TIL that in January 2014, a seven-year-old girl named Charlotte Benjamin wrote a letter to Lego, pointing out the lack of female characters compared to male ones. A few months later, in June 2014, Lego introduced a “Research Institute” set showcasing female scientists, which quickly sold out.
That wasn’t an issue when I was a kid and they all looked like this:
Is that a man chef? A lady chef? Who knows? They all have the vacant smiley face. Even the astronaut one after you throw his (or her) space ship against the wall.
That said, they weren’t “minifigures” at the time, they were Lego men. Even the obvious female ones were Lego men. This is a lady Lego Man:
…although it could be a hippy man Lego man.
It’s important that we make sure girls know they have to wear dresses and have long hair and boobs.
Legos have typically sold more to boys. For a long time, Legos were meant to be gender neutral, but it didn’t work out and 90% of Legos sold were to boys. It was bad enough that Lego felt a need to create girl targetted legos in 2012, to try to capture some of that market. The “Friends” Lego sets were enormously successful, and tripled sales of Legos to girls in the first year it came out.
It’s also common to target an audience by having the characters be reflective of the audience. If you write a book targeted at elementary school boys, you usually want it to start an elementary school boy.
So I’m not surprised that most traditional LEGO figures are boys after decades of boy dominated sales.
It’s also common to target an audience by having the characters be reflective of the audience. If you write a book targeted at elementary school boys, you usually want it to start an elementary school boy.
Which is pretty funny when looking at Disney vs Ghibli movies because Ghibli actually does that while Disney just goes “Here’s a young adult princess, enjoy girls!”
Ghibli movies always appealed to me growing up because their female protagonists were very grounded, weren’t hyper-feminine to a comical degree, and actually did interesting things, like go on adventures. Their stories also did not focus solely on falling in love with a male character, and focused a lot on their unique internal struggles.
I would strongly suggest that anyone with a daughter give them the opportunity to see Ghibli movies. “Howl’s Moving Castle”, “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, “My Neighbor Totoro”, “Porco Rosso”, “Whisper of the Heart”, “The Cat Returns”, and “Castle in the Sky” were important to me in my formative years. Boys may like them, too! My son particularly loves “Porco Rosso”, “Ponyo”, and “Spirited Away.”
Definitely give your kids a chance to see them.
My son is obsessed with Kiki and Ponyo.
