[Emailed to Lego on 5/2/2012 since they have a charlimit on their comment form]

Hey guys,

I’m a woman who has been a Lego fan since I was a little girl. I loved cars, and I loved hotel rooms, and I made the coolest spaceships and space stations from the random Lego sets my parents bought me. My style was “Airstream meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, plus Holiday Inn” (because, c’mon, every space cruiser needs a pool!). It was super fun building vehicles for imaginary adventures. Luckily, I still create stuff as an adult even though they aren’t space Winnebagos.

I gotta say though… I have yet to see one girl represented in your “Cool Creations” shout-out spread where you feature works by kids.

Granted, I may have overlooked some issues, but this kind of layout is typical.

And yet, your advertisements for your Legolands have a pretty fair split between the sexes.

What gives? It’s 2012 already, and we should be beyond this gender-skewed thing.

I’m guessing it’s one of two things. Either you’ve got a photo editor who favors boys’ creations, or you’re just not getting enough girls to submit the stuff they’ve made. If it’s the latter… that’s kind of disturbing, and I’m perplexed why you haven’t addressed it.

I love what your company represents–creativity, architecture, engineering, “building worlds” all that. But as I flipped through my last issue, I did notice it’s emphasis on superheros and cartoon drama. While that’s necessarily not a bad thing, you’ve created the heros as males, and since the viewer is supposed to identify with the protagonist, you might be turning off girls who “can’t see themselves” in that situation.

Don’t you think girls should be welcomed into fields of engineering and creating? It might be a bigger question that you as a company can simply answer and solve, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on these issues.

Thanks for your time,
Liz McLean Knight

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lizmcleanknight
http://www.lizrevision.com
http://www.quantazelle.com

But, this particular “southern traditional diet” also happens to be very high in calories, and taking in more calories than you need means you store it as fat, and that throws your system off whack, which is a precursor to diabetes. This high-caloric diet was totally necessary when humans had to put in hours of hard labor just to take care of basic physical needs. A big part of the South’s economic value related to agriculture, and that, in the time, it meant physical labor was required.

Our physical energy requirements have been evolving over time

Since then we’ve evolved beyond the human labor requirement just to survive, via complex machinery and systems that can basically run themselves. It started with Eli Whitney’s cotton gin that extracted useful bits from prickly bits of the cotton plant, then Watt’s steam engine that increased efficiency just by putting in a separate condenser to an already existing steam machine…which meant machines could be powered without human or animal direct energy. Hooray!

Now that humans don’t need to spend all their time working on survival we can now do things that are more intellectually rewarding: creating art, building alternative energy sources, constructing innovate buildings, making systems more efficient… you get it. Instead of just maintaining “now” we can relax and start thinking about and creating what’s next.

A personal story about moving towards a new system

When I was younger, I naturally inherited my parent’s values about food and nutrition. We were financially stable enough where food access wasn’t a problem, but my parents may have inherited some “scarcity” mentalities from their parents that were likely passed on unintentionally (their parents had to deal with the realities of the Great Depression). I wasn’t that into sports or outdoor activities, and preferred using computers to play and build computer games, build and use servers, that kind of thing–very “cerebral,” so I didn’t need very much food. I was a very picky eater, and remember only being able to eat meat if it was drenched in some sort of sauce. Chicken needed a Bearnaise / Hollandaise sauce, hamburgers were required to have cheese and to be absolutely drenched in ketchup (and if they came with a toy, even better!), etc.

In college, with free will to schedule my day and my eating habits, I made new friends who turned me onto environmental sustainability issues, and the realities of how factory farming and government subsidies played a part in easy, cheap accessibility to animal meat for food.

I’ve always loved animals–even wanting to be a vet when I grew up–and when I learned how hamburgers were made, it was basically the equivalent of watching Soylent Green [spoiler]. and I went vegetarian, then vegan, then back to vegetarian because I paid attention to what my body was asking for.

[Sidenote: The vegan-to-vegetarian story is actually kind of amusing: I was in the south of France for a student exchange program, and was struggling to apply my dietary choices to living abroad. I happened to find the local "Whole Foods" within a small local store that sold natural, organic, sustainable goods, and popped in for lunch. In French, I asked what vegan options were available. The proprietress then came all the way around the counter to face me in person and then explained to me that since I was living in the south of France, I should appreciate the south of France, in so many words, while pointing at wedges of cheese that were made by her friends who lived close to the town. She told me to stay here and she would explain. I was caught off-guard, but interested, so I waited while she hurried off behind the counter. She then came back around with a plate full of cheese samples, and while I tasted them, she told me about the cows, what they ate, who their owners were, and how cheese is aged. Granted, she was highly technical, but she made her point. The cheese was deLICIOUS. I could mentally see a happy cow eating clover while her milk was made into cheese by her owner. And all the love put into the process from cow to now. So... yeah, I very much appreciate and enjoy cheese these days.]

I now grow herbs and have learned the delicate survival needs of plants, and appreciate their natural cycles. I share a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership and have been learning more intensely about seasonal vegetables and what makes them seasonal. I got a sprout kit for Christmas and it’s like getting a chemistry set for Christmas (which I seem to remember getting quite regularly): lots of instant gratification and application of the scientific method. And, real greens in Winter! Woo-hoo!

The CSA I’m a part of [Tomato Mountain]  is very “boutique-y” in some regards. It’s run by someone who has farming in his blood, and who wants to see his traditions continue. Obviously they know tomatoes, but for me, I enjoy the newsletters that talk about how weather patterns affect plants, and why (yeah, that’s the nerd part of me).   Also, it becomes Iron Chef / Chopped IRL: What do I do with obscure oriental radishes that are in season today? 

When healthy options are forced on people addicted to unhealthy but “tasty” food, they will probably reject it outright, as shown by Los Angeles high schooler’s rejection of the new healthier menu that was introduced. Living by example is the best way, and less stressful for everyone.

Anyway, my personal choices have worked out pretty well for me, but everyone has their own rhythm of healthfulness and they’ve got to figure it out themselves. All of these things have pulled me back into the loop of real human sustainability potential here on this planet.

It’s totally possible and easier that you might believe now to live sustainably. And this is coming from someone who makes electronic music and basically lives on the internet, so that should tell you something. This is not about preaching that there is a “right”way to live, it’s about syncing up to an individual daily lifestyle, based on what feels right and what does not.

I’ve noticed that people who are faced with an illness start to question their daily choices when something starts going wrong with their physical bodies. Diet is an easy way to approach non-well-being, because we all need food and energy to keep going through our days on our planet. And when you start to pay attention to what your body really needs and by relying on instinct and not news reports on antioxidants, protein or a similar buzzword, you will start to learn a language with yourself on a very personal level.

I’m being general on purpose here, but when you step back and listen to your body’s subliminal cues and rely less on society’s expectations, you will find the natural rhythm of what makes you work the best while you’re here.