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Comment by dev1n | Hacker News Reader

Growing up watching shows like "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius" definitely shaped me as a child into the tech freak I am today. Girls getting barbies thrown at them when they are 12 does not help put girls into the tech sector. We need television shows like "Diane's Laboratory" or "Jennifer Neutron Girl Genius" to get girls interested in tech. Hit 'em when they're young.

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For my son, it was "Johnny Test" and "Phineas and Ferb", the latter being one of the most well-done bits of hacker/maker propaganda I've ever come across. Amusingly, all the scientists/engineers in Johnny Test that aren't creepy villains are girls (Johnny's twin sisters and occasionally friends). My son had no problem looking up to them anyway.

I got a certain amount of crap from others for "letting" him be so into a girl thing, and I remember getting crap as a kid because most of the figures I looked up to are men. Is it hypocritical of me to be both frustrated by the lack of stuff about girl techies and irritated that our society pushes kids to pick such things only from same-gendered examples?

Phineas and Ferb is awesome. I'm 22 and I watch that show.

Your frustration is justified IMO. Among the other interests I had growing up were movies like Johnny Tsunami and Brink where I wanted to get out and be a cool extreme sports athlete like the main characters in those movies. The fact that I picked the tech industry IMO shows that society doesn't always push kids to pick things up from examples, but providing the option to discover interests via same-gendered examples is imperative in my opinion. I really have no data for this other than my own personal experiences, however I did read a blog post maybe a year ago on the effects of television and career path choice which I thought was interesting.

Wait, in what way are either of those shows "girl things"? They seemed pretty gender-neutral to me. Or were you referring to something else?

Girls don't get barbies thrown at them, they beg for them. The are expensive, too.

Not if they never find out that there exist things called "barbies". We never introduced our girls to barbies or anything -- only cars, legos, etc. etc. and they're more than happy with them.

I think barbies dolls should be outright banned. Why're we teaching our children to worry about their looks at such a young age? That's what barbie dolls are -- "pretty woman", woman with obnoxiously pretty dresses, lipsticks, etc. etc. Why're we normalizing that kind of behavior for children?

Maybe Barbie doesn't teach them to worry about looks, but lets them relax about it? Barbie is pretty, after all. Like boys playing with batman figurines, they have a powerful actor that can do anything they want.

I don't want to defend them. I always chided my sister for playing with barbies, but she enjoyed it. She grew up to be a normal, non-pink woman with a serious occupation, so the damage from playing with barbies seems to have been limited.

>I think barbies dolls should be outright banned.

You do realize there are plenty of girls out there who love their barbies, right? Why do you hate them?

When I was 8 or so, a relative gave me a huge pink plastic box full of barbies and barbie accessories. I hadn't asked for it, and I wasn't entirely sure what to do with it, but I said thanks and tried my hand at playing with barbies, because that's what was expected of me. After that, I kept receiving dolls as gifts--plastic dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls on stands, dolls in cases. I tried playing with all of them, because that's what I was supposed to do. I never got it, and I learned that I was abnormal because I didn't really like dolls.

What we tacitly expect of kids does shape them, to an extent.

But your example says that it doesnt?

It absolutely does. That feeling of abnormality is one of the things that helped push me into tech--I wasn't normal, so I went to a place where I hid my non-normalness in a way I never could (so thought my 15-year-old self) from real people.

Great end result for me, but painful at the time. I'm looking forward to the day when tech isn't something girls like me get punted into by accident.

Neither Barbie at 12 nor doll and cooking set at 2 will cause your daughter to be stupid. The same way as boys do not grow to be violent jerks for having access to wooden sword and action figure.

Being socialized into thinking that Barbie is the only thing she can play with or into thinking that she can not figure technical stuff so there is no point in trying anyway will do it.

It is more about your general attitude then about plastic mold that was used for toy.

I am not totally sure about the "representation" thing, meaning that you need a role model to like something. I clearly did not have any role model that I can look at to play around with computers on the TV (I'm not young)

I think that the inner motivation to be a hacker or programmer comes from liking to know how things work, and how to build stuff. I remember dismantling and reassembling my toys when I was a small kid. If we are able to give a try to kids that feeling (which it was extremely satisfying to me), we may "lure" more people with potential into tech. If we teach that tech is cool, that nerdy t-shirts are amazing, and you'll make a lot of money, we are spreading the wrong ideas, something that will deviate the focus from "what's really tech about" with "perks around being in tech". People that are attracted for those "perks" will never be truly happy and probably, will never be good professionals.

> Girls getting barbies thrown at them when they are 12

As I understand it, Goldie Blox was founded precisely to provide an alternative to that. They already have a product out. I wonder how well they'll do.

It is just marketing. Goldie Blox is just expensive and not much flexible toy.

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