Media Report to Women, The Blog
Commentary by Sheila Gibbons, Editor of the quarterly Media Report to Women (www.mediareporttowomen.com)
Barbie 'Computer Engineer' Book Infuriates Parents
So much for empowerment. Mattel icon Barbie, long known for her independence and career versatility, turns out to be hopeless at computer engineering -- a lucrative career field that still has far too many women in it. Based on the content of I Can Be A Computer Engineer, Barbie's not going to be one of them.
That's because, in Taylor Lorenz's review of the book, "She is portrayed as an inept programmer who inadvertently plagues her friend's computer with a virus and can't fix a bug without help from a man."
Lorenz says parental criticism has harmed sales, but my check of Amazon says the paperback edition of the book, paired with I Can Be An Actress, is temporarily out of stock. So someone's buying it -- lots of someones, unfortunately. Or perhaps Amazon has quietly stuck it in a dark corner, where it belongs.
As dispiriting as the insipid content is the fact that the book was written by a woman, Susan Marenco, who has co-authored two other Barbie achiever books, Pastry Chef and Lifeguard.
If girls don't like the book, they can console themselves with a Barbie Computer Programmer doll, who -- of course -- has a pink laptop.
UPDATE NOV. 20: Mattel has apologized for the content of this book: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/19/mattel-pulls-sexist-barbie-book-i-can-be-a-computer-engineer-off-amazon/
and you can suggest improvements to it here: https://computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com/
Posted by Sheila Gibbons at 10:17 AM 2 comments:
Media Report to Women
Barbie 'Computer Engineer' Book Infuriates Parents...
Sheila Gibbons
Media Report to Women Editor Sheila Gibbons has been studying the interaction of women and media since the early 1970s, and has written extensive commentary and analysis about this subject. She is the co-author of Taking Their Place: A Documentary History of Women and Journalism (Strata Publishing, 2002) and of Exploring Mass Media: Past, Present, Future (Lawrence Erlbaum). Sheila is the former director of public affairs for Gannett Co., Inc., where she was also a news editor. She has also edited a special-market women's magazine and taught journalism at the University of Maryland.