Why Be A Princess When You Can Be An Engineer And Do This…

There seems to be a huge trend of society, parents, companies and experts wanting to move young girls away from the Disney princess mentality and into something more realistic that will actually equip them for real life. The notion of wanting to spend your life being “pretty”, dressing up in fancy dress, not having a particular career or interest and waiting for a “prince charming” to come and sweep you off your feet to look after you for life is not healthy and promotes the wrong message.

While it’s not wrong to desire a family, a husband, and love, its also important to show girls that being strong, skilled, independent beings is a worthy calling in life.

We saw this week how a girls school in Kentucky, Mercy Academy, are promoting their new enrollments by releasing a campaign stating “You are Not A Princess”. Rather, they instill into the girls how to be real-life problem-solvers by learning skills, and being equipped to deal with the real world on their own, without having to rely on someone else.

Another great company who we love is Goldie Blox. It is a toy company based out of Oakland, CA and founded by Debbie Sterling (title: Chief officer of Fun!) who is an engineer from Stanford University. She wanted to show young girls the importance of design and engineering in every day life, and what better way to make this fun than to create a line of toys which subtly integrate the fundamentals of engineering into every day life!

They successfully raised their own money to create prototypes of toy models that were (no surprise) in huge demand by parents who caught wind of the brand before it even became available for purchase.

Goldie Blox just released a new music video campaign promoting once again the importance of math and engineering in a way that will hopefully appeal to younger girls and give them a fun alternative to barbie dolls, bratz and Disney princesses. This video is also in the running to be featured in the 2013 Superbowl, you can vote for it here.

“We’re out to show the world that girls deserve more choices than dolls and princesses. We believe that femininity is strong and girls will build the future — literally,” states the Goldie Blox website.

They worked with an inventor named Brett Doar who made the funky Rube Goldberg contraption for OK GO’s ‘This Too Shall Pass’ music video, and built something similar in a house with three girls showing off what they are capable of building thanks to these toys. It was called ‘The Princess Machine’ and was built out of household items and Goldie Blox products.

Set to The Beastie Boys’ ‘Girl’ track (don’t worry, some of the lyric were changed to be more age appropriate) this music video is a fun visual display of the power of what creative minds can do. The pink aisle in the toy store no longer needs to be the only place young girls find satisfaction in their formative years.

It’s time to change!
We deserve to see a range,
cuz all our toys look just the same,
and we would like to use our brains.
We are all more than princess maids…

“We think it’s a perfect encapsulation of the potential of every little girl, with a nice splash of the organized chaos that is the trademark of any good invention. We want everyone to see it and be inspired,” says Goldie Blox about the project.

“This holiday season, if your daughter’s asking for fairies, dolls, and princesses, consider adding GoldieBlox to the mix — so she can build something amazing, too.”

Watch Raven, Reese and Sabrina show the girls of this world what being an inventor is all about. We hope this will go a long way to ingraining into our culture how crucial it is to teach the next generation of women about the different types of people they can aspire to be like, not just stay stuck in the “princess” mentality.