Home > education, open source tools, rant, women in math > What the fucking shit, Barbie?

What the fucking shit, Barbie?

November 19, 2014

I’m back from Haiti! It was amazing and awesome, and please stand by for more about that, with cultural observations and possibly a slide show if you’re all well behaved.

Today, thanks to my math camp buddy Lenore Cowen, I am going to share with you an amazing blog post by Pamela Ribon. Her post is called Barbie Fucks It Up Again and it describes a Barbie book entitled Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer

The other book is called "I Can Be an Actress"

The other book is called “I Can Be an Actress”

Just to give you an idea of the plot, Barbie’s sister finds Barbie engaged on a project on her computer, and after asking her about it, Barbie responds:

“I’m only creating the design ideas,” Barbie says, laughing. “I’ll need Steven and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game!”

To which blogger Pamela Ribon comments:
What the fucking shit, Barbie?
Update: Please check out the amazing Amazon reviews of this book (hat tip Chris Wiggins).
BEST UPDATE EVER (hat tip Marko): BARBIE CAN CODE REMIXED
Categories: education, open source tools, rant, women in math
  1. Shecky R
    November 19, 2014 at 6:56 am

    …and maybe I shouldn’t even state the obvious, but the body shapes on Barbie and her friends… anorexic-a-little?

    Like

  2. wgersen
    November 19, 2014 at 10:05 am

    Thanks for sharing this… I forwarded it to my two adult daughters, my niece who is an education technology, and the young woman who serves as Director of Technology in our local school district…

    Like

  3. no one of consequence
    November 19, 2014 at 10:06 am

    The five star reviews are even better than the one star reviews

    Like

  4. ambeeson
    November 19, 2014 at 10:08 am
  5. medicalquackblog
    November 19, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    Thanks or this excellent share and retweeted it. By the way I’m Barbara and not Barbie, so this is not me..lol:) Sorry I just had to say that and it’s why I stick with my surname identity of being a “duck” instead, my real last name, although it too has created problems for me too, Google’s algorithm last year told me I was not machine name compliant and suspended me but there’s life beyond that too. Being a former developer, yes, I get this attitude and crap as well with even writing about Health IT as I’m not a member of that boys club, so it’s all over.

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  6. Marko
    November 19, 2014 at 2:26 pm
  7. Lauren
    November 19, 2014 at 4:18 pm

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    The Barbie Liberation Organization or BLO, sponsored by RTMark, are a group of artists and activists involved in culture jamming. They gained notoriety in 1993 by switching the voice boxes on talking G.I. Joes and Barbie dolls. The BLO performed “surgery” on a reported 300–500 dolls and then returned them to the shelves of stores, an action they refer to as shopgiving. This action resulted in girls opening their new Teen Talk Barbie to hear it say phrases such as “vengeance is mine” and boys hearing their G.I. Joe say “The beach is the place for summer.”[1]

    Like

  8. Dan Drake
    November 20, 2014 at 12:54 pm

    Mattel has pulled the book from Amazon: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/mattel-pulls-sexist-barbie-book-i-can-be-a-computer-engineer-off-amazon/

    A glimmer of hope for humanity?

    Like

  9. Simplicio
    November 20, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    Isn’t “Tux” the Linux penguin a Trademark?

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