited minifigs at the City Park Cafe. From pirates to Stormtroopers: everyone wanted a cupcake. The minidolls fought off a zombie invasion once (my daughter decided to serve the zombies cupcakes because her cafe serves *everyone* alive or undead.) And when I buy her the Shelob set from the Lord of the Rings theme, they'll fight off a giant spider invasion. ;)

Ultimately, though, I do agree with you that LEGO should create a town set that isn't so gendered. The LEGO City line could have been promising, but they focused so narrowly on the cops/robbers/rescue aspects that I look at the sets and go: meh. I would love for them to bring back an old school LEGO Town theme that both boys and girls would love.

[purplecat]

I agree its not nearly as bad as its denigrators make out and it really bugs me this idea that little girls shouldn't want to play with figures that actually look like women (these are hardly Barbie doll proportions). But it's hard to escape the fact the the sets (at least at present) place an emphasis on the domestic (baking, clothes, pets) in which the inventor is the exception rather than the norm. And they are pretty pink. But given the alternative is very, well, macho in emphasis makes me think that it isn't the "pink lego" that's really the problem but the exceptionally gendered marketing of, frankly, pretty much everything you can buy in a toy store these days. Children shouldn't have to pick a gender first before they pick a toy...

[miss_s_b]

Lego City isn't too bad. I say this having bought a set for Shrubby only yesterday with firefighters in - one male, one female. She really wants the police dog set because you get a cop and van, and a roober and cool car, and three Alsatians.

[purplecat]

The LEGO city stuff I've seen in shops still seems quite focused on vehicles, if you see what I mean. Though I think part of the problem is that the Lego franchise is vast and varied, so you can always find something that doesn't fit into the stereotypes. It's just the combination of the emphasis of the packaging and the items shops choose to carry seems to send some pretty clear gender messages. As I say, I'm sort of hoping the enthusiasm for LEGO friends will lead her to look a bit more carefully at the other ranges. Just as I'm desperately hoping that discovering there are a few books about boys which aren't all about football may lead to some kind of agreement to being read The Hobbit as a bedtime story - attempts by well-meaning friends to convince her that Smaug and/or half the dwarves are female having been met with the derision they deserve.

[miss_s_b]

Smaug is totally a girl. But the only female dwarf is Gimli ;)

I guess I'm lucky in that I don't see vehicles as a gendered thing, and nor does my girl, mainly because the only person with any enthusiasm for them in this house is me.

[bagpuss]

I think the main problems with the Lego friends range isn't that it is mostly feminine colours and things which are mainly considered feminine pursuits but that the figures are incompatible with all other lego mini figures (suggesting it is a separate products) and there appear to be no figures in this form which aren't young female and dressed in short skirts or dresses both of which put a very strong suggestion as to how the children playing with this lego should appear

They also have a category on their website which is girls (which at least doesn't just contain the lego friends range) but there is no boys category which would suggest everything on the site is for boys but just the girls section is for girls

More humanised mini figures is no bad thing, more humanised mini figures which are only portraying girls and only portraying girls in only pretty rather than pretty and/or functional clothing isn't great

Introducing a range which is more feminised in its colour scheme and types of models again no bad thing, better introduce models to several existing ranges which have these properties rather than having just one range which appears to be directly aimed at girls and only girls

What makes it most disappointing of course was that there are many of us who still remember when lego didn't have any gender bias apart from girls (myself and my sisters included) played with city stuff and the boys who I knew with it tended to do castles and pirates and of course the rallying cry of the movement against the lego friends range the what is it is .... is beautiful poster http://www.brothers-brick.com/2009/07/14/what-it-is-is-beautiful/

[miss_s_b]

I love that poster so hard.

[freddiefraggles]

Three alsatians!?! I WANT ONE TOO!!

[miss_s_b]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LEGO-City-4441-Police-Dog/dp/B005KIQ26I/ref=sr_1_7?s=kids&ie=UTF8&qid=1337804023&sr=1-7