"Don't Underestimate The Importance of Body Language"

Y'all know how I feel about Target.

So when my husband asked me if I wanted to get out of the house for a bit and take our daughter on a Target run with my mom while he watched the newborn, I jumped at the chance. (And I don't care how #basicwhitegirl it makes me if I love walking around Target with my Starbucks macchiato. Or #suburbanmom. Or both.)

And I'll admit that one of the reasons I love going to Target -- and there are many -- is that there is always so. much. Disney. stuff. Disney is a marketing genius, and this extends to their ability to merchandize everything and anything.

In our house, we're a sucker for Disney Legos -- if only because Legos are my husband's Kryptonite. Combine them with Disney? There's no hope for us.

So as we're walking down the toy aisles, I noticed this set, "Ariel and the Magic Spell":

Nothing special -- I was actually more interested in the Moana sets on the shelf below -- but it struck me that this was kind of a "dark" scene for Disney to make a Lego set out of. (Aside from the fact that it's the scene with one of the greatest Disney songs, ever.) It would be having a Snow White set with the old crone and the apple or a Sleeping Beauty set with Maleficent and the spinning wheel. 

And then I took a closer look at Ursula:

I'm not one to judge but...if Ursula weren't an animated cartoon character, she'd probably have serious grounds for a misrepresentation/overly Photoshopped lawsuit. She is, IMHO, surprisingly slender, given her original appearance. I mean, yeah. Maybe I'm reading too much into the design of a tiny Lego toy, but still. Part of Ursula's design -- and her appearance did evolve; in early concept art she was based on eels/manta rays/lion fish rather than her now-iconic squidlike similarities -- is her corpulence. The late 80s/early 90s was also the time for heroin chic in fashion, so it (unfortunately) makes sense that the heroine would be impossibly thin and the villainess would be the opposite. (Compared to, for instance, rail-thin Cruella De Vil in the 1960s.)

Again, I don't think Disney or Lego is making a statement about female body image through Lego characters...I just think it's really interesting that Ursula is so much slimmer -- and that she's even in a toy set at all. Just scrolling through the first few pages of the Disney Legos on Target's website, the closest thing to a villain in the other sets -- excluding the Star Wars ones because they make villains cool -- is Marshmallow from Frozen, and even then, he's not the uber-villain of the movie.

Disney + Toys + Gender = Newsworthy

So, gender + toys has been an interesting discussion of late. Ever since Target decided to remove gender-specific signs in their toy section (which is much less controversial than it actually sounds -- all they did was remove "Boys Toys" and "Girls Toys" from the end of the aisle and the backs of the walls; "girl" toys are all still lumped together in a giant explosion of pink and purple), toys and merchandise have kinda been a hot button issue.

No surprise, given that we're a consumerist society.

But what is a surprise -- at least to Star Wars fans -- was the lack of Rey merchandise in stores following the release of the film. Like, people were pissed. (Which is oddly reminiscent of the situation 2 years ago, when Frozen came out. There was a surprising lack of Frozen themed merchandise, and parents went crazy on the Internet complaining to Disney.)

And then this story popped up in my NewsFeed the other day:

Whoops.

Now, obviously, one Internet story does not mean that there is any truth to this whatsoever. After all, the article reports that it was an "inside source" who only told the story after being guaranteed anonymity. 

Surprising? Definitely not. If I was revealing scandalous, controversial information about Disney, I'd want anonymity too. 

But automatically reliable? Also definitely not.

That being said...it's not impossible to believe:

The idea that "boys won't play with girls' toys" but that "girls will play with boys' toys" isn't new or revolutionary: it parallels the idea in the literary world that girls won't hesitate to read a book with a male protagonist but boys won't go near a book with a female protagonist. (Hence the success of Harry Potter and part of the reason why Joanne Kathleen Rowling is better known as J. K. Rowling. Initially, that "J" and "K" could have stood for anything.)

If the story is true -- and, as much as I love Disney, I can totally see the moneymakers making this decree -- then at least the response to it is encouraging. At least we're talking about gender-segregated toys and the lack of strong female characters. As the article pointed out, the lack of Rey merchandise sparked an outcry of hostility and even a trending hashtag -- #wheresrey -- and comparisons to the other lack of female superheroes in toy merchandise. After Guardians of the Galaxy came out, Gamora was nowhere to be found, and neither was Black Widow after Avengers 2 came out. And all three of those females -- Gamora, Black Widow & Rey -- were protagonists: front and central in the storyline and integral to the plot. (We'll leave my disappointment with Black Widow for another post.) It's not like they were helpless damsels in distress or relegated to the romantic love interest: the future of the Star Wars story is going to rely on Rey -- her parentage is one of the new trilogy's essential mysteries. 

So far, having Hasbro as their toy manufacturer has worked out well for Disney...let's hope that the progressive attitude continues.