Dear readers:
My blog is new and improved! Thank you to many of my readers, who nudged
me in multiple ways to continue writing for you and for me. Many of you asked
me for my previous posts on Executive + Mom. Some of you continued to nudge me for my opinion on this
and that, and some other thing, related to being a working mom, being a complex
woman, and raising children in this interesting world. And
finally, the viral marketing video for
Goldie Blox, got me out of my retreating
stupor, because I got stuff to say. You knew it. I now know it. I am back. I relaunched the blog as DEEPER because I wish to go deeper into a variety of topics. I will still write about what it means to be a woman, a mother, a working mom, but I have a few other topics...you'll see!
Yesterday, my Facebook feed was teeming with this
video: a truly fantastic marketing
effort with a clear message – we are girls, we want to play with building toys
that are not pink. Got it. But then, Goldie Blox proposes that my girl play
with their “specially-designed for girls” construction toy. I looked at the
toy, and I got this intense feeling, right in the center of my gut, which goes
along with a face in which my mouth pouts forward, its sides fall down and my
forehead contracts into a series of significant lines that announce the time
for Botox might finally have come. This is not a good feeling. It is the
feeling that my female spirit has been crushed in some way I couldn't quite yet verbalize...the toy just seemed simple and dumbed down compared to what I have seen in my 10 years of parenting a boy.
The Eureka moment was facilitated by guess who?
My 6-year old daughter. After work, homework
and dinner, we sat on the rug to play, just like we do most evenings. Today, she
picked up the Sky Rail, a well-reviewed, time-tested, marble-run building toy
for boys, which belongs (or belonged) to her 10-year old brother (he has moved
on to programming robots). We know that this toy is decidedly for boys because the
box features two boys, wearing all-time boy colors of blue and light blue,
smiling proud at the loopy, ingenious rollercoaster that certainly provided
hours of creative discovery for them, and will likely serve as a building
ground for understanding of physics, construction, material sciences, innovation,
leadership and teamwork. It is a freaking boy toy. Look at the box.
But my decidedly female daughter, with long hair and female
body parts, opened the box to the boy toy, put it in the center of the rug and
began building with the boy toy. She successfully clicked the boy pieces
together, and after several trial-and-error attempts, she calculated
the height of the boy suspension bridges needed to support the boy toy marble
run. She took a boy toy marble, and gave it a good-girl try. The boy toy marble
traveled through half of her boy toy structure and then abruptly flew off the
rail. She made building adjustments, adding a few additional boy toy rail
pieces, and tried again. The boy toy marble went for a second run and this time
traveled all the way through the sky rail, landing perfectly into her pink jewelry box!!! She was victorious. She was delighted.
And that is when it hit me!
Goldie Blox is treating my girl
like she has a disability: SHE IS A GIRL.
See, by being born a girl, my daughter does not possess a
special disability that prevents her from playing with regular or boy toys. But
Goldie Blox seems to be telling my girl that she is too girl to play
with the myriad of award-winning (boy) toys in the market (favorites: LEGO,
Mindstorm, Quercetti Rails, ThinkFun, Chess, Battleship, Blokus).
Picture this ridiculousness in the real world, in the other
myriad of decisions we make each day:
-
Ridiculousness #1: Instead of regular (or
advanced) math classes like my son, my girl will now attend special math classes for
girls
-
Ridiculousness #2: Instead of learning HTML like
my son, my girl will now learn a special programming language designed for
girls
- Ridiculousness #3: Instead of pursuing a
Computer Science degree at college like my son might, my daughter will now earn
a Computer Science for Girls degree
-
Ridiculousness #4: Instead of being the CEO of a
company like my son might be, my daughter will be the Girl CEO of a company
You see? Goldie Blox is telling me that my
normally-developing girl needs special accommodation.
ACCOMMODATE ME: I AM A GIRL!
Let’s go further. After a girl who does not require accommodation
is accommodated one too many times in her early life, that girl may begin to expect to be
entitled to such accommodations for the REST of HER LIFE. If a girl has special accommodations for being
a girl in play, might she not also expect them in school and work? Then, we are
setting her up to fail.
I understand the need to sometimes separate male and
females, as it happens in most sports. I get it. But I cannot ever support this
segregation in play, academics, or work. The path to success for our girls, in
my opinion, is in INTEGRATING GIRLS INTO THE ALREADY EXISTING WORLD which may be, in some fields like the
one in which I
work, CURRENTLY (but not forever) dominated by men.
I don't yet have big answers on how to integrate women into male-dominated fields, but this is what I am doing for my daughter:
- Equal exposure at an early age to math, science, coding, chess. Anything her brother got, she gets.
- Equal rewards for milestones. We don't dumb it down or water it down for her.
- Reinforce her ability to pursue what interests her, which will differ from her brother
- Encourage mastery of skills and hard work
- Encourage innovation
- Ensure brother can act as role model and guide, and discourage put-downs for being a girl.
And, yes, her closet still looks like a pink explosion, but there is occasional green, orange and blue in the mix!
So, Goldie Blox: Great marketing. Congratulations. A really good try. We don't want pink toys, and we want girl engineers. But let's use your talents to integrate girls into the already existing world. Don't dumb it down. Don't water it down. I want you to succeed.
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