"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

I know this!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unix!!!11

Re:I know this!

[i kan reed]

To be fair to that scene, it actually takes a bit of awareness to realize that fucked up 3d UI was a filesystem wrapper.

Like, "Oooooooooooooooh, there's /usr/, I get it now" was a perfectly reasonable reaction.

Re: I know this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, 3d graphics libraries are on the roadmap for systemd: it will then be called system3d and it will raytrace everything that used to be in inittab.

Re:I know this!

[wiredlogic]

It is also worth pointing out that the role of the boy and girl were reversed in the movie. In Crichton's book the boy was the Unix nerd and the girl was just a tomboy with no leet skillz.

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

[Austerity Empowers]

I found this to be highly offensive to computer engineers. The implication we're marketing...that other people do the real work... that we'd dare stick a USB key with an unknown history into our USB port...

Actually that last one sets sex ed back about 30 years too.

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.

Re:From Experience

[Deep Esophagus]

If that's how you (and judging from your +5 Insightful rating, at least 5 others here) view the role of business analyst, my company must be using the term wrong. Where I work, BAs are an indispensable part of the design process; they don't get into that job until they know not only the product but the business needs of our users extremely well. A developer who changes a UI, report format, or so much as a calculation without first consulting with a BA doesn't last long. The BAs know every single one of the five bazillion federal regulations and industry standards so we developers don't have to worry our pretty little heads about it. We just write our code so it does all the number-crunchy things they tell us it needs to do.

Accounting is hard. Let's go shopping!

LOL ... w00t?

[gstoddart]

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.

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[Alrescha]

"A cavalcade of white dudes, of course."

Two wrongs don't make a right.

A.

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I don't think they're punking anything.

They are identifying empowering roles that could portray Barbie in a good light. Vetinarian, Doctor, Computer Engineer, etc. All the roles which are in demand, desirable, and have decent appeal to some set of the population. (I've been asked so many times how someone "gets" into my field, but as soon as you start off with the truth, that it is a lot of work, they drift away).

Then, they send these roles to their team of artists and storywriters who must do the minimal amount of research to put together the template driven "Barbie storyline". This typically means no understanding of the role she's in, strong emphasis on tieing in other characters, good dialog, a gatitous fun scene, and Barbie getting recogonized for her actions.

In the computer engineer role, obviously they misunderstood the role so badly that she gets recogonized for something they thought was admirable, when in reality (again you must learn the field to know) she's getting recogonized favorably for creating problems. To the educated eye, she's incompentent and the entire field would be better off without computer engineers of her skill.

90% of the time they don't botch the template-filling story creation this badly, but the heavy reliance of story patterns typically lead to Barbie stories that give you the impression it's all a big dress-up game. Barbie hardly does anything different, no matter what role she's portraying. I should know, I have a six year old daughter. 90% of the stories are innane, but at least the friends and "support networking" that she does has a positive message that is sometimes missed in other cartoons.

Re:LOL ... w00t?

[RabidReindeer]

Barbie is based on a doll who is based on a cartoon about a prostitute. She's a whore turned housewife. So she's actually an abusive stereotype to a number of groups and subgroups...

That's a terrible thing to say about Barbie.

Before she became a computer engineer, she worked at McDonalds. And drove a brand-new pink corvette. And lived in a Malibu beach house. And I'm sure she was paying her way through the IT program in college. All on her salary from McDonalds.

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)

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

[DarkOx]

Yea, honestly the lesson I would want a child to take away from this book is that life isn't fair. Barbie is a bimbo she hasn't got to neurons to rub together but she is pretty and charismatic, she will be able find other people like boys in this book to sponge off and carry her anywhere she wants to go.

This isn't a gender thing either. Pretty boys gave the same advantage although it might show up a little later in life. I have worked lots of places and seen one male manager who is near totally incompetent leading a vastly less successful and productive team than his counter part and their team get selected for promotion to some role like director or CIO/CTO over and over again. Why because that guy was taller and better looking and maybe if he possessed any skills at all its knowing how to tell others what they want to hear.

People need to understand that they may come up against the Barbies and Kens out there and depending on the situation it might not be a fair fight. They might need to recognize they are Barbie or Ken and learn to lever that too.

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

[Bengie]

The best female programmer that I've know, and I thought she was quite good, was a programmer for almost a decade, then quit to become a stay-at-home-mom, but then became a pseudo-part-time programmer who does remote work for a company, since she can do that from home. She's still salaried, but gets paid a lot less.

Take it how you want, but I don't know any male programmers who quit to be a stay-at-home-dad with a pay hit. Doing this would probably be grounds for divorce for most wives and losing custody of your children, for a man. I assume this kind of stuff can affect the average.

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

[lgw]

No-one is asking for special treatment

Every third-wave feminist is, along with most SJWs.

which by practically every metric shows that women are at a disadvantage in society

They have every advantage in family law. There are colleges where men are just assumed guilty of any charge of sexual assault, and cannot even question their accusers in the adjudication process. There's no wage gap for those under about 35 if you adjust for hours worked. Sure, there are certainly still areas like "competitive power lifting" where women are at a disadvantage, but so what?

We (feminists) want everyone to be equal,

Clearly you don't. You say this a lot, some of you (others wear shirts saying "I bathe in male tears"), but then go on to claim that women need special treatment in one way or another.

Equality in society means equality of opportunity: the same rules apply to all, the same social services are available to all, blind to sex and race. It does not mean equality of outcome. Different individuals make different choices, and have different skills and abilities, and the very nature of liberty is that your success in life is influenced by all of that.

Everyone has the right to walk their own path to happiness. You don't get to define "success" for another, you can only measure it against what people chose to pursue in life. You also can't guarantee that people will succeed even there: some people pick a stupid path to their goal.

Even if "the woman" said gamers were werewolf pedophiles from Mars, the backlash from the community demonstrated that what she said was true

Ah, so it's the victim's fault then? 8 Gaming sites/magazines simultaneously published articles attacking "gamers", which is to say, their readers. It's not a leap to deduce that something is rotten in the state of gaming journalism.

The core issue here seems to actually be semantics, oddly enough. People have legitimate complaints about the culture of the tiny corner of gaming that includes CoD and similar games, and call those people "gamers". But anyone who plays Candycrush or WoW or that PvZ shooter or whatever 20+ hours a week is every bit as much a "hardcore gamer", and the overall population was incensed by the offensive stereotyping. Funny how that works.

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:So close, so far

[Xest]

Interestingly the UK's official statistic authority (which is pretty good and impartial by the way - it's never been afraid to reprimand the government of the time or opposition for misusing it's stats) has just this last week released it's latest research into the gender paygap:

http://www.independent.co.uk/n...

It shows that not only is the gender paygap not an issue on average for women up to the age of 40, but it actually goes in their favour.

It is only past the point where many start to pull ahead because they are less likely to opt to stay at home and sacrifice their career for childcare duties that the paygap moves back in favour of men. Effectively the overall paygap only exists because when people tend to get the highest salaries (when they have the most experience) many women have opted not to pursue that path.

Of course, we should examine why women as disproportionately opting to be the parent that stays at home to perform childcare duties, there's merit in that. But it does seem to imply there's no real bias against women in the workplace, because all things being equal, when children are much less a part of the equation on average, women actually do better salarywise than men in the UK.

*Spoiler alert*

[Anonymous Coward]

In the final chapter, Barbie sleeps with several game reviewers to make sure her game gets good reviews and publicity on various gaming websites.

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.

Well, to be fair...

[XxtraLarGe]

This Barbie actually does sound like some computer "engineers" I've known.

I prefer this rewrite

[JoshuaZ]

http://www.themarysue.com/barb... is much better done. If only that had been the actual book!

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!

Barbie Remix

[k6mfw]

http://caseyfiesler.com/2014/1...

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!

The one woman is the Barbie brand manager

[alispguru]

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...

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.

Torso Barbie

[coolmoose25]

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"

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: OMG!

[hey!]

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.