'Computer Engineer' Barbie book features her breaking two laptops

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The blog post that noticed the book.

Mattel's response:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/19/barbie-computer-engineer_n_6187554.html

Mattel Apologizes For Depicting Barbie As An Incompetent Computer Engineer

Barbie is sorry. In a posting on Mattel's Barbie Facebook page Wednesday, the iconic doll apologized for a 2010 children's book that portrays her failed attempt at becoming a computer engineer.

In Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer, Barbie is depicted as totally incompetent, dependent on the help of men and unable to even restart her computer.

"We believe girls should be empowered to understand that anything is possible and believe they live in a world without limits," Barbie's Facebook post says. 'We apologize that this book didn’t reflect that belief. All Barbie titles moving forward will be written to inspire girls imaginations and portray an empowered Barbie character.'

Customers have been posting negative reviews of the book on Amazon since 2013, but outrage on the Amazon listing and doll's Facebook page reached a critical mass after the book was flagged this week by the websites Pamie and Consumerist.
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Some literature:

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I worked in a bookstore in the children's section for a while. The store claimed that the books they carried were meant to inspire kids, to help them learn, and to be educational to everyone.

Except they carried these books. And all the damn Barbie books are horrible. All of them. They have some of the worst messages for young girls (and for boys, but I never saw a boy go near the Barbie section), and the stories are crap. Lazy, weak crap. There are thousands of other books with popular characters (that tie in to other merchandise) that are better than the Barbie books.
 
Ay yo barbie here is a tip, if that ken on ken video you downloaded has a file extension that looks like this -> ".avi.exe"
Then you're about to get trojaned.
 
I mean, reading the strip in the OP, it seems much less severe than people are making it out to be. It's not that she's 'incompetent' she just gets a virus on her computer and needs help getting it removed? Isn't that like everyone?

And so what if she needs two guys to help her turn it into a game? Isn't that more realistic than saying Barbie designed and coded a game all by herself?
 
CartridgeBlower said:
I mean, reading the strip in the OP, it seems much less severe than people are making it out to be. It's not that she's 'incompetent' she just gets a virus on her computer and needs help getting it removed? Isn't that like everyone?

And so what if she needs two guys to help her turn it into a game? Isn't that more realistic than saying Barbie designed and coded a game all by herself?
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Why

It's a made up story
 
If all of the storylines in all of the books featuring the character are going to be "Barbie fucks X up because she is worse at X than everyone else", maybe that's the part they should change instead of trying different subjects X every time.
 
CartridgeBlower said:
I mean, reading the strip in the OP, it seems much less severe than people are making it out to be. It's not that she's 'incompetent' she just gets a virus on her computer and needs help getting it removed? Isn't that like everyone?

And so what if she needs two guys to help her turn it into a game? Isn't that more realistic than saying Barbie designed and coded a game all by herself?
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In a book presumably about female empowerment, that she is incompetent and always needs men to do the work is a pretty bad signal to send, yes.
 
Cosmo Clock 21 said:
In a book presumably about female empowerment, that she is incompetent and always needs men to do the work is a pretty bad signal to send, yes.
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She's incompetent because she got a virus? Pretty sure the angle there is that it isn't her fault. And needing help on creating a game doesnt make someone incompetent.
 
OddMorsel said:
She's incompetent because she got a virus? Pretty sure the angle there is that it isn't her fault. And needing help on creating a game doesnt make someone incompetent.
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If you evaluate it in a vacuum this might be okay but as it stands it's re-enforcing a mountain of other cultural cues.
 
Somnid said:
If you evaluate it in a vacuum this might be okay but as it stands it's re-enforcing a mountain of other cultural cues.
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Amazing how this needs to be spelled out every time. It's like saying there's nothing wrong with the damsel in distress trope because, "what's wrong with helping the poor princess? you want her to die instead?". Ugh, that's not the fucking point.
 
It's weird because in many places you're like, ok this is great! Then they just write in some random WTF moments as she troubleshoots the problem. Like there were two authors. One from the 1950s and one modern one.

Really weird.
 
OddMorsel said:
She's incompetent because she got a virus? Pretty sure the angle there is that it isn't her fault. And needing help on creating a game doesnt make someone incompetent.
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Let's just look at the virus part (beyond the author apparently thinking it's 2002). Barbie needs her little sister to explain that she seemingly has a malware infection. Barbie responds to this by plugging in her backup flash drive into a clean machine without any kind of precautions.

On the game part: She's only designing it. She needs the help of two guys to actually make it.

So yeah, computer engineer my ass. More like Where's the Any Key Barbie.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
Amazing how this needs to be spelled out every time. It's like saying there's nothing wrong with the damsel in distress trope because, "what's wrong with helping the poor princess? you want her to die instead?". Ugh, that's not the fucking point.
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So we should overcompensate in the other direction every single time instead of just starting from a blank slate and telling more realistic stories to and for girls, like this one was trying to do?
 
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