Letter to Lego: “Why you still have sausage party?”

[Emailed to Lego on 5/2/2012 since they have a charlimit on their comment form]

Hey guys,

I’m a woman who has been a Lego fan since I was a little girl. I loved cars, and I loved hotel rooms, and I made the coolest spaceships and space stations from the random Lego sets my parents bought me. My style was “Airstream meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, plus Holiday Inn” (because, c’mon, every space cruiser needs a pool!). It was super fun building vehicles for imaginary adventures. Luckily, I still create stuff as an adult even though they aren’t space Winnebagos.

I gotta say though… I have yet to see one girl represented in your “Cool Creations” shout-out spread where you feature works by kids.

Granted, I may have overlooked some issues, but this kind of layout is typical.

And yet, your advertisements for your Legolands have a pretty fair split between the sexes.

What gives? It’s 2012 already, and we should be beyond this gender-skewed thing.

I’m guessing it’s one of two things. Either you’ve got a photo editor who favors boys’ creations, or you’re just not getting enough girls to submit the stuff they’ve made. If it’s the latter… that’s kind of disturbing, and I’m perplexed why you haven’t addressed it.

I love what your company represents–creativity, architecture, engineering, “building worlds” all that. But as I flipped through my last issue, I did notice it’s emphasis on superheros and cartoon drama. While that’s necessarily not a bad thing, you’ve created the heros as males, and since the viewer is supposed to identify with the protagonist, you might be turning off girls who “can’t see themselves” in that situation.

Don’t you think girls should be welcomed into fields of engineering and creating? It might be a bigger question that you as a company can simply answer and solve, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on these issues.

Thanks for your time,
Liz McLean Knight

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizmcleanknight
http://www.lizrevision.com
http://www.quantazelle.com