"Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer" Pulled From Amazon

New submitter clcto writes Back in 2010, Computer Engineer Barbie was released. Now, with the attention brought to the Frozen themed programming game from Disney and Code.org, unwanted attention has been given to the surprisingly real book "Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer". So much so, that Mattel has pulled the book from Amazon. The book shows Barbie attempting to write a computer game. However, instead of writing the code, she enlists two boys to write the code as she just does the design. She then proceeds to infect her computer and her sister's computer with a virus and must enlist the boys to fix that for her as well. In the end she takes all the credit, and proclaims "I guess I can be a computer engineer!" A blog post commenting on the book (as well as giving pictures of the book and its text) has been moved to Gizmodo due to high demand.

Comments

From Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

This book sounds just like real life.

Re:From Experience

[funwithBSD]

Which means she is a Project Manager.

Re:From Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

More like Barbie Business Analyst: "Hey guys, I don't know anything about business or technology, but if I invite 20 business people and programmers to a meeting, then I can type what they say into a horribly formatted Word document (that the programmers will fix for me later) and collect $125/hr".

Re:From Experience

[shadowrat]

With the right color commentary I think we could have a entire youtube channel dedicated to putting together jigsaw puzzles.

1)get a hot chick to put together jugsaw puzzles on youtube.

2)profit!

Re:From Experience

[Julia Cameron]

Tell that to Ada Lovelace.

So close, so far

[AmiMoJo]

We have come so far since feminism began, but then stuff like this still happens... How could anyone, in 2014, have thought this was acceptable?

Re:So close, so far

[MightyMartian]

I guarantee you, by the time the day is through, 2/3s of the posts here will say something along the lines of "What's the problem with the book? It's just like real life!"

Re:So close, so far

[rs79]

Barbie is a manager. Coding is for suckers.

Perspective.

Re:So close, so far

[AmiMoJo]

Depressingly I think you might be right. I used to think it was people not being aware rather than being actual misogynists, but if you look at the posts on any equality in work story or any GamerGate related story at least half of them will be people trying to sabotage any progress by denying the problem or bogging everyone down in semantics.

Re:So close, so far

[gstoddart]

I know people with young daughters (like, under 5).

Dora tells little girls they can do anything they want to, and grow up to do cool things. Barbie teaches women to be stereotypes, dumb blondes, and how to fake your way through life.

So, for birthday gifts, we give chemistry lab play sets, National Geographic books on space and dinosaurs, and actual educational stuff.

It's fun to see a four year old excited about a book on space.

If Barbie can't be a good role model after 50 years or so, just don't buy it.

There's so many good toys out there for kids that unless the child is asking for Barbie, you can skip it altogether.

Re:So close, so far

[dywolf]

It's already most of the posts here, and it's only been an hour.

Godwin Feminist Corollary: As an online discussion about sexism continues, the probability of a woman who speaks out being called a feminazi approaches one.

Moff's Law: As comments continue in a discussion of pop culture in relation to feminism, the probability of someone saying 'why do you have to analyze it? it's just a movie/cartoon/book!' approaches one.

And perhaps the best one, Lewis's Law: Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.

Re:So close, so far

[DarkOx]

Which is insane, but if it looks like special treatment it usually is. Denying our own senses takes us away from reality, it prevents us from recognize something that actually is unfair when we see it. We spend all our time solving imaginary problems rather than addressing real ones.

There is this huge push to get girls into STEM, encourage them to do science and math etc; because what apparently they can't be expected form their own ambitions and desires in the presence of all the societal messaging.

Yet on flip side we don't see a big push to encourage boys not to enlist in the armed forces. Nope despite all the glorification war in movies (almost always shown be fought by men) GI Joe, video games where you play soldier clearly marketed almost exclusive to men and boys, men are still expected to think for themselves. The idea of encouraging our girls to go into this high risk line of work is given lip-service at most.

Oh sure there has been lots of news about women in the military but you don't see the recruiters chasing the girls down the side walk outside the local high school.

Lets face it if it was really about getting rid of gender stereotypes we would stop calling attention to gender stereotypes. Rather than going oh look "SHE is a successful software developer" we would start saying oh look "Jane is a successful software developer" We should put the emphasis on Jane and not her sex. We would not "find female mathematician" to speak to the girls in the class about math, we would find the best mathematician willing to talk about their work to class of students regardless of their gender to do it.

Kids are not stupid, showing Barbie "can be a computer engineer too" or having a chapter in the computer science text about "women in the field' or something does not play as "see girls can do computers" it plays as "see you won't be the only freak out there, girls can do computers but its still kinda weird"

Finally we need to stop framing thinks as women's issues that are not. Early voting for example. Pelosi tried to push the idea the women for some reason are unique in the obstacles they face getting to the polls, because I don't men apparently don't have events in their daily lives that make it hard to abandon their usual routines on a particular Tuesday, nope that's girls. Then we see how she treats a female fellow democrat that might happen to vote in away she does not agree with, the instance she seeks the right to vote by proxy. Hint she is denied.

So either women don't need special consideration for voting or the do which is it? Oh that right the answer is obvious they don't or if they do the need it no more and no less than any male. Still Nancy was perfectly willing to portray her gender as needing special accommodate when it was politically useful but she knows perfectly well the need is imagined, and discards the idea when its not politically useful.

Re:So close, so far

[Kielistic]

Maybe stop misusing the word "misogyny" to make things seem scarier than they are then? If you used the word correctly maybe people wouldn't be misinterpreting what you "mean" so often.

Re:So close, so far

[geminidomino]

And perhaps the best one, Lewis's Law: Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.

Apparently, Lewis is/was a feminist. In the rational universe, we call that "begging the question."

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[Southpaw018]

A cavalcade of white dudes, of course. http://corporate.mattel.com/ab...

Re:*Spoiler alert*

[Anonymous Coward]

Then in the next book Ken and his SJW friends try to destroy the lives of anyone who point's it out.

Re:Slash Jezebel

[sinij]

Wait, but what about STARVING AFRICAN CHILDREN, why worry about privileged white women in first-world countries when CHILDREN ARE STARVING?!?! What kind of monster are you?! I expect you to dedicate all your attention to issues that I care about! NOW!

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[Alrescha]

"A cavalcade of white dudes, of course."

Two wrongs don't make a right.

A.

I Tried To Skeptic The Review

[Bob9113]

I saw this yesterday and tried, so hard, to be the skeptic poking holes in a feminist's overreaction -- and failed. This thing is just awful. The best I could come up with was, "Well, there are valuable people on software development teams who do design. I value them immensely, because I can't do it."

Well, sure, and maybe they should also put out a book titled, "I can be a game designer." But that's not the title, and (I can tell you from personal experience) women make fine software engineers. Some great, some awful, most somewhere in between -- just like guys. If they want to make a book with a title about Barbie being a software engineer, they should just tell that story.

Re:"Acceptable"? WTF?

[Ionized]

How could anyone, in 2014, have thought this was acceptable?

"Acceptable"? Was the First Amendment declared null and void, while I was sleeping? What do you mean by "acceptable", mister thought-policeman?

If burning American flag, calling for killing of the sitting President, or publicly defecating on a police car is acceptable, having a book with a hare-brained bimbo as one of the characters certainly is too.

none of those things are acceptable either. 'legal' and 'acceptable' are not the same thing.

this is very clearly unacceptable. it was legal, but it was fucking terrible, and should be called out as such.

mattel has the right to produce terrible products, and everyone else has the right to mock and berate them for doing so. free speech runs both ways.

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[CauseBy]

What's sexist and racist? The post makes a statement of fact that Mattell is lead by exclusively white people and 11 out of 12 are men. The way I use that word, statements of fact cannot be racist, only opinions can be racist.

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[Alrescha]

Tragically, I am forced into the disgrace of responding to my own post: "Two wrongs don't make a right.".

For the ironically-challenged, I found it somewhat funny/sad that in a thread nominally about stereotypes and the inappropriateness of judging people by their race, gender, et al, someone would refer to the wrongdoers specifically by their *race and gender*.

A.

(note to the angry responders: sorry, I have little time for the 'professionally offended', who assume the worst and then get all hot and bothered over their own error)