Kingsley

1 Meghan Kingsley Dr. Erin Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric 5 October 2012 The Gender Segregated Land of Lego

Legos have changed the world. Since their creation in the mid-1900s, Legos have been linked to fostering skills useful in math, science, and engineering fields. They increase ability to concentrate, accelerate childhood development, and even increase capacity for creativity. With all of these key attributes, its disappointing to see that only about half of children benefit from Legos; the male half. However, Legos have not always been solely for boys. Back in the 1950s Lego marketed to both boys and girls and created relatively gender-neutral products. In the past couple of decades, Lego decided to go a different route and have admittedly directed their advertising and products almost exclusively to young boys. They used masculine rhetoric, images, and associations to focus their products to the supposed interests of young boys. The fact that girls had been missing out on an additive learning tool was brought to the attention of Lego, and in response, they decided to create an entirely separate pink and purplefilled Lego world, Lego Friends, exclusively for girls. Rhetoric is used in distinctly different ways to market the boys Legos and the girls Legos based on the supposed differences in intended audience. Stereotypes and myths about gender are perpetuated through the rhetoric in the marketing campaigns of Lego products and are used in persuasive ways.

Kingsley 2 Traditionally, rhetoric has been thought to consist of merely persuasive language, however, images, toys, music, tone, and more, can all be rhetorical. In An Overview of Rhetoric, Herrick asserts, More recently, both the goals of rhetoric and the symbolic resources available to those practicing the art have expanded dramatically (7). Therefore, in my analysis of the two rhetorical texts, I not only draw from rhetorical language used in the advertisements, but also rhetoric in the images, voice, and even the product itself. Lego Friends is the directed towards young girls and is centered around the lives of five friends who engage in stereotypical female activities. They decorate, go to social events, and spend time chilling with the girls. Their lives are set in beautiful Heartlake City, where just about everything is pink and purple. Lego Dino is an example of a Lego set directed at boys and is centered around the idea of saving the city from a dinosaur attack. They engage in stereotypical male activities in which they must build their Dino Truck and use it to valiantly stop the dinosaurs from destroying the city. The advertisements for Lego Friends and Lego Dino present contrasting gender stereotypes regarding interpersonal relationships. In the Lego Dino advertisement, the city needs to be saved from a dinosaur attack, so the idea of being a hero and saving people is heavily emphasized. Also, the idea of individuality is conveyed in this commercial because the dinosaur is taken down by one person, as opposed to a large group working together. The valiant spirit and heroism emphasized perpetuate the stereotypes that boys should be heroes and achieve things singlehandedly. This view of interpersonal relationships limits boys because they constantly are encouraged to do everything by themselves. This can be extremely detrimental because it can encourage selfishness, thereby discouraging teamwork.

Kingsley 3 On the contrary, in the Lego Friends advertisement, friendship and togetherness are emphasized heavily in the rhetoric of the ad and the product. Obviously, based off the name, Lego Friends emphasizes play with friends. In the Lego Friends ad, it even says, Im Andrea! I love being together with my friends. While the emphasis on collectivism in the rhetoric encourages togetherness, it does so in a way that limits the way that young girls will play with their Legos. Instead of emphasizing the Lego aspect of building and achieving something together, it makes it into just another doll set. In Where the Women Are, T.L. Taylor asserts that Talking about how women like the social component of games, or how they like to chat can flatten a fairly rich play landscape (169). Although this article is referring to online gaming, the same can be applied to Legos. Since the social component of Lego Friends is overly emphasized, it takes away the emphasis on creative play and essentially takes away many of the benefits offered by Legos. The rhetoric of calling the set Lego Friends implies that they should only play with friends, and for a girl to play by herself would be odd. However, since the boys sets emphasize individuality and creativity, if a boy played by himself it would just be considered creative and independent. The two Lego advertisements also perpetuate myths about differing interests between boys and girls. In the Lego Dino commercial, dark, earthy colors are used throughout the set, pink and purple are nowhere to be found. On the contrary, in the Lego Friends commercial, all you can see is pink and purple. The differences in color based on assumed differences in audience imply that girls innately like pink and purple, and boys innately do not. This is simply not true. Back in the early 1900s when baby boys were born they used the color pink, and the color blue was used for girls. The idea that boys and girls only like specific colors is created by our society. The Lego advertisements perpetuate this creation and use it as a marketing strategy

Kingsley 4 because they think girls are more likely to buy pink Legos, and boys more likely to buy Legos of dark, neutral colors. Based on the Lego Dino commercials rhetoric, boys like destruction, dirt, weapons, and violence. The dinosaurs are about to destroy the city, so the boys have to leap into action, build and use their dino truck, laden with weapons, to stop the dinosaurs. The set in the commercial is surrounded by dirt, and the dinosaurs even stomp through the dirt freeing up clouds of it. However, in the Lego Friends commercial, the interests of girls are portrayed as much more superficial. They go to a beauty salon, socialize with friends at a caf, and drive around Heartlake City in the purple car. Hearts are everywhere in Lego Friends, from the name of the city to the clothes that the mini-figures wear. This implies that girls like hearts, butterflies, and other classically feminine images. If Lego can place boys and girls into these separate and rigid categories, it makes it much easier for them to market the products separately. So, by using these stereotypes about the appearances of sets desired by boys and girls, they can classify different types of Legos and market the products accordingly. A very significant difference in presented interests between the Lego advertisement for boys and the advertisement for girls is the way that building is presented. Building with Legos is the most beneficial part because it has been proven to stimulate learning. In the Lego Dino commercial it states, You can build the dino truck! This implies that part of enjoying the toy is the act of building it. However, in the Lego Friends commercial, building is never even mentioned. In the advertisement, we see the caf rapidly built by hands, but it isnt vocalized or drawn attention to. This is troubling because the whole idea behind creating a set for girls was so they could also reap the benefits presented by Legos, yet with this rhetoric, this additive part is seemingly forgotten. The difference in how building is portrayed implies that boys are more

Kingsley 5 naturally interested in the building aspect than girls are. This is an extremely limiting idea, and can even be linked to perpetuating stereotypes that careers in math, science, and engineering are exclusively for men. We wonder why more girls dont have these types of careers, yet society is steering them away from them extremely early in development. The Lego Friends and Lego Dino commercials also perpetuate stereotypes of what boys and girls should look like. Classically, Lego mini-figurines are relatively shapeless. We see this shown in our representative boy Lego set of the Lego Dino. The classic mini-figurine is used in this set, and we see how the body is under-played. The figures in the Lego Dino set are extremely masculine, bearing facial hair, masculine clothing, and the advertisement is even narrated by a deep, masculine voice. However, the Lego Friends sets have an entirely new type of figurine. Its completely deviant of what we would consider a normal Lego figurine. These girl figurines are taller, have curves, and are even wearing mini-skirts. The creation of an entirely new figurine for girls further separates these Legos from the norm. Therefore, the rhetoric of the figurines themselves separate girls into their own little sub-category when it comes to Legos. Also contrary to the Lego Dino advertisement, the Lego Friends ad is narrated by a high-pitched, feminine voice, implying again that the advertisement is directed solely at girls. Both the Lego Dino set and the Lego Friends set in the advertisements are completely gender segregated with regards to figures. The Lego Dino set only consists of male figures and the Lego Friends set only consists of female figures. This further emphasizes that boys are supposed to identify only with the boy set and girls with the girl set. My analysis of the two texts could be argued by the fact that I chose to analyze a male Lego set that is clearly very masculine because it is centered around dinosaurs. However, had I chose a set that seems to have less gender associations, I wouldve seen many of the same

Kingsley 6 stereotypes perpetuated. For example, a Lego City ad highlighting the fire department is narrated by a deep voice and consists of almost solely male mini-figurines. The only female figurine seen in this commercial is the old woman who needs to be saved from her burning apartment with her cat. Really? Old lady and her cat? Yet, we see this stereotype of women needing to be saved in society all the time, so people recognize and accept these images. We see the males portrayed as heroes, and we see the stereotype that certain occupations are solely for men, such as firefighters, perpetuated. Therefore, since these stereotypes are widely known in society, theyre recognizable and add to the marketing strategy. The Lego City ad also emphasizes the actual act of building parts of the set as we saw in the Lego Dino ad by saying, You can build the fire truck!, so we see this as a theme in the advertisements geared towards boys. Since it is absent in the Lego Friends ad, this further validates the idea that theyre perpetuating stereotypes with regards to building. So, when creating the new product for girls, why a stereotype laden set? In an interview with Bloomberg regarding the creation of Lego Friends, a Lego representative stated, We focused on creating a play experience centered on the joy of creation, while heeding the way girls naturally build and play(3). This rhetoric used by the Lego Company implies that girls naturally like pink and only care about baking and going to beauty salons. They use divisive rhetoric, which further fosters gender stereotype, it can even help create them. This kind of rhetoric can actually cause a change in society. In The Rhetorical Situation, Bitzer asserts, The rhetor alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes mediator of change (4). By dividing their intended audience in advertisements, Lego may actually be contributing to dividing boys from girls. Girls see these advertisements and can recognize through the rhetoric

Kingsley 7 that the normal Lego commercials are directed at boys, and the Lego Friends commercials are directed at them. In a sense, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since young girls see in the media that theyre supposed to like simply hanging out with friends, going to parties, and beauty salons, they actually begin to take on the identity. Young boys are affected by advertisements in a similar manner. Since they think theyre supposed to look and act extremely masculine, it creates an unyielding avoidance of anything feminine. Boys think theyre not allowed to like anything pink, care for other people, or even perform household tasks. Consequently, advertisements such as this can put boys and girls into their own separate little boxes, limiting the capabilities of both genders. Ultimately, the reason for Lego separating the audience into boys and girls is simply because they want to be able to sell separate products to make more money. They didnt create gender stereotypes, they simply use rhetoric to emphasize existing ones in society to achieve their end goal of selling more products. However, this rhetorical situation can create negative changes in young boys and girls because they are still in the process of forming identities. Therefore, we have to be conscious of what children are exposed to, and help them to achieve stimulating, fun, and desegregated play.

Kingsley 8 Works Cited Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric. 1st ed. Vol. 1. N.p.: Penn State UP, 1968. 1-14. Web. 01 Oct. 2012. Herrick, James A. "An Overview of Rhetoric." The History and Theory of Rhetoric. 2nd ed. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1-30. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. Taylor, T.L. "Where the Women Are." (E)dentity. 1st ed. Southlake: Fountainhead, 2011. 169. Print. The Lego Group. "LEGO City 2012 Forest Fire Commercial HD." YouTube. YouTube, 10 Jan. 2012. Web. 02 Oct. 2012. The Lego Group. "LEGO Dino 2012 Commercial HD." YouTube. YouTube, 15 Dec. 2011. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. The Lego Group. "Lego Friends 2012 - Welcome to Heartlake City Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 08 Jan. 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012. Wieners, Brad. "Lego Is For Girls." Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine. Bloomberg, 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.