Tuesday, 16 February 2010

Geek Barbie = FAIL

She wears pink. No self-respecting girl-geek wears pink.

She has a T-shirt and a laptop with binary on it. That would be OK, if it was obviously in homage to The Matrix, but it isn't - it's just obvious that the designers of her outfit thought that you're still likely to see binary on someone's desktop. She should have a t-shirt with GOT ROOT printed on it, or maybe SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE CLUE > 0 - perhaps ThinkGeek could produce a range of T-shirts for her. And her laptop should have some code on it, maybe some Java or UML.

She works in tech-support. This is a perfectly respectable choice for someone who is just starting out in the world of IT, but someone who has been around since 1959 should be at the top of her game by now - a respected über-geek who gets invited to give keynote speeches at geeky conferences. I mean, I know she has had a number of other careers, but still.

The BBC article about this suggests that her wearing glasses is a bit stereotypical, but on the other hand, glasses do make people look brainy, and quite often, they actually are brainy (I wear glasses, for instance, and I am brainy).

According to the Women in Technology article, geeky Barbie's accessories were created in conjunction with the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering. Really?! Then why are they so naff?
Nora Lin, president of the Society of Women Engineers, said: "Girls who discover their futures through Barbie will learn that they - just like engineers - are free to explore infinite possibilities and that their dreams can go as far as their imaginations take them.

"As a computer engineer, Barbie will show girls that women can design products that have an important and positive impact on people's everyday lives, such as inventing a technology to conserve home energy or programming a newborn monitoring device."
Oh yeah? Then why isn't she a programmer, or a network manager, or a systems administrator, or a web developer?

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