This Is Fabulous – Lego Women of The Supreme Court

PFSK report…. (Apologies that some of the images are cut off – wordpress issue) Looking forward to famous feminists of the 20th century series.

LEGO Women of the Supreme Court

http://www.psfk.com/2015/03/lego-legal-justice-league-lego-supreme-court-women-maia-weinstock.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=Daily%202015-03-13&post_count=11

Fans of LEGO blocks and the long arm of equality rejoice: the U.S.’s highest toy court is now in session

scotus-women-lego-legal-justice-league-weinstock-04Attention all constitutional violaters under two inches high: better get lost under the sofa with the dust bunnies, because an all-female force of LEGO supreme court justices has arrived.

 

 

With over a century of experience and expertise (and likely over 600 IQ points) in their shared arsenal, the LEGO-rific Legal Justice League comprises Justice O, Justice G, Justice S, and Justice K (or Their Honors Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan), and is ready to rule.

The team comes from multi-talented science and children’s media whiz Maia Weinstock, who works (among other things) to promote women and girls in the fields of science, tech, and information. Her previous work with LEGO included the creation of a small army of STEM-related doppelgangers, each representing one of sixty-five current or historical figures in science (one’s TED talk is even immortalized in a LEGO-fied stop-motion video).

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As Weinstock told PSFK, it was while developing this project that she “first started noticing the gender imbalance in LEGO minifigures.” She explained,

I had noticed, for example, that there were an incredible number of minifigure head designs with beards while there were relatively few female designs.

 

In 2012 I decided to quantify this by creating an infographic of gender in LEGO heads.

Through various creative projects and articles, Weinstock has stressed the importance of offering girls a rich variety of toys and activities — not just ones invoking the color pink. As a kid, she enjoyed a “combination of toy types,” including Transformers, Cabbage Patch Kids, LEGO, Construx, My Little Pony’s, and Voltron. She noted,

My parents definitely helped shaped my views about gender stereotypes growing up; for example, I wasn’t allowed to watch the Flintstones, which featured women in very traditional roles; I remember being told that expecting a prince to save you like in Sleeping Beauty or Snow White wasn’t realistic; nor did they buy me any Barbie dolls, the body proportions of which are drastically skewed compared with healthy women’s.

Recently, a growing number of women (representing a wide range of career paths and achievement between them) have been pushing for better female representation in LEGO and other toys; one result of this push was the twice-sold out Research Institute play set, featuring female scientists—one of many pro-girl LEGO ideas receiving support on the company’s Ideas page.

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Weinstock explained to Makers that the League of Justice set furthers this aim by demonstrating how women’s accomplishments can (and should) be integrated into today’s playthings for the good of tomorrow’s adults: “All of these women are trailblazers who should be celebrated—not only by adults but by kids just learning about civics and government.”