Elizabeth Z. sent us a note to point out that Lego currently has only one female character in the castle line, the princess. Here she is, as pictured on the Lego website, as a damsel in distress in the cage under the dragon's left wing:
In her description, the website nicely balances the coy and the tomboy:
"The King’s only daughter is beautiful and brave, but a little headstrong. When the Evil Wizard captured her, she tried to escape so many times that he had to lock her in the Skeleton Tower. Now she waits for a hero to come to her rescue… if she doesn’t get away herself first!"
Elizabeth notes:
"Maybe this year is just short on women? Nah, the Wikipedia entry calls out the years there were 2 whole women in the line. There aren't many. And in the discussion I ran across on this topic, the men justified the lack because a) mostly boys buy Lego anyway and b) you know, it wouldn't be realistic to have more women. Medieval fighters were mostly men. 'Cause yeah, it's absolutely realistic to have more skeleton fighters and dragons than women."
Thanks so much, Elizabeth!
Also in companies I hate to bash: I love my Roomba, but....
5 comments:
April 3, 2008 at 12:46 AM
Elizabeth touched upon this, but isn't this just a representation of the inherent gender stereotypes in medieval stories (knights saving damsels etc) which are in turn carried over from the extreme sexism present in that era? What exactly, would be a respectful period appropriate female character be in this lego set? Assume for a minute that they make half the knights female. How are we even going to tell? Lego figurines are sexless save for their costumes. Maybe the girl knights can wear pink armor.
April 3, 2008 at 5:11 AM
LOL Girl knights in pink armor.
To say that Lego is carrying over an accurate depiction of the social state of the middle ages isn't realistic. If they can have dragons and a made up king they can also put those big fat lipstick lips on a knight figure.
The kids could always take the head off the princess and throw it on a knight body. Yes yes, I know that the picture and the packaging has the woman figure in prison but ultimately it's the Kid who keeps her there.
April 3, 2008 at 7:11 AM
Not like I as a kid didn't just assume all the knights were guys, technically there's nothing saying they are (is the skeleton captor in the picture male or female?). As far as I remember, it's not like Lego torso and legs are any different between male and female Legos.
The only things that were different between male and female legos were:
1) female torsos sometimes had painted on breasts or lower necklines on the shirts
2) female heads sometimes had lipstick and eyelashes.
In the end, I do think everyone assumes that the knights, skeletons, dragons, etc etc etc are all male because of gender stereotypes, and I do agree that it would be good for Lego to do a bit more spoon-feeding to encourage people to believe otherwise. But it's a lot easier for parents to make Legos yet gender-role oriented than, say, Barbies or GI Joes (kids still get those these days, right?).
April 3, 2008 at 7:12 AM
Hah, and since I contradict myself in that statement above, I meant that generally there's little difference between male and female Legos, with the exceptions being below.
April 10, 2008 at 7:37 PM
This is very FOAF, I know, but my friend knew a lego exec and said that they specifically market to boys, and that there is VERY little concern for girls. They just don't care.
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