![]() Outside in the side alley there is a typical colorful drink vending machine that you see everywhere in Japan. To order Ramen, Sushi or other dishes, they provide a ticket machine called a Otsuri. Once inside, the patrons can choose between eating upstairs or downstairs. Elements of architecture and elegance include Japanese style-windows, lanterns, tile roof, cherry tree, bamboo, and a wood bridge over a pond that spans the front of the building. Maybe, in other words, there’s more than a grain of truth in the gender stereotypes.Īnd parents, if your daughter wants to make herself a fort or a skyscraper out of regular Lego bricks, there’s no law preventing you from crossing the aisle in the toy store to satisfy her desires.Ĭharlotte Allen writes frequently about feminism, politics and religion.The Japanese Restaurant was inspired by my trip to Kyoto, Japan in 2018. ![]() Maybe little girls actually like the colors pink and purple, and they actually like pretend-home decoration and pretend-mothering of baby animals.Īnd boys - maybe they’re more interested in building vast mechanical and architectural projects with their Lego bricks because, as neuroscience has demonstrated, their brains are different and they, as a group, have superior spatial skills, whereas girls tend to gravitate toward interpersonal connections and stories. ![]() But here are some thoughts: Maybe Lego stopped running those 1981-style ads featuring girls in rumpled blue jeans because the ads didn’t sell many conventional Legos to either sex. Lego can’t win for losing with the gender-neutral crowd, it would seem. In the name of breaking down “gender stereotypes,” he urged parents to buy girlie Friends sets for their sons, and he urged those same sons to write letters to Lego protesting the dearth of female mini-figures in the regular Lego sets. “I must make him aware of this subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) re-enforcement of gender roles,” Diaz de Leon wrote. Against Sexual Assault, Emiliano Diaz de Leon complained that his son’s Lego City sets contained nearly 100% male mini-figures: policemen, firefighters, city workers and the like. 7 post on Speaking Out, the blog of the Texas Assn. It contributed to me becoming a physician and inspired me to want to help others achieve health and wellness.”įurthermore, even those supposedly nonsexist regular Lego sets have come in for attack from the gender-neutral crowd. “I know that how I played as a girl shaped who I am today. That sent the ad viral again, this time with its original model beating the gender-neutral drum: “Gender segmenting toys interferes with a child’s own creative expression,” she scolded. The anti-Friends people posted and reposted the ad, demanding that Lego resume its gender-neutral marketing campaign of 30-plus years ago.Ī few weeks ago, a blogger found and interviewed the model for that ad, Rachel Giordano, now 37 and an alternative-medicine doctor in Seattle. Not long after the Friends line came out, its critics uncovered a 1981 magazine ad for regular Legos that featured a Lego-loving redheaded girl in pigtails and scruffy overalls. Carolyn Costin, an eating-disorders specialist in Malibu, told Time magazine that the Friends line “promotes damaging gender stereotypes and limits creativity and healthy role development.” ![]() A online petition was launched calling on Lego to stop selling the “body dissatisfaction”-promoting Friends line. They’re the people, in case you’ve escaped their preaching, who insist that segregating toys into “boys” and “girls” categories - even if, as with Legos, the toys aren’t labeled as such and the segregation is strictly de facto - sends a message to girls that they can’t do certain jobs, discourages them from studying science, technology and engineering, and perpetuates stereotypes of women as wives, mothers and homemakers.īut the gender-neutral people went ballistic, and they’ve been that way ever since. And now, the company’s attempt to address the disparity has outraged the sizable “gender-neutral toys” contingent. Certainly some girls enjoy making castles or skyscrapers out of the bricks, just like their brothers, but in 2011, Lego’s market research boys found that 90% of Lego users were boys. 1 at the box office for three straight weeks?īut here’s Lego’s problem: The main market for the $4 billion company’s traditional plastic bricks and mini-figures is boys. I know what you’re thinking: How could anyone have a beef with those colorful, plastic toy bricks with which you can build cities, stage your own Bible stories or reenact the Trojan War, the Civil War or Star Wars? And hasn’t “The Lego Movie” been No.
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