Old Man Weldon - pauljay: Legos have been getting a lot of flak...

3rd January 2012

Photo reblogged from Paul Jay Comma Comic

pauljay:

Legos have been getting a lot of flak for sexism lately, what with their introduction of a new girl-focused “Friends” line with skinny little girl figures instead of the squared-off nearly-genderless traditional minifigures.
Honestly, Friends doesn’t bother me all that much - you can still take the sets apart and make whatever you want with them, it’s not like you’re buying a one-piece non-disassemblable beauty parlor - but at least there is more than one female character to choose from. On the other hand, the new Superheroes line only has one female hero, and it’s Wonder Woman, and in all the art for her set, she’s getting rescued.
And that’s fine; superheroes need help sometimes just like everybody else. Where I’m afraid the sexism comes in is the fact that she’s getting rescued by Superman from what is clearly a kryptonite-powered robot. If anyone needs rescuing from anything in this scenario, it’s Superman, from his one and only weakness. Wonder Woman should be the star of this set, punching and lassoing her way to victory, while Superman slowly expires of interstellar radiation sickness in the glowing green claws of Luthor’s death machine. Instead, because she’s a girl, the whole of DC Comics continuity gets reordered so she can flop helplessly around and let Superman save the day.
Bullshit, I say. If they wanted to make a set where Wonder Woman needed to be rescued, they should have built a bank vault with her locked inside, tied hand and foot and breast and thigh, with a cute little Lego ball-gag in her mouth, just like her original comic writers and artists would have wanted.

Legos have been getting a lot of flak for sexism lately, what with their introduction of a new girl-focused “Friends” line with skinny little girl figures instead of the squared-off nearly-genderless traditional minifigures.

Honestly, Friends doesn’t bother me all that much - you can still take the sets apart and make whatever you want with them, it’s not like you’re buying a one-piece non-disassemblable beauty parlor - but at least there is more than one female character to choose from. On the other hand, the new Superheroes line only has one female hero, and it’s Wonder Woman, and in all the art for her set, she’s getting rescued.

And that’s fine; superheroes need help sometimes just like everybody else. Where I’m afraid the sexism comes in is the fact that she’s getting rescued by Superman from what is clearly a kryptonite-powered robot. If anyone needs rescuing from anything in this scenario, it’s Superman, from his one and only weakness. Wonder Woman should be the star of this set, punching and lassoing her way to victory, while Superman slowly expires of interstellar radiation sickness in the glowing green claws of Luthor’s death machine. Instead, because she’s a girl, the whole of DC Comics continuity gets reordered so she can flop helplessly around and let Superman save the day.

Bullshit, I say. If they wanted to make a set where Wonder Woman needed to be rescued, they should have built a bank vault with her locked inside, tied hand and foot and breast and thigh, with a cute little Lego ball-gag in her mouth, just like her original comic writers and artists would have wanted.

Source: pauljay