Child of Light Review Sparked an Epiphany.

[crazychicknlady]

Something occurred to me today while discussing this game on Facebook. More specifically it was in discussing it from the perspective of this review.

I have never absorbed the idea that I can't do something just because I'm a girl.

Maybe that's why I'm less than sympathetic with all the: let's make pink and purple legos to let girls know it's okay to build, let's encourage girls to be leaders (though that particular one might have more do do with undermining the value of Motherhood than anything else), let's make video games with strong female roles so girls can relate, stuff running around the interwebs these days.

I suppose I have my parents to thank. All the matchbox cars and smurf figures, just like my brothers got (and my sister for that matter), that ended up in my Christmas stocking. All the ranting my Mom did at the TV when all the commercials for toy cars didn't have girls in them, and all the commercials for dollies didn't have boys in them.

Or maybe it had something to do with how much time I spent listening to my Free To Be You and Me record album.

Mind you, I'm not exactly full of self confidence in general. I have lots of other reasons floating around in my head about why I might not be well suited for one task/job or another. It's just, no where in there, is because I'm female.


ETA: With regards to Legos - it's not the existence of pink and purple legos that I object to. I realize that it isn't even wrong for Lego to try to tap an underrepresented potential consumer base by designing sets they think will appeal more to the girl demographic. If they can make more money by expanding their product line, more power to 'em. What I find obnoxious, is the attitude that girls will not want to do things like build with legos if we don't make them "girlie". The tone of the advertising for these specific sets (at least when they first came out with them - I don't know what the advertising has been recently) makes me want to reverse rant about why can't boys have pink and purple dollhouse legos too, if they want to.

ETA: Btw, cognitive dissonance hurts my head, right behind my left eye - not the right one, just the left.

Comments

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

See, I want pink and purple Lego because K loves pink and purple, and enjoys having those colors to build with. I get very annoyed with the people bashing on the Lego Friends sets, because most of them have clearly never actually looked at them closely - they are just as complex as any other Lego set, they just come in pink and purple, and have little dolls instead of the blocky minifigs.

[crazychicknlady.livejournal.com]

You're right. I shouldn't be hating on the Legos. I can imagine the truly epic builds that could come into being - the more colors available the better. In all honestly, I haven't done any serious Lego shopping in a very long time. My kids just aren't that into building with them, and the sticker shock when I do take a peek just about does me in. So I have no coherent critique of the quality of the sets these days. I think my knee-jerk reaction stems more from the advertising I vaguely recall from whenever they first launched the Legos for girls campaign (easily over 10 years ago).

BTW, when I was ranting earlier today, my son told me he thought purple Legos would be cool (he's not fond of pink these days, but purple is still an acceptable color to him). From the mouths of babes and all that ;)

[catnip13.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think that "we don't let boys have the girly stuff" is a *huge* problem that nobody really talks about.