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"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.
It's unix!!!11
This book sounds just like real life.
Who does Mattel have in charge of Barbie these days?
Because whoever it is, has stepped in it so many times it's not even funny.
Are they being punked from inside? Or are people actually thinking this shit is a good idea?
Absolutely mind boggling.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In the final chapter, Barbie sleeps with several game reviewers to make sure her game gets good reviews and publicity on various gaming websites.
This Barbie actually does sound like some computer "engineers" I've known.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
http://www.themarysue.com/barb... is much better done. If only that had been the actual book!
Misogyny is so much easier, we'll just go with that instead.
I always hated this particular hatred of "Math is hard"... Math is hard - I always tell my daughter that. Not telling girls that math is hard because we are afraid they won't like it isn't going to help them. They are going to struggle with it like all of the boys - not understand why it is hard for them and fear that it is because they are a girl. I always tell my daughter math is hard - she has to struggle with it like everyone else, but in the end that is what she will need to get the good jobs when she is older. And yes - she is actually very good in Math as an honor student in pre-calc as a sophomore.
Get off your high horse saying that is is Misogyny telling a girl that math is hard... If it isn't you aren't doing it right, take the next class up until it is.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
The difference is, most of the coders kind of know how to approach virus removal - it's just a lot easier to ask Help Desk to do it since they've probably got a machine dedicated to it (we called ours "Benchy the Nurse Box" - it had multiple malware removal programs on it and the only other thing it did besides nuke viruses was play the radio.)
Although the message about not sharing USBs between sick machines is a good one in this book. MANY professionals haven't figured that one out yet.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
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!
And the problem isn’t even that Barbie isn’t a “real” computer scientist because she isn’t coding. (I am one of those mostly-non-coding computer scientists myself, though now I’m tempted to make a game about robot puppies shooting lasers anyway.) The problem is the assumption that she is a designer, not a coder, and the coders are boys. (There are also problems with nonsense explanations for computer viruses, taking credit for other people’s work, and inexplicable pillow fights.) I happen to study remix, so one of my first thoughts upon seeing this was: someone is obviously going to remix this. I figured, why wait? I also have at my disposal my roommate Miranda Parker, a student of Mark Guzdial, who studies computing education and broadening participation in STEM. So with her input, I rewrote the book with a slightly different spin. (I also kept her as a “computer engineer” even though she’s really more of a computer scientist, software developer, etc.) I hope you like this new narrative better, too!
mfwright@batnet.com
Jean McKenzie has been Executive Vice President of Mattel since September 2012. She was named President of American Girl Jan. 1, 2013. Prior to re-joining Mattel in 2011 as Senior Vice President-Marketing, she was President and CEO of Gateway Learning Corporation and Senior Vice President for The Walt Disney Company. From 1989-1998, Ms. McKenzie served in various executive positions at Mattel working on the Barbie brand, most recently as Executive Vice President and GM of Worldwide Barbie for Mattel.
Not sure if this makes the screw-up better or worse...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
In my house, computer engineer Barbie would have ended up just like all the other Barbies in the house... naked, legless, armless, and often headless in the bathtub. We affectionately called them all "Torso Barbie"
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Maybe if little girls read a book about Barbie happily being a developer instead of breaking computers and outsourcing coding work to cute boys, there would be more women with good developer skills?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Math, at the age where Barbie hits her prime demographic, is no harder than reading, history, singing, or being physically fit. There are exceptions where certain things really are hard to some people with disabilities (both mental and physical), but for the vast majority its not hard - it just takes practice and study/work.
Saying "Math is hard" elevates it and offers an excuse as to why you aren't doing well at it. If you don't read, you'll never be a good reader. If you never do physical activity, you'll never be in good cardiovascular shape. If you don't study history, you shouldn't expect to be able to recall historical facts and make logical connections between events. Playing piano will not work out well for you if you never practice. In that sense, all those things are "hard" - but only "hard" as compared to, say, watching a movie or drinking a slurpee.
Misogyny is presenting a girl as an incompetent fool, incapable of doing the very things which the presentation aims to promote. Apparently, writing even the most basic story book an staying true to the subject is hard as well.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"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.
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/0449816192
Waay back in the day when my wife was a grad student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution by an odd fluke the sysadmins and programmers of the Vax/VMS systems they used for scientific data processing were women. Possibly their inability to grow beards disqualified them from Unix jobs. Anyhow, the nickname for them was "data dollies".
Of course there was a long, long history of women in scientific computing. The mom of one of my high school friends graduated from Wellsley during WW2 and worked programming the Harvard Mark 1 -- which meant (although I didn't realize it at the time) she must have worked with Grace Hopper. And of course there were the female code breakers of Bletchley Park. There were a lot of opportunities for smart women to do innovative things in WW2 while many of their equally brainy male counterparts were being fed into the war effort like scraps into a meatgrinder.
Anyhow, I don't think "data dolly" was meant to be as patronizing it sounds to us today. It was a cultural anachronism, like the drinking and smoking on the TV show Mad Men, which appears to us gauche but strangely fascinating. The common assumption back then was that even an intelligent, highly trained woman would quit her job when she got married to raise some man's children. My generation was the first to view automatically assuming that as patronizing. This new attitude was in its day called "radical feminism" -- which was a not too subtle way of associating us with Communists. But of course insensitivity is a two way street. A lot of older women felt insulted by the implication that they'd thrown their lives away.
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