Blogarithm

I like having feminism. It brings a different mood to the Hero team. And if I'm not mistaken, feminine characteristics are programed into the AI of the robots, no? Besides, it gives the sisters in the family a character to play with. Because to them, they all look male. If this one is supposed to be female, I guess that one they'll play with.

 

Night Fury

My theory:

 

Lego doesn't have any good female set designers. Either that, or said female set designers aren't as active as the male set designers.

Also remember that we had some fairly nice female sets IMHO. Gali Mata and Nokama Metru come to mind.

E: Also, having all guys might appear sexist against females.

 

Night Fury

I don't see anything wrong with it.

Well, it would be kind of hard to have a good character if they were treated as just robots. That kind of makes giving them more of a personality sort of awkward.

 

There's not much wrong that TLG does by including genders, it's just the fan response to character feminism that was be a little, shall I say, creepy at times.

The reason there are female sets is because there, well, are females in the world. It's really as simple as that. Even in a toy line targeted at boys, where they're going to relate most easily to male characters (usually), if you want the world you're creating to be in any way believable, then you're gonna have to include females in it.

 

I would also say that the problem isn't that Lego makes its female sets more masculine than the males (generally), but rather that they almost never differentiate between the two. There was nothing making, say, Gali Mistika more or less masculine than Tahu Mistika; the two had the same build in just about every way. The same could be said of Toa Nokama or Gali Nuva or Hahli Inika – they just had the same build as the rest of their group.

 

The problem with these female sets is that the default proportions for most Bionicle/Hero Factory sets are masculine. In the way of human proportions, most adult males have shoulders wider than their hips, whereas most adult females have shoulders and hips of nearly the same width. The vast, vast majority of Bionicle sets have had shoulders wider than the hips, and once we got to the Inika and beyond, the shoulders were waaaay wider than the hips – so, exaggerated masculine proportions. The only set we've ever gotten with realistic feminine proportions was Kiina with her narrow shoulders.

 

And then Breez and her 2.0 form follow the same pattern. So, though I see what you're saying, I don't think it holds water – it's not that Lego is making their female sets more masculine in order to appeal to their target audience, it's that Lego isn't bothering to differentiate between male and female as far as set design goes.

 

As I said before, the main characters need gender to be relatable. If they were all just referred to as "it," we humans wouldn't feel much connection to them. And if you then gave the heroes all male names, and called them all "he," then one, the absense of females would be notable, and two, it would – as Night Fury pointed out – be incredibly sexist.

 

 

edit: also, guys, just a pointer – the word "feminism" refers to the school of thought that women deserve equal rights and treatment as men. I'm at a loss for a single word to mean "the state of being female" except maybe to say "femaleness" – but not feminism.

The reason there are female sets is because there, well, are females in the world. It's really as simple as that. Even in a toy line targeted at boys, where they're going to relate most easily to male characters (usually), if you want the world you're creating to be in any way believable, then you're gonna have to include females in it.

 

I would also say that the problem isn't that Lego makes its female sets more masculine than the males (generally), but rather that they almost never differentiate between the two. There was nothing making, say, Gali Mistika more or less masculine than Tahu Mistika; the two had the same build in just about every way. The same could be said of Toa Nokama or Gali Nuva or Hahli Inika – they just had the same build as the rest of their group.

 

The problem with these female sets is that the default proportions for most Bionicle/Hero Factory sets are masculine. In the way of human proportions, most adult males have shoulders wider than their hips, whereas most adult females have shoulders and hips of nearly the same width. The vast, vast majority of Bionicle sets have had shoulders wider than the hips, and once we got to the Inika and beyond, the shoulders were waaaay wider than the hips – so, exaggerated masculine proportions. The only set we've ever gotten with realistic feminine proportions was Kiina with her narrow shoulders.

 

And then Breez and her 2.0 form follow the same pattern. So, though I see what you're saying, I don't think it holds water – it's not that Lego is making their female sets more masculine in order to appeal to their target audience, it's that Lego isn't bothering to differentiate between male and female as far as set design goes.

 

As I said before, the main characters need gender to be relatable. If they were all just referred to as "it," we humans wouldn't feel much connection to them. And if you then gave the heroes all male names, and called them all "he," then one, the absense of females would be notable, and two, it would – as Night Fury pointed out – be incredibly sexist.

 

 

edit: also, guys, just a pointer – the word "feminism" refers to the school of thought that women deserve equal rights and treatment as men. I'm at a loss for a single word to mean "the state of being female" except maybe to say "femaleness" – but not feminism.

I was going to say something like this, but ToM said it so much more gorgeously and smarter...ly.

 

<3

 

On another note, Lego is definitely making up for that with the female minifigs. Quite a bit too much, in fact; they have to be completely sure we´re not in doubt about a minifig´s gender.

 

~MOSM~

I don't think LEGO is trying to not look sexist. (After all, if your target audience is 9-12 year old boys, what makes you think 9-12 year old boys would care if there were no girls. They're the same people that put "No Girls Allowed" signs on their treehouses and stuff. Although the 12 year olds probably start becoming a little less antagonistic to girls at that age.) LEGO may simply be throwing in a girl for the sake of attracting a small female group, or it may just be that they wanted a female character in the story, and decided to slap that name and personality onto the green set.

 

Really, it's not that big of a deal. HF puts sets above story anyway, so perhaps the set designers didn't know the story before they designed the 2.0 heroes, which may explain the masculine appearance of Breez 2.0. Either way, it's a toy line targeted towards boys who consider girls to be annoying and weird for liking Barbie toys and the color pink. There are exceptions to that little girl stereotype, but I doubt many 9-12 year old boys care. My idea is that LEGO simply didn't tell the set designers the story. They just had them build and then slapped some names onto them. And since Breez is green, the green set was assigned the name of Breez 2.0.

Also, if there were characters with distinctly feminine figures, we'd have the whole are-toys-setting-unrealistic-expectations argument on our hands. Nobody seems to care if the male robots have big mechanical muscles, but methinks if the female robots had more curves then there would be some argument from someone.

 

Besides that, it would mean the production of new pieces. If a girl Hero could be built on a guy Hero frame, they'd already be making them that way. But I doubt it's worth it to make a new frame and armor for one character. They could separate the team in half so the pieces get distributed pretty well, I guess, but then they're risking more because of the target-audience-mainly-dislikes-girls thing.

 

 

 

 

 

All that said, though, if LEGO was marketing solely to BZPower, there would probably be just as many female sets as males and you would be able to tell by looking at them. We don't seem to have a problem with it as a whole, and in fact are in favor of it.

 

Personally I think the Heroes should have had gender-neutral names like Flametron and Boombox. Because the names are just to make them seem less robotic/intimidating/cold/whatever, no? Make them Transformers. XP

Um ... wow. Really wasn't expecting large walls of text but your comments are very much appreciated.

 

The thing is, LEGO isn't going to make the male-female ratio exactly like it is with humans here on Earth. Last time I checked, it was a 1-to-1 ratio, while in the line of buildable figures it stands at about 5-to-1 - even less so if one takes a look at 2006 on up, when not all the blue sets were feminine.

 

I do wish very much so that, eventually, LEGO will start making decent female sets. I don't mean breasts, per se, but at least get the shoulders-hips ratio down and maybe some more feminine masks.

 

I still consider the masks that can be male or female to be the best (read: 2001 is awesome for another reason).

Aw darn, I would have said something like what others have said. And not as well. Anyways, yeah. What ToM said. XD Also, Bitter Cold has a good point, some parents would probably complain if they made them more feminine.

Um ... wow. Really wasn't expecting large walls of text but your comments are very much appreciated.

Heh, yeah, sorry about the huge wall of text. It's just that this is kind of a big question. There are entire fields of study devoted to the question of what gender is and how society deals with it, so it's a little difficult to summarize that in a comment on a blog entry, see.

 

And yeah. I wish Lego would actually make the gender ratios equal, but I realize that's never going to happen as long as their target audience remains boys. I'd like a 2-4 ratio if not actual equal numbers, but there are times when I'd really just be happy if we'd consistently get at least one female per team, you know?

And yeah. I wish Lego would actually make the gender ratios equal, but I realize that's never going to happen as long as their target audience remains boys.

Especially during the years of Bionicle, when names did not give away gender at all, I don't see why Lego couldn't have sold several female sets with gender neutral names that looked exactly like the males. It would have made no difference in the set sales, and would have been so much better.

 

~B~

In the way of human proportions, most adult males have shoulders wider than their hips, whereas most adult females have shoulders and hips of nearly the same width.

Probably isn't a good thing my proportions fall into the latter category.