Barbie

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/barbies-next-career-computer-engineer/?scp=2&sq=barbie&st=cse

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/02/15/barbie-becomes-computer-engineer/1


Amanda Eccleston

Barbie has been and will continue to be one of the most important and enduring toys within the doll industry. Since the 50’s, when Barbie originated, women have been fighting for the rights of equal rights and respect while one of the most influential toys for young girls is programmed to say things like “I love shopping.” There has been much controversy over this “role model” for your girls not only in what the figure represents but also in the lack of diversity that it represents, when it comes to race, class and body shapes and sizes. Some would argue, however, that Barbie has gradually changes with the times and one of the most recent articles that would justify this was in the New York Times on February 12, 2010 and was titled “Barbie’s Next Career? Computer Science.”
The Article, by Claire Cain Miller, begins with a famous, degrading quote that Barbie has become known for, “Math class is tough.” Throughout history this toy has played into the stereotypes of women and in this instance, draws upon the absence of women in math and engineering related majors and professions. Men have dominated these fields and there have been few women to break into them and there is no clear reason as to why. Previously, Barbie worked in very gender divided professions however recently there has been a push to move Barbie from an aerobics instructor into more high powered professions so that young girls might be influenced to be more. In this article it was recently discussed how Barbie’s new profession was chosen by over half a million fans to be Computer Science. And although there has already been debate over the attire and accessories, Mattel makes a point to say that it was all chosen with the help of the Society of Women Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering. This career move has thrilled the women of the profession with the argument that “We can use any sort of positive influence that we have, because the number of girls studying programming is abysmal,” This article does an interesting job at looking at the positive side of this article and although it is a positive thing to see progression in an industry that have proven to be extremely sexist, I want to draw on the comments section to show how far we have NOT come.
Many women in this field were happy to see the way this profession was represented by Mattel however was not taken very seriously by the readers of the article. First of all there was a very negative reaction to the style of dress that this Barbie was wearing. “Computer Engineer Barbie still has her trademark cascade of blond hair, impossibly small waist, feet frozen on tiptoes to slide into her high heels and a whole lot of hot pink.” Baumgardner and Richards would not argue this as something negative, they would see this as successful, intelligent women embracing the girly culture by allowing traditionally feminine things to be seen as powerful. Through this the women in the Engineering field who chose their attire could be seen as using these stereotypical colors and beauty trademarks to empower what is naturally womanhood. However this could be viewed much differently because what these women see as a means to promote femininity in the profession is seen as merely a joke or as sexual objects by men in that same field. Majority of the comments to the article consisted of sexual comments by men, from simple comments like “she is hot” or “hubba hubba” to one guy who actually made a porn plot out of the thought of an attractive women working in computer science and then finished it off by saying, “Then their system suffered a serious hard drive failure which resulted in a huge order from an important customer was lost costing Ken's company millions of dollars…You see Mattel what happens when you put hot chicks in IT jobs!” His attitude is the reason why women need to act like men in order to survive in a successful job because our patriarchal society makes it impossible to get past the stereotypes that go along with having feminine qualities. It is comments like this, however, that make it hard to believe the arguments of Johnson that men’s attitudes are a product of our society as well because such blatant ignorance cannot be justified in a societal sense. However it could be easily argued that because the women in this profession want to be viewed as sexy and smart that they over feminized the appearance of the doll and therefore succumb and are trapped in the very system that oppresses them. They strive for the male approval and it is so subconscious that they think they are making these decisions that will benefit women when really they are accomplishing the opposite. It is hard not to completely agree with Levy in that it is hard for women to break out of this mold because we are so imbedded in society that to go against the norm is detrimental to status and how both men and women see you. One man posted a comment that said “hahaha representative of a real [female] computer engineer….closer to reality perhaps http://www.damnfunnypictures.com/weird/14000/fat-barbie-doll/” In some sense we can look at Computer Science Barbie as a step in the right direction for promoting and showing women that they have the same opportunities as men, however on the other hand it proves how quick we are, still, to sexualize or make a joke out of anything that involved a woman and success. It is not the Barbie at all that represents the gendered struggles in our society; it is the male and often female response to these very serious issues that need to be noticed and restructured.