LEGO brand toys recently introduced a new line of products marketed strictly to girls. The line is called Friends, and it includes sets to create things like a café, a beauty shop, a house and a dog show arena, along with accessories like a convertible and a swimming pool. The blocks are mostly pastel pinks and purples and blues, instead of the familiar primary-color blocks we’ve come to love.

Now SPARK, an organization working to fight the sexualization of girls, is petitioning the toy company to rethink its marketing and product development strategies, claiming the new line reinforces outdated gender stereotypes. In less than a month, nearly 50,000 people have signed the petition, which reads, “On behalf of all the creative, smart and imaginative girls around the world, we’re asking LEGO to recognize that the toys our children play with today help shape them into the leaders we want them to be tomorrow.”

That’s true. What we play with and how we play as children is practice for what we’ll be and do as adults. There was a time when girls were mainly given baby dolls because they were expected to grow up to become mothers inside the home, and boys were given trucks and firemen hats because they would grow up to become builders and doers outside. The roles were clear, and the toys were made to match.

I grew up at the tail end of that era, and each year for Christmas, my mother would present me with a new doll until the year I asked for a racetrack. The boy next door had an elaborate one with little cars that looped around wide turns and up and down steep hills, and I imagined such a toy would be much more fun than a burping, crying plastic baby.

That year, I received a racetrack instead of a baby doll, a drag strip with two cars that sped toward the finish line and inevitably crashed at the end, and the world changed. My mother lamented the end of baby-doll shopping, but I began dreaming beyond domestic life.

My own daughters grew up in a different era, one in which girls had more choices when planning for the future, and their toys reflected their wide-open dreams. They still played with baby dolls, but they also had racecars, board games, craft and science kits and more stuffed animals than any kid could possibly shove in a closet on cleaning day.

And they had LEGOs, a big bucket of them that they would dump out on the floor, and they would build and rebuild for hours.  With no constraints, playing with the blocks was like coloring outside the lines, creating whatever their youthful minds imagined on any given day. They dreamed of being astronauts, veterinarians, scientists, world-traveling photographers for National Geographic. No one stopped them then, and no one stops them now, because all of those fields are realistic options for girls.

Remembering those play days, I can understand a parent’s frustration with a new line of toys that appears to set little girls back a generation or two. If toys really do reflect societal changes and gender expectations, wouldn’t having your little girls targeted with toys that seem to guide them toward the old stereotypes, limiting them to home decorating and hair appointments, make you want to stand up and scream, or at least submit a petition?

But I thought what we all wanted when society began the slow shift toward gender equality was choice. Let women choose how to shape their lives, and let little girls discover their limitless options even when playing with toys.

I believe little girls are smarter than marketing, and if given a choice, they’ll choose the building blocks—and the future—that suit them, whether they construct an impenetrable fort or a hair salon, whether they imagine bombarding a city with laser beams from space or relaxing by the pool while their nails dry.

All of those creative, smart and imaginative girls around the world, they’ll sort through the toys we market to them, and they’ll make their choices. They’ll play now and then grow up to run governments or businesses, or they’ll choose to run households instead. Either way, even with pink blocks at their disposal now, they’ll become the leaders we want them to be tomorrow.