Monday, July 20, 2009

A Random Aside...

One of the blogs I check in with on a daily basis is Sociological Images, and I'm always amazed at the way toys are marketed to girls these days. (See here for a few examples with toys you wouldn't have thought were particularly gender-specific to begin with.) You will hardly ever see an ad that doesn't involve an excessive amount of pink or girls who tend to be too dolled up to have any real fun. That's why the ad below (from 1981, discussed here) makes me so happy.
I loved playing with LEGOs as a kid, and I know a lot of other now-adult women did, too. They didn't have to make us special pink LEGOs or give us a kit to build a LEGO purse. We just loved them because it was fun to build things - whatever things we could imagine... (I will admit to putting flowers and trees on my fighter ships so that my LEGO people would be extra-happy while fighting wars against my brother's civilization, and I suppose that was pretty "girly" of me, but it seemed like a practical necessity to my little-kid brain at the time...) Anyway, I don't think you really see ads like this anymore, and it's a shame because seeing this little tomboy so proud of her random LEGO creation totally warms my heart...

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