Aren’t there rules about inciting violence on BoingBoing?
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Oops. Is this how we get ants?
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http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/magazine/lego-is-for-girls-12142011.html
Lego won’t say how much it spent on its anthropology, but research went on for months and shattered many of the assumptions that had led the company astray. You could say a worn-out sneaker saved Lego. “We asked an 11-year-old German boy, ‘what is your favorite possession?’ And he pointed to his shoes. But it wasn’t the brand of shoe that made them special,” says Holm, who heads up the Lego Concept Lab, its internal skunkworks. “When we asked him why these were so important to him, he showed us how they were worn on the side and bottom, and explained that his friends could tell from how they were worn down that he had mastered a certain style of riding, even a specific trick.”
The skate maneuvers had taken hours and hours to perfect, defying the consensus that modern kids don’t have the attention span to stick with painstaking challenges, especially during playtime. To compete with the plug-and-play quality of computer games, Lego had been dumbing down its building sets, aiming for faster “builds” and instant gratification. From the German skateboarder onward, Lego saw it had drawn the wrong lessons from computer games. Instead of focusing on their immediacy, the company now noticed how kids responded to the scoring, ranking, and levels of play—opportunities to demonstrate mastery.
…
Encouraged by what it had learned about boys, Lego sent its team back out to scrutinize girls, starting in 2007. The company was surprised to learn that in their eyes, Lego suffered from an aesthetic deficit. “The greatest concern for girls really was beauty,” says Hanne Groth, Lego’s market research manager. Beauty, on the face of it, is an unsurprising virtue for a girl-friendly toy, but based on the ways girls played, Groth says, it came, as “mastery” had for boys, to stand for fairly specific needs: harmony (a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order); friendlier colors; and a high level of detail.
So, there, you have it. Lego is indulging the competitive pursuit of beauty.
This “Beauty Tips for Girls” is further indication of the necessity for a 3D-printed Astroturf-roots Brick-liberation movement. Le’go my Lego, LEGO!
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Dunno, I find it funny precisely because it’s hostile. Looks like Lego Magazine’s become even less relevant over the years.
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I see. And what would you print?
I don’t remebmer ever subscribing. Sample issues, for your pleasure
http://catalogs.lego.com/Club/us/2014/redbrickNovember/ (lego club)
http://catalogs.lego.com/Club/us/2014/yellowbrickNovember/ (friends insert)
http://catalogs.lego.com/Club/us/2014/greenbrickNovember/ (junior lego club)
I wonder if the highly desirable ‘oval’ face becomes a loser ‘round’ one if the person gains enough weight?
Seriously, is it me or is this whole ‘face shape’ business highly dubious to start with? I’m sure there are plenty of end-of-bell-curve people with perfectly pointy features or whatever, but the vast majority of heads I see outside those exaggerated-stereotype diagrams are kind of not obviously geometric.
For reference, this is the text-- minus the bit about Emma.
The term “competition” would seem to imply actual goals or standards which could be said used to evaluate something. I think that “beauty” or any other simply aesthetic criterion doesn’t offer this, since it’s all subjective.
How about “Le’go my EGO”?
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I had a free (paper!) subscription when I was much younger. I remember the magazines being mostly terrible, but they had photos in the back of cool stuff other kids had built. I guess it’s all beauty tips nowadays?
There’s a preposterous excuse for journalism/editorial! The entire thing is based upon shrill conjecture of what the shirt supposedly signifies, and singles out Cumberbatch for no apparent reason. “let’s be honest about this”, indeed!
Read the sample issues and decide for yourself. Though there’s a significant online component, and I really don’t want to explore the interesting ramifications that come from pretending to be a female more than thirty years my junior on an online forum
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Why do you think oval faces are more desirable than round ones? Nothing in Lego’s text would seem to suggest that.
It’s conservative journalism. Topicality is merely the hook for the rant.
The quote from the original article implies oval is being presented as ‘best’, doesn’t it? Because “almost everything looks great on this face shape!” I guess? I wouldn’t know.
Lego Friends, according to the Lego website, is meant for children ages 5 to 12. Children far too young to be told by the oval-faced (of course) Lego “Friend” Emma that little girls with square faces need a haircut to “soften the edges of your face” while the unfortunate long-faced girls — remember, ages 5 to 12 — can get a haircut to “help your face appear slightly shorter.”
I put my hair syling needs in the capable hands of my hair stylist, so I wouldn’t know. once I take my glasses off, I’m too blind to give feedback. The same goes for choosing eyeglass frames…
I always try to hold up my old glasses between me and the mirror to try to get some idea what the sample frames actually look like on me. It’s not very effective.
Going to a new hairdresser though always makes me feel crazy vunerable, trusting that whatever is going on with the vague blobs in the mirror is going to be ok.
Children far too young to be told by the oval-faced (of course) Lego “Friend” Emma that little girls with square faces need a haircut to “soften the edges of your face”
Actually…
to soften the edges of your face, short curly bobs or long straight hair make pretty square faces even prettier
So clearly a misquote.
while the unfortunate long-faced girls — remember, ages 5 to 12 — can get a haircut to “help your face appear slightly shorter.”
And actually
If you want a long style, curls and waves help your face appear shorter. "Blunt bangs, side swept bangs and choppy layers will also look cute.
I’m assuming, of course, that long hair looks longer if it’s contrasted against a shorter (appearing) face.
