Pink Legos

(That's Lego bricks to you, if you're outside North America. We say Legos, you say Lego bricks.) 

I was helping with vision screening in a new school, and I’m not sure what I did differently that morning, but I had more than a few of the elementary student girls say to me, “You’re pretty.” It was a nice compliment, but now that I have a daughter of my own, I think about these things more...Why is a second grader so concerned with how I look?… Which brings me to the topic of pink Legos.

Pink Legos are not the kind of thing that I pictured myself taking issue with before I had my daughter. But when she received a Christmas package containing pink Legos, I felt it was my motherly duty to intercept and exchange them for the “regular” kind. For those that don’t know, Legos apparently come in two different kinds now – the mostly green/red/blue/yellow set you’re used to, and a pink set marketed for girls with pink/purple blocks. First I thought I time-traveled back to the 1950’s, but no, pink Legos are a thing because, you know, girls need separate building toys. What?! I can sort of understand it when, say, a 7 year old whose favorite color is pink picks out the pink Lego set. Cool, she’s building stuff. But to give only pink things to a 1 year old just because she is a girl, I can’t stomach it, and would rather risk offending a gift giver than suggest to my daughter that she can only have pink things because she’s a girl. (She’s a girl whose favorite color happens to be blue right now, by the way: blue socks, blue pants, blue blankets.)

The toy I found more offensive than Pink Legos though, was given to her for her first birthday: a Fisher Price mirror set with makeup brushes. Because that is what a 12 month old needs, right? WRONG. I won’t even link the toy here because I am grossed out by the positive reviews on it.

A couple of link-worthy articles on the subject:

•  Let toys be toys.
• What the Research Says: Gender-Typed Toys.:  “I am not sure how surprising this is to me but it might be to parents: Moderately masculine toys encourage children's physical, cognitive, academic, musical, and artistic skills more so than moderately feminine ones."
• The Princess Industrial Complex.  

Target has its problems, but even they are inching toward neutrality, by fixing their toy aisles and making some pretty cool kid bedding. (Kid bedding. Not boy bedding or girl bedding.)

My daughter turns 2 (TWO!) next week, and if there’s one thing I want to do for her, it’s to teach her she’s more than just a pretty face.