
Barbie Fucks It Up Again - daigoba66
http://pamie.com/2014/11/barbie-fucks-it-up-again/
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Crito
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.

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kstenerud
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.

~~~
scott_s
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.

~~~
kstenerud
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.

~~~
dllthomas
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_.

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onaclov2000
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).

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daigoba66
Cached content in case it doesn't load:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MjsZEYT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MjsZEYTwdacJ:pamie.com/2014/11/barbie-
fucks-it-up-again/)

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

w8.1x64 chrome 38.0.2125.11m x64

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

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smoyer
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.

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ChuckMcM
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...](http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/catalog/author.pperl?authorid=160068)

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

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

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

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

EDIT: Love the Amazon reviews: [http://www.amazon.com/Actress-Computer-
Engineer-Barbie-Pictu...](http://www.amazon.com/Actress-Computer-Engineer-
Barbie-Pictureback/dp/0449816192)

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ultrasaurus
This looks like a decent alternative:
[http://www.helloruby.com/](http://www.helloruby.com/) but it's a year off

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Jean-Philipe
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.

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dang
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.

