Photo used under Creative Commons license from flickr.com user ricarose

The Super Bowl has a trifecta of entertainment: great football (unless you’re the Broncos defense), great entertainment and of course great commercials. The Super Bowl is when we say at least seven times during the game, “Oh my god this is my favorite commercial ever!” Usually, the majority of the commercials are catered towards men — with hot women, fast cars and a lot of beer — however Budweiser’s puppy commercial was clearly for everyone.

When a commercial for GoldieBlox, a toy company, featured young girls revolting against pink toys by taking them and building a space rocket out of them, I was intrigued. My favorite part of the commercial was when a pageant girl named Jessica ripped off her sash and ran to join the revolt. I guess Jessica’s are just rebellious women, what can I say.

GoldieBlox actually won a contest, held by Inuit, that paid for the commercial to air; it cost $4 million. In 2012, Debbie Sterling established GoldieBlox after she went to a toy store to find that the option for girls’ toys hadn’t progressed since her childhood. So Sterling, an engineer herself, decided to change the stigma of girls’ toys being pink and created engineering and construction kits. According to Sterling, in her 2013 TED Talk, women only make up 11 percent of U.S engineers.

With the kits, Sterling hopes to increase women’s involvement in science, technology, engineering and math; I couldn’t agree more.

All my life, I have constantly struggled with math and science. My learning disabilities probably play a role in my ability to do well in math and science, but I’m sure if there were more toys like GoldieBlox available to me growing up, I wouldn’t have developed such anxiety over math and science as a child.

GoldieBlox won the competition by having the most public votes, showing society’s view on girls’ lack of exposure to the sciences. GoldieBlox beat 15,000 other businesses according to an article in Forbes Magazine.

I applaud GoldieBlox’s efforts in taking initiative to change to future for women in the sciences. I hope this inspires other toy companies to take the same initiative in how they design their products. And just so society knows, as the commercial says, “so come on bring the toys, girls build like all the boys.”