Barbie Fucks It Up Again | Hacker News Reader

Barbie Fucks It Up Again

pamie.com

56 pointsdaigoba6624 comments

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I've never heard of the Barbie franchise not fucking it up. "Math is tough" Barbie was more than two decades ago; the adults designing current Barbie products were likely playing with the Barbie products of that era, yet it seems like nothing was learned.

At this point I think it is safe to say that Mattel honestly does not care how many people Barbie offends. They probably have sales numbers and market research that back up their approach. I can't imagine they would feel comfortable continuing down this path otherwise.

OK, I'm confused by all the vitriol.

Barbie, a game DESIGNER, is going to enlist a couple of code monkeys to implement her design. Remind me again what's wrong with this?

Barbie, your typical computer-savvy geek, keeps a flash drive with her backed up files. Remind me again what's wrong or unusual about this? So what if it's heart shaped?

Barbie accidentally infects her sister's computer after being careless with her USB drive. Umm, yeah. Been there, done that, lesson learned. Once again, what exactly is wrong here?

OH NOES! Her sister hit her with a pillow! How misogynistic! Maybe she should have used a crowbar? Or maybe, you know, she actually TRUSTS that Barbie can fix it, which is why she's not freaking out?

And it even gets worse! Her two friends help out as she tells them what needs to be done (hook the drive up to another computer and copy the files). How shameful that her friends are male! Naturally, if she doesn't do everything by herself she's not a full person. Time saving is obviously evil.

Sorry, but I just don't buy this critique.

Agreed that few things like pillow fighting are not at all misogynistic, but the title of the book should've been "Barbie The Game Designer" or similar. Saying that Barbie is a computer engineer and then having stuff like "Steven and Brian will do the coding" is nonsensical. Its like saying Barbie is an actress but Ron and Bob will play her character on stage. Make sense?

Also, at the end Barbie doesn't credit the guys for fixing the issue, and take all the credit in front of her sister.

While not all of it is against women, most of it is nonsensical, immoral and just something I wouldn't want to read to my girls if and when I have them.

Oh of course, the story is pretty lame, poorly thought out, and in general what you'd expect from a merchandising book mill on a budget. I'd be against buying it for my daughter on that principle alone.

It's fiction, that's supposed to be empowering to little girls. So, it can be about anything we want. They could have just as easily made her a designer and programmer. They could have just as easily made her capable of fixing her own computer.

I read it that she IS capable of fixing her own computer, but was directing others in said fixing in this story. As for not making her a designer and programmer, who can say? Maybe the author wanted to emphasize collaboration, like what typically happens in industry when you're in a decently sized company? We'll never know, and it's your typical low quality book mill pulp anyway, so one can't expect much in the way of consistency or storytelling. Worthy of a 1-star rating, not a whole blog post.

Showing collaboration is great, but in "I Can Be A Computer Engineer" she should be collaborating with artists, possibly a designer, possibly other coders to work with her. Not doing things that have little to nothing to do with computer engineering.

I design and code websites and games. If I get a virus, I fix it myself. I don't need my boyfriend or other males to do any of that for me. I do ask for help when I need it, but I try to keep this to a minimum. This "book" could have been written so many ways, and it makes me sad to see a woman continuing to write Barbie as a vacuous and powerless girl.

Yes you are right. But the title should reflect that.

> Barbie, a game DESIGNER

Where did you get "DESIGNER" from? The title of the book is "I Can Be a Computer Engineer"...

"Barbie, a game DESIGNER, is going to enlist a couple of code monkeys to implement her design. Remind me again what's wrong with this?"

Except they didn't call it "Barbie: I Can Be A Game Designer." As I said elsewhere, it's like "Barbie: I Can Be A Construction Worker" "Oh, I don't build the buildings, I just come up with ideas for what they should look like." Add some rigor and that's a totally valid career, but it's not being a construction worker.

"Barbie accidentally infects her sister's computer after being careless with her USB drive. Umm, yeah. Been there, done that, lesson learned. Once again, what exactly is wrong here?"

What's wrong here is that it's not a typical piece of doing work as a computer engineer (or a game designer). Does it happen ever? Yes. But it can happen just as well to anyone using computers - that portion of the book could as well be "Barbie: I Can Be An Author" or "Barbie: I Can Be An Accountant" - and Barbie The Computer Engineer should have a better sense of what to do about it.

I understand the issues they present in the article and don't disagree, but if you look at it from another angle, that book describes a scenario that plays out regardless of sex, I've seen plenty of times people who are in positions that don't know what to do, get help from others and take credit. In a way this book is describing what hard working individuals (male AND female) go through when they do the work and others take the credit, and in fact it's encouraging it. I'll admit, the book is rough (this comment solely based on what I read/saw on the link that is here).

Cached content in case it doesn't load: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MjsZEYT...

This page stays white loading until I hit stop. I assume because of the images.

w8.1x64 chrome 38.0.2125.11m x64

'Barbie' and 'f...' generate a lot internet traffic.

My daughter once broke the "family computer" trying to install "Barbie Dress Designer". In the late '90s, we had a relatively high-end computer with a reasonable hard drive but the kids had A LOT of software. When the installer told her there wasn't enough hard-drive space, she went looking for applications they didn't use and since "we never play win98", she deleted that folder. The computer was soon upgraded to WinXP and the kids had were provided with unprivileged accounts.

This unfortunate Barbie story has a happy ending ... my kids developed a fearlessness when using computers which is precisely what I'd hoped. Next spring my daughter will finish a combined undergrad/masters degree in Biology (she's a molecular geneticist) and switch universities for a doctorate program. She's had no problem understanding the general logic concepts involved in computer programming including a rigorous course in bioinformatics (using Python).

So how do we go from Barbie to CS? I'd say skip the Barbie completely, but if that won't work in your household, then temper it with equal time on nerdy pursuits. And if you ever run into the "Barbie Dress Designer" software? Buy stock in hot pink Inkject cartridges ... it will empty them at an amazing rate.

Wow that is so lame, I wonder if the author [1] of the book is a real person. Basically the author sends the message that all Barbie will ever be good for is design and sending the 'hard stuff' out to the boys to get done.

[1] http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/catalog/author.pperl?authori...

Seems fairly analogous to the Barbie story that this woman's website broke and now other people are jumping in to help.

well we killed pamie.com, (or was it Brian & Steven), so content reposted over at tumblr http://pamiedotcom.tumblr.com/post/102960377050/barbie-fucks...

They haven't rehosted the many images though, still linked to the server which has fell over.

And you wonder why only 20% of programmers are female.

EDIT: Love the Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Actress-Computer-Engineer-Barbie-Pictu...

This looks like a decent alternative: http://www.helloruby.com/ but it's a year off

Dear men. The book says "Barbie is a computer engineer". Please read the title again, it says "computer engineer", not "game designer". So Barbie is a computer engineer that doesn't know how to code. If that's not sexist, I don't know what is. That this submission gets flagged by HN users just makes me sad.

This post was killed by user flags, but since the thread is reasonable and people are reposting the story, we'll reopen it so discussion can continue.

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