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LEGO Agrees to Meeting After 50,000 Denounce Selling Out Girls
From Change.org
Feb. 9, 2012
By Bailey Shoemaker-Richards
After a month and more than 50,000 petition signatures, an open letter, numerous
radio shows, TV segments, blog posts, articles, and even YouTube videos about
the company, LEGO has decided to listen to girls! On Sunday, February 5, Michael
McNally, Brand Relations Director, sent an email to SPARK Movement. SPARK, a
girl-fueled movement to end the sexualization of girls, is a coalition of more
than 70 organizations and reaches tens of thousands of girls and those who
support their healthy development. LEGO has accepted SPARK’s request for a
meeting to discuss how they can go back to offering all LEGO toys to both boys
and girls and to respect girls’ hunger and desire to play with toys that
challenge them creatively and intellectually.
In response to their new Friends line, which includes Barbie-like, skinny,
mini-skirted girls in settings such as a beauty salon, a bakery, and a splash
pool, SPARK demands that LEGO, the third largest toy company in the world,
encourage girls to build, construct, imagine, dream and create a world that can
include both hair stylists and rocket scientists, cupcake bakers and fire
chiefs. In SPARK’s Change.org petition, they demanded that LEGO stop selling out
girls. More than 52,000 people have signed on already, and the conversation
about LEGO Friends has become global.
LEGO has defended the Friends line, saying that it’s the result of 4 years of
research into how girls play and what they want, and that they have plenty of
other offerings for girls. However, LEGO’s website features 86% male characters,
and the majority of the female characters come from the new Friends line. LEGO’s
marketing strategy consistently ignores girls who have interests beyond make-up
and cupcakes. Putting the focus of LEGO on “beauty” as opposed to creativity
places unnecessary limits on girls’ interests. While there is nothing wrong with
an interest in pastel-colored LEGOs, making “looking pretty” as opposed to
“building things” the focus of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign
serves only to limit all kids in the long run.
For years, LEGO’s focus has been on licensed products marketed almost entirely
to boys (and the few other LEGO lines “for girls” over the past few decades have
been similarly limited to fashion and beauty). Leaving girls out of the LEGO
experience has meant that fewer and fewer girls are interested in the product.
However, offering girls only one line of stereotyped toys that look like
everything else on the market and continuing to aim the rest of their marketing
at boys isn’t going to bring more girls to LEGO. SPARK wants to address this
gender imbalance and help LEGO get back to creating imaginative and challenging
products that develop the spatial skills of all kids without the need to divide
their toys by gender.
SPARK is thrilled to sit down with LEGO next month and discuss strategies and
ideas for their future, and the future of our daughters, sisters, nieces and
friends. SPARK will make sure that voices from developmental psychologists,
parents, activists, educators and girls themselves are represented at that
table. To stay updated about SPARK’s meeting with LEGO and other actions they
are taking to end the sexualization of girls, friend SPARKsummit on Facebook,
follow SPARKsummit on Twitter and visit Sparkmovement.org
Change.org
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