Hacking Girl Power: GoldieBlox Play Sets and Material Rhetoric

Abstract

Since the 1990s, girl power discourse has heralded young girls as smart, capable, and feminine. However, today, overwhelming numbers of girls still lack confidence in their skills and remain underrepresented in leadership positions. In response to this confidence gap, two trends have emerged. First, a brand of all-inclusive girl power that features young girls has become more prevalent in advertising than ever before. Second, countless new girl-geared objects and spaces have emerged, all of which are committed to improving the lives of girls across the United States under the banner of girl power. Nowhere has this been more evident than in initiatives that seek to increase girls’ involvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). GoldieBlox, a toy ecosystem that aims to encourage girls to learn engineering concepts through play, is one such initiative. Leveraging material rhetoric and Barthes’ analysis of play, I examine how GoldieBlox acts both on and with those who play with it, as well as its impact on girl power rhetoric. I argue that GoldieBlox’s form enables a style of play that pushes back on girl power by emphasizing agency over femininity and a productive “apprentice” role over consumption as a means to empowerment.