Gender Stereotypes from Legos to the Legislature

      This weekend I went to visit a friend at the Mall of America in Minnesota. My family dropped me off and told me to meet up with them at our designated time at Legoland because of it's easy to spot location (there's  a roughly 30 foot transformer built out of Legos). My next few hours consisted of browsing (after all we're college students working underpaid jobs-we can hardly afford to look at anything from most of the stores), gelato consuming (I recommend candied maple bacon if you're ever there), and discussing non-existent love lives. Finally the time came for my friend to go to work and for me to meet back with my parents at Legoland.
      They texted me saying they were stuck in traffic, so I decided to browse the shelves to see if there were any good Legos to be had (my inner geek has recently been finding Legos to be a great relaxing tool). While walking around the congested store, contemplating whether or not to get a Lord of the Rings Lego set,  I noticed the same thing multiple times: young girls carrying American Girl dolls were utterly bored in the store. Some even seemed exasperated while their brothers ran around the store soaking in all the Lego glory. Looking back I realize, it's a look I've seen before, except on faces on old females when they're hearing about current affairs.
      You see in my area of the world men still write into the paper with editorials saying women belong in a kitchen pregnant (although if they were a teacher, nurse, secretary or cheerleader that'd be okay). Women have been groomed that there are rules each sex must follow. Girls play dress up, kitchen, Barbie-maybe the new line of Disney Princess Legos (but it's because they're in pink packaging). Boys enterain their young selves with  play tools, GI Joe and other action figures, Lincoln Logs, and Legos. As children grow up, women entering public sector occupations (minus elementary teachers) are frowned still relatively frowned upon. So some of the people I go to school with don't engage in discourse on current affairs because they've been trained to think it's not for them, so it's boring to have to deal with.
    Though women are certainly breaking away from those homemaker/the political arena stereotypes. There are twenty women in the Senate, seventy-eight in the House. (And another fun fact, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords was featured more prominently than Barack Obama in a magazine covering Emerging Democrats to watch for in the future.)  There are more women attending certain law schools than males; more women are pursuing jobs in the military, campaigns, the State Department, basically everywhere. Women are starting to stand up and show we are equally as capable in the same situation. Women don't want a special purple packaging to distinguish their sex. Women don't want a special pen marketed to them (cough cough BIC). Women want to show the world you don't have to be a "bra-burner" to be a female influencing politics and advocate for their beliefs. Woman want to make their voices heard in the political arena, since females make up the other half of the population.  
      In the end I bought a Council of Elrond Lego set. And I can tell my parents it was to show all those girls American Girls dolls are cool, but so are Legos- and so are careers in public service.