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ABSTRACT
Using the coordinated management of meaning theory as a guide, this article examines critiques and commendations of toy company, GoldieBlox Inc.’s, goal of “disrupting the pink aisle.” Notwithstanding capitalistic enterprise, it is argued that GoldieBlox’s corporate narrative engages in an imperative social skill that its toys still lack: critical reflection. Although GoldieBlox’s toys are rudimentary in their science, technology, engineering, and math designs, the company’s corporate narrative—driven by its origin story, mission and vision statements, and marketing strategies—challenges a 100-year-old gendered toy tradition and prompts significant questions of gender representation and improbable beauty ideals in our children’s toys.
KEYWORDS:
Notes
1. GoldieBlox Inc., “About GoldieBlox,” http://www.goldieblox.com/pages/about. GoldieBlox's complete mission statement can be found on their official website. A few sections have been emphasized at the beginning of each section for amplification.
2. National Science Foundation, “Scientists and Engineers Working in Science,” http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2015/nsf15311/digest/theme5.cfm#trends.html.
3. GoldieBlox Inc., “About.”
4. Peter Meiksins, Peggy Layne, Elsa Camargo, and Katie Snead, “Women in Engineering: A Review,” Society of Women Engineers Magazine (2013): 230.
5. GoldieBlox Inc., “About.”
6. Katy Waldman, “GoldieBlox: Great for Girls? Terrible for Girls? Or Just Selling Toys?” Slate, November 26, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/11/26/goldieblox_disrupting_the_pink_aisle_or_just_selling_toys.html.
7. Amazon.com reviews of “GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine,” January 18, 2016, http://www.amazon.com/ss/customer-reviews/1223095649.
8. Serena Larson, “That GoldieBlox Ad Doesn’t Challenge Beauty Stereotypes The Way You Think,” ReadWrite, January 18, 2016, http://readwrite.com/2014/11/07/goldieblox-perfection-ad-not-perfect.
9. Clare O’Connor, “Check Out GoldieBlox's ‘Girl-Powered’ Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Float”, Forbes, December 12, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/11/25/check-out-goldiebloxs-girl-powered-macys-thanksgiving-parade-float-video/#41309c404d7e.
10. Yael Kohen, “What's the Problem with Pink, Anyway?” New York Magazine, April 30, 2015, http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/03/whats-the-problem-with-pink-anyway.html.
11. CMM theory was first established by W. Barnett Pearce and Victor Cronen in Communication, Action, and Meaning: The Creation of Social Realities (New York: Praeger, 1980), but this quote was taken from W. Barnett Pearce and Kimberly A. Pearce, “Extending the Theory of the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) through a Community Dialogue Process,” Communication Theory 10, no. 4 (2000): 408.
12. W. Barnett Pearce and Kimberly A. Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling: Abilities for Systemic Practitioners” Human Systems 9 (1998): 173.
13. W. Barnett Pearce, “The Coordinated Management of Meaning,” in Theorizing about Intercultural Communication, ed. William B. Gudykunst (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), 39.
14. Andy Hinds, “Girl-Power Toy or Sexist Game?” Daily Beast, December 12, 2015, http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/12/24/should-i-put-goldie-blox-under-the-christmas-tree.html.
15. Rebecca Rosen, “Can a Kids' Toy Bring More Women into Engineering?” The Atlantic, April 20, 2015, http://theatlantic.com/technology/html.
16. Cees Van Riel, Principles of Corporate Communication (London: Academic Service, 1992).
17. Lars Christensen, “Corporate Communication: The Challenge of Transparency,” Corporate Communications 7, no. 2 (2002): 162.
18. Jane Perkins and Nancy Blyer, ed., Narrative and Professional Communication (Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999).
19. Ira Levin, “Vision Revisited: Telling the Story of the Future,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 36, no. 1 (2000): 93.
20. Joep Cornelissen, Corporate Communications: Theory and Practice (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), 25.
21. The greatest example of this is Stephen Denning, The Leader's Guide to Storytelling (San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, 2005). Denning uses the words “story” and “narrative” as synonyms that describe the eight ways in which leadership cues are circulated via narratives.
22. Sarah Spear and Stuart Roper, “Using Corporate Stories to Build Corporate Brand: An Impression Management Perspective,” Journal of Product & Brand Management 22, no. 7 (2013): 492.
23. Ibid., 499.
24. Barbara Czarniawska, Narrating the Organization: Dramas of Institutional Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 78.
25. Barbara Czarniawska, “Uses of Narrative in Organization Research” GRI Report (Gothenburg Research Institute, 2005), 15.
26. David Boje, “Organizational Storytelling: The Struggles of Pre-Modern, Modern and Postmodern Organizational Learning Discourses,” Management Learning 25 (1994): 433.
27. David Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (London: Sage Publications, 2001), 2. Boje sees narratives as “fragmented and multi-layered experiences” that require thought, action or both.
28. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), xi.
29. Ibid., 33.
30. Ibid., 64–5.
31. Pearce and Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling.”
32. Ibid., 175, authors' emphasis.
33. Ibid., 180.
34. Ibid., 168.
35. Pearce and Pearce, “Extending the Theory.”
36. Ibid.
37. R.J. Branham and W. Barnett Pearce, “Between Text and Context: Toward a Rhetoric of Contextual Reconstruction,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 71 (1985): 19–36.
38. Rosen, “Can a Kids' Toy Bring More Women into Engineering?”
39. Toni Feder, “Designing Toys to Inspire Girls,” Physics Today, April 30, 2015, http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news.html.
40. Craig Causer, “Ribbons and Wheels and Engineers?” Potentials, IEEE 32, no. 5 (2013): 17.
41. TedTalkxPSU can be found on GoldieBlox Inc., “About.”
42. Sterling, “GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls,” Kickestarter (2012), https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls.html.
43. Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (New York: Viking, 1959), 12.
44. GoldieBlox, Inc., “Goldie's Field Notes,” post titled “Digging Earthworms in the Land of Barbie.”
45. Pearce and Pearce, “Extending the Theory,” 410.
46. Pearce, “The Coordinated Management of Meaning,” 45.
47. Pearce and Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling,” 167.
48. Meghan Neal, “A Sadly Brief History of Girl Toys Finding STEM Jobs,” Motherboard.com. LEGO® released a female science character in 2013 and designed a female minifigure set with a scientist, paleontologist, and astronomer in 2014. See “Lego Releasing a STEM Figurine Line for Girls,” Girltalk, http://girltalkhq.com/lego-releasing-female-stem-figure-line-girls.html.
49. Feder, “Designing Toys to Inspire Girls.”
50. Causer, “Ribbons and Wheels and Engineers?” 16.
51. Charlie McCormick and Kim White, ed., Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Beliefs, Vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011).
52. Ariel Schwartz, “How GoldieBlox Went from a Scrappy Kickstarter to Making Important Toys for Girls,” Fast Company, http://m.fastcompany.com/3035356/how-goldieblox-went-from-a-scrappy-kickstarter-marketing-important-toys-girls.html.
53. Larson, “GoldieBlox Ad Doesn’t Challenge.”
54. Olga Khazen, “The Psychology of Giant Princess Eyes,” The Atlantic, January 18, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/the-psychology-of-giant-princess-eyes/281209/
55. Larson, “GoldieBlox Ad Doesn’t Challenge.”
56. GoldieBlox Inc., “Goldie's Field Notes” blog, post titled “More Than Just a Sidekick.”
57. Ibid.
58. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 147–48.
59. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. 2, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 99.
60. Rosen, “Can a Kids' Toy Bring More Women into Engineering?”
61. Pearce and Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling,” 168.
62. Rebecca Grant, “Disrupting the Pink Aisle: The Rise of Empowering Toys for Girls,” Fast Company, January 12, 2016, http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040270/disrupting-the-pink-aisle-the-rise-of-empowering-toys-for-girls.
63. GoldieBlox Inc., “Frequent Asked Questions,” http://www.goldieblox.com/pages/faq.html.
64. Vanessa LoBue and Judy S. DeLoache, “Pretty in Pink: The Early Development of Gender-stereotyped Colour Preferences,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 29 (2011): 656.
65. Deborah Siegal, “Is GoldieBlox Trojan Princess, or Trojan Feminism?” Girl w/Pen, January 12, 2016, https://thesocietypages.org/girlwpen/2013/11/22/is-goldieblox-trojan-princess-or-trojan-feminism/.
66. Pearce and Pearce, “Extending the Theory,” 419–20.
67. GoldieBlox Inc., “Goldie's Field Notes,” post titled “A Message from Our Rainmaker, Lindsey Shepard.” Shepard provides article links to the statistics on her post, including a Springer article titled “Barbie Could Dampen a Young Girl's Career Dreams,” Barbie Inc.'s official website: www.barbiemedia.com, and a National Library of Health study titled “Does Barbie Make Girls Want to be Thin?”
68. Waldman, “GoldieBlox: Great for Girls?”
69. GoldieBlox Inc., “A Message from Our Rainmaker” and “GoldieBlox vs. The Big Sister Machine,” http://www.goldieblox.com/pages/big-sister-is-watching.html.
70. Ibid.
71. Larson, “GoldieBlox Ad Doesn’t Challenge.” See also Eliana Dockterman, “New GoldieBlox Doll Takes Aim at ‘Barbie’ Beauty Standards,” Time, January 18, 2016, http://time.com/3557696/goldieblox-doll-barbie-beauty-standards/. For pro-stances on “GoldieBlox vs. The Big Sister Machine,” see Jessica Samakow, “In New GoldieBlox Ad, Little Girls Smash The Idea That ‘Beauty Is Perfection,’” Huffington Post, January 18, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/06/goldieblox-ad-beauty-is-perfection-_n_6113940.html.
72. Hinds, “Girl-Power Toy or Sexist Game?”
73. Ibid.
74. Rebecca C. Hains, The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls through the Princess Years (Sourcebooks, Inc., Kindle edition, 2014).
75. Ibid., Introduction.
76. GoldieBlox Inc., “Goldie's Field Notes,” post titled “A Message from Our Rainmaker, Lindsey Shepard.”
77. Ibid., “Comments”
78. Pearce and Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling,” 173.
79. Sneha Vakharia, “After 59 Years, Mattel Gets It Right: The New Barbie Ad is Awesome,” Catch News, December 12, 2015, http://www.catchnews.com/culture-news/after-59-years-mattel-gets-it-right-the-new-barbie-ad-is-awesome-1445076134.html.
80. Pearce and Pearce, “Transcendent Storytelling,” 168.
81. “Toys ‘R’ Us U.K. Agrees to End Gender Marketing” Huffington Post, April 30, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/08/toys-r-us-uk-gender-marketing_n_3890599.html.
82. Robin Wilkey, “GoldieBlox ‘We Are The Champions’,” Huffington Post, July 11, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/goldieblox-video_n_3541690.html.
83. Glosswitch, “The Sly Sexism of Goldie Blox's ‘Confidence-boosting’ Toys for Girls,” NewStatesman.com, July 11, 2015, http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/11/sly-sexism-goldie-bloxs-confidence-boosting-toys-girls.html.
84. Eliana Dockertman, “The War on Pink: GoldieBlox Toys Ignite Debate,” Time, April 30, 2015, http://time.com/3281/goldie-blox-pink-aisle-debate/html.
85. Gabriel Noble, “GoldieBlox is ‘More than a Toy’,” Yahoo! News, July 11, 2015, http://news.yahoo.com/bianna-golodryga-interviews-goldie-blox-ceo-debbie-sterling.html.
86. Causer, “Ribbons and Wheels and Engineers?”
87. Sterling, “GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls.”