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Comment by insickness | Hacker News Reader

> Lego has become more gender stratified

In this day and age, I would be surprised if the Lego Friends line, which was created with girls in mind, were marketed explicitly to girls. My guess is that the girls stratify themselves by what type of toys they are attracted to. There's evidence that the preference is biological:

Male monkeys prefer boys' toys https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-pr...

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That study doesn't show what most people think it does. Monkeys have no idea what a firetruck is, so how could a monkey have any preference towards it? The only thing they managed to show is that there is a flaw in the experiment. In a sense it is the ideal control question: do the monkeys distinguish based on something they cannot know? A more charitable reading which is mentioned is that male monkeys prefer hard shapes with wheels, but I doubt that is very relevant.

And yes, companies absolutely do market towards boys and girls. They don't write "for girls" on the box, but they consciously produce two product lines. Often it is one unisex line and one that is "forbidden for boys", i.e. it has pink and glitter and you would be teased as a boy of you bought it. This way, they can create artificial market separation and increase sales.

A monkey doesn't know what a firetruck is, nor is it influenced by cultural pressures, such as glitter and pink are for girls. The difference in gender preference is that the females prefer people, such as faces and social interaction and boys prefer objects such as trucks.

This preference was also shown in studies where female new born babies tend to look at faces more than male babies.

> I would be surprised if the Lego Friends line, which was created with girls in mind, were marketed explicitly to girls. My guess is that the girls stratify themselves by what type of toys they are attracted to.

Lego themselves talked about lego friends being meant for girls, publicly and loudly. Also, all characters are girls. The kids in ads for lego friends are all girls too. It could not have been more clear that it is for girls.

The other legos at that time and few years before were very very clearly for boys. They used colors used for boy toys. Toy stores are clearly separated to boy and girl section by color. They also used themes that literally any kid over 2 identify as boys.

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As side note, claim that they are less about building then other lego sets for same age brackets is untrue. I dont know why the article felt the need to claim the difference is character vs building.

Actual differences against other themes are colors, fight vs life, indoor vs outdoor, gender of characters.

All five characters of the Lego Friends line are female.

I have a boy and girl, I purposefully made the effort not to push them into gender specific things, but hell they still ended up pretty stratified. They even play minecraft differently!

I'm convinced there is a major biological underpining after watching these two grow up.

Really weird you just jump to "biology," as I assume your kids have access to media and at some point interacted with someone else other than you (children and adults).

I didn't learn gendered behavior or thoughts from my parents but I learned them from everyone else and society as a whole. I learned from a very, very young age that some of my interests were very much not acceptable for girls and I internalized a lot of it.

> They even play minecraft differently!

Pls explain

I think the point is capitalism gives people what they crave. Not necessarily what they need. But any alternative is unimaginable in individualized minds of modern people.

Oh, it does give them what they need, plus loads of other needs they didn't even know they had - and sometimes these other needs take priority regardless of whether that should be the case. I.e. they will sell you milk, which you likely need, but also all possible types of cheese and yogurt and cream, which you really don't but might actually end up consuming more than milk.

Cheese and yoghurt may be healthier than milk, because bacteria already processed the lactose in the milk.

I for one am glad that LEGO provides the girls series to get my daughter interested in building things with it.

The photograph of the girl building things with the universal bricks is just marketing, not a report from the 60ies. It does not imply that girls actually did that en masse.

Personally I remember building houses with Lego (so walls and a roof), but not much more. These days the Lego toys may actually be more fun.

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