Name: レゴフレンズ - レゴとジェンダー その1 (LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:50:53.000Z
Duration: 10 min 31 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

“LEGO is here, hey kids, look a whole new world to build.”

LEGOS are one of the most fantastic and creative toys ever developed.

I mean check this out, it’s a LEGO stegosaurus, it even has light up eyes *rawr*

Research has consistently shown that playing with LEGOs accelerates childhood development,

and is upheld as a gateway to math, science and engineering fields, promoting spatial memory, spatial design and of course imagination.

Sadly, as a consequence of LEGOs decision to design and market their products almost exclusively to boys over the past few decades,

So when the LEGO Group announced that they were committed to expanding the LEGO experience for girls in 2012 in a significant way I was excited,

but a little skeptical.  Here’s what LEGO had to say

“We actually see ourselves as duty bound to find a fantastic LEGO experience for Girls.

we are passionate about what the LEGO experience does to children around the world,

I mean, their development, great experience, ability to concentrate,

and it’s just not good enough that we cannot do something which is really appealing to girls and delivering that same great experience.”

LEGO claims to have spent millions of dollars and 4 years doing intensive research on this endeavor and they’ve even budgeted 40 million dollars to market to girls globally.

So with all that what has the company done to integrate girls back into the LEGO experience?

Welcome to Beautiful Heartlake City.  I’m Stephanie, I’m going to a party at the new café with my friend Olivia.

That’s me, I just finished decorating my house. Time to chill with the girls.

At the Beauty Shop, Emma is styled and ready to go.  This is gonna be so much fun!

Welcome to the world of LEGO Friends.  New LEGO Friends.

This new LEGO collection features 23 sets that focus on the lives of 5 “Friends®” Mia, Emma, Andrea, Olivia and Stephanie

who all hang out and have fun in someplace called Heartlake City, not to be confused with the regular “City” which is LEGO’s longest running theme.

No, Heartlake City is a pastel colored gender segregated stereotypically female suburban paradise.

And to make it absolutely clear that these sets are for girls,

they’ve covered everything in pink and purple, from the branding to the boxes to the bricks themselves.

Another way LEGO has segregated the Friends theme from the rest of the LEGO universe is by creating a brand new LEGO person.

The traditional LEGO characters or “minifigs” as they’re called has become a recognizable icon world wide.

The minifigs are the center piece of the entire LEGO universe

featured in their videogame and movie franchises, extended merchandise, and even in their theme parks.

By contrast the new Bratz/Barbie style “Lady Fig” or “mini doll” featured in Heartlake City

is taller, curvier and they wear little skirts.

By essentially making the mini-doll an entirely separate species

it just works to further segregate the Friends theme from the rest of the LEGO universe.

The Friends theme sets focus on traditionally female identified tasks

getting your hair done at the Butterfly Beauty Shop,

taking care of pets at the Heartlake Vet,

Out of the initial 14 offerings the only set that breaks out of this mold might be Olivia’s Inventor’s Workshop,

which would be really awesome if it weren’t for the inexplicable decision to make all of her tools purple.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with pink and purple, I’m sometimes fond of these colours, obviously,

pink and purple are just two options out of the rainbow of brick colors available in the LEGO universe.

The problem is pink and purple hardly ever appear in the sets marketed to boys and Heartlake city is dominated entirely by soft pastel colours.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with LEGO sets that include

places to live, places to eat, beauty salons, entertainment venues etc.

These are all establishments that you’d expect to find in pretty much any city.

But here is where LEGO starts to go horribly wrong

First, the activities featured in the Friends theme such as baking, cooking, caregiving, homemaking, decorating, hair styling

are rooted in deeply stereotypical and limiting roles for women in children’s toys and sadly, in society in general.

Second, these types of establishments only exist in the girls’ world of Heartlake city.

The real LEGO city, on the other hand, you know, the ones that come in the blue boxes, that’s marketed almost exclusively to boys

has dozens of CITY subthemes including Search and Rescue, Police, Firefighters, Construction, the Space Port

which are all traditionally male identified occupations (though they shouldn’t be).

Noticeably absent are any places for the LEGO city minifigures to live or eat.

Isn’t it curious that there are almost no housing, entertainment or restaurant subthemes in LEGO city?

So what happens when something in Heartlake City catches on fire?

I guess you have to call the boys to put it out,  similarly what happens when someone in LEGO city gets hungry?

I guess you’d have to call the girls to bake them something.  This is just absurd.

Now you may be thinking to yourself that kids don’t have to follow the instructions, they could build whatever they want out of the LEGO set,

girls could build spaceships out of the beauty salon for example.

The problem is that the Friends theme was developed from the ground up based on a story of five friends

and everything that girls are meant to do with the sets revolves around that specific story.

This severely limits the possibilities of what most girls will do with the sets.

And there’s nothing else in the rest of the LEGO universe that will encourage girls to think outside of the gendered walls of Heartlake City.

It seems as though LEGO is convinced that boys and girls just naturally have different interests,

the LEGO Group CEO said “We focused on creating a play experience centered on the joy of creation, while heeding the way girls naturally build and play.”

Using the language of “natural” or “nature” in reference to gender infers

that girls are biologically predisposed to like dolls and pink things.

As noted by Peggy Orenstein in her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter,

if we look to the turn of the century this gendered color dynamic was actually reversed,

in the early 1900s blue was associated with baby girls and pink with baby boys, really,

it might be hard to believe but you can look it up.

This demonstrates that colour association with gender is a social construct,

it’s not biological, it’s not genetic, it’s not natural. It’s made up.

Contrary to LEGO’s press release that states that “LEGO Friends is the first 100 percent LEGO building experience fully optimized to girls’ tastes and interests.”

LEGO has tried this type of gender stereotyping before.

Here’s a quick history of LEGO’s ridiculous attempts to market to girls.

In 1979 LEGO released SCALA, a jewelry making kit that featured little plastic pieces with birds and flowers painted on them.

In 1992 LEGO released the PARADISA collection, which to their credit,

was meant to fit together with the larger TOWN LEGO theme (which is now renamed CITY).

“Paradisa, Paradisa, sun is shining all day.

Let us ride down to the beach, go surfing, camping and play.

We can do anything we like at the house with the sun.

Paradisa, Paradisa, this is where we have fun.”

It included female minifigs so that’s good but all the boxes were bright pink,

and all the activities were leisure activities like the poolside paradise, the fun fair, and the country club.

In 1994 LEGO reduced the building experience to almost nothing with the Belville theme.

And similar to the ladyfigs of the Friends theme,

the characters of Belville looked a lot more like Barbie then Lego’s traditional minifigs.

The play focused on fairy tales where girls could play house with prince charming or have magical tea parties.

A few years later LEGO brought back the Scala theme, in name only,

this time there was virtually nothing to build and the core of the theme was to play with and dress up the Barbie knock off dolls.

Clickits, click it your way. Clickits.”

So they brought back customized jewelry making with Clikits.

字幕リスト動画再生

レゴフレンズ - レゴとジェンダーその1 (LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1)

city

play

world

girl

レゴフレンズ - レゴとジェンダー その1 (LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1)

city

play

world

girl

レゴフレンズ - レゴとジェンダーその1 (LEGO Friends - LEGO & Gender Part 1)