Point-Counterpoint GoldieBlox

Point: Stop Using Stereotypes to Sell STEM to Girls

by Melissa Wardy, Co-Founder: BraveGirlsWant.com + Pigtail Pals/Ballcap Buddies

We all get it, we desperately need more girls involved in STEM at increasingly younger ages.

As they age, we need to keep them engaged there. We do a great disservice to them when we raise them solely on a diet of vapid princesses, beauty queens and sexualized fashionistas.

But when we use princess culture, pinkification, and beauty norms to sell STEM toys to girls and fool ourselves that we are amazing and progressive and raising an incredible generation of female engineers we continue to sell our girls short. It is the equivalent of covering broccoli in melted processed cheese and thinking we’ve very served a healthy meal.

Girls do not need the Pink Princess Hook to get them interested in building or engineering. They need to be handed building materials and the message, “Hey! You are a person with a brain and two hands. Go build, it is great fun!” Kids are naturally curious which makes them natural experimenters which makes them natural builders and creators. All of that comes organically. NO WHERE is the princess complex hardwired.

Stop believing the hype, “Well, if it gets girls building that is all I care about.” No. Just no. Have more faith in girls that they don’t need products dripping in the pink syrup and exhausted princess stories. Be brave enough to tell new, more daring stories. If you go there, the girls will come. They don’t need pink bread crumbs leading the way. Have the strength of your convictions.

I know it is a common belief at some very popular manufacturers of girls toys right now to use the princess hook as any means necessary to get girls building. I know the marketing around some of these companies has the Internet swooning and in love. I’m just not buying it. I know that to publicly deviate from this thinking may leave me unpopular. But that doesn’t make me wrong.

You cannot create a toy meant to break down stereotypes when you start off with the ideal that “we know all girls love princesses”. That is a stereotype. Not all girls love princesses. Many girls are limited to and even force fed princesses. Many families stay far away from the princess industry. Don’t confuse these two ideas.

This difference is a company that thinly veils mediocre building toys as girl empowerment while still using the same marketing tactics that we can’t stand – namely gender stereotypes and low expectations of girls. As you view this slick marketing, ask yourself if the toy is really that engaging and complex. Is the toy even capable of the engineering concepts being shown and celebrated? I know people will say, “But this is a step in the right direction and we should support it.” Yes, but at the same time, with all of the awareness that is out there, all of the studies and articles published, is it fair that we ask for giant leaps in place of smalls steps? Have we arrived at a time when we can expect more than scraps?

Do the ends justify the means?

For example, this Lego nightgown that has girls “Building Beauty”. Is there a pajama set for boys named “Building Handsome”? Of course there is not. When my daughter builds with her Legos, she builds ocean side villages and tidal waves, science labs, schools, office buildings, and hospitals. We don’t focus on beauty or princess pageants, we focus on brains. It would be nice if these engineering toys did, too.

I want all of you to soak this in. Print it out, push it up against your forehead, and soak. it. in.

“After grading finals yesterday, I put my finger on what was bugging me about the whole Goldie Blox argument of “But girls like princesses!” The prompt for the final was two questions: who am I and who do I want to be (referencing and reflecting on the literature we studied this term). Several of my students, who are bright, capable, talented young women, wrote about how they felt restricted or “less than” or “other” because of their looks, and how they didn’t want to or like to feel that way. They said that they felt like women’s accomplishments are tied in no inconsequential way to their appearances. One even wrote “It’s not enough for me to be a good athlete and a good student. Society says I should look beautiful, too, or I’m a failure.”

These girls grew up in the early stages of princess culture. They absorbed the message that their accomplishments don’t mean much unless they’re accompanied by a certain beauty standard. Another said “I’m afraid to draw attention to myself because of the blemishes on my face.” Another: “I know I should care more about who I am than what I look like, but I still think of achievement in terms of weight and appearance.”

Toys that emphasize girls’ appearances rather than their abilities, or that place appearance alongside ability, send toxic messages to the young women they become. It matters. And I don’t want my daughter — or anybody else’s daughter — to feel less than awesome or that she’s somehow a failure because her abilities aren’t paired with a perfectly made-up face or size zero figure or a boyfriend. I don’t want to read essays from my full-of-awesome students that break my heart with the baggage they’re carrying already about womanhood.” -PPBB Community Member Gina Caponi Parnaby

The messages we give our daughters in childhood matter. Make them healthy, empowering ones. And don’t settle for anything less.

CounterPoint: Focus on Macro vs Micro, Close the STEM Gender Gap

by Erin McNeill, Founder: Media Literacy Now; Marketing Media & Childhood

(see update, No. 4 item, below)

Inspiring Ad Using Rube Goldberg Machine

1. It’s inspiring. Marketing does have an effect on all of us, but especially children. There are many girls who are going to see this ad and be inspired to make cool stuff. Older girls will recognize themselves and their eyes will be opened to the tiny limiting box they’ve been shoved into by toy companies.

2. Normally, I don’t like it when the focus is on the message “girls can do that, too.” That perpetuates the idea that girls are limited in what they can do and need special attention. Show, don’t tell, as they say in writing class. I like to see media messages that simply show girls doing cool things without explicitly saying, “Look, it’s a girl doing this cool thing.”

HOWEVER, in this case, the message is different. There’s media literacy going on here – girls questioning the message they’ve been given. Girls have been buried in this message that they like pretty pink things, and everything else is for boys. This ad says explicitly “That is total and complete crap!” Well, pretty explicitly. And that’s what needs to be said.

3. I’m seeing some tweets coming over the wire suggesting that it was somehow wrong to hire a man to build the cool thing in the ad or produce the video. Every woman-owned business that is working to provide more choice to girls is also supposed to hire only women to produce their advertising? That’s not reasonable. Should they also refuse to hire men, ever, at this company? Does reverse discrimination further the cause of equality and help lead to the demise of patriarchy? Um, no. It’s an absurd complaint.

And obviously, the children didn’t build the Rube Goldberg device. Again, let’s apply some media literacy here. This is an advertisement. The children don’t build the cool sets in the violent ads targeted at boys, either. So if the kids didn’t build it themselves, does it matter if an adult man or adult woman built it? This man happens to build these things, it makes for a fun engaging ad, which will work to get the message across, he’s the one to hire.

Besides, it turns out, according to GoldieBlox on Twitter, that “the design and implementation team was a 50/50 gender split.”

From @ZeebraFadem on Twitter, here’s the takeaway:

So, imagine that this ad plays during the Superbowl. Picture so many people seeing a new message in a place where so frequently the messages serve to stereotype, sexualize, and demean women and girls. What kind of change could that bring?

You can vote for this ad to get a free spot in the Superbowl, thanks to Intuit.

4. Update: Some of my friends in cyberspace point out that despite the ad, the toy behind it is still pandering to princess culture!

Here’s Rebecca Hains:

But there’s one problem: the new GoldieBlox toy that this ad promotes, which appears on screen for only a few seconds, is actually princess-themed…So GoldieBlox is having it both ways: appealing to parents with anti-princess rhetoric and then, in stores, selling girls on a princess-themed toy.

She believes to get picked up by major retailers, the product has to conform to the dominant princess culture.

Sigh. If that doesn’t prove that “princess” is the dominant marketing force in girl culture, I don’t know what does.

That’s too bad, because I think the advertisement itself works to inspire girls and parents to seek out more invigorating, imagination-promoting toys for the coming holiday season.