Hard-working Barbie is adding two more careers to her
long resume — news anchor and computer engineer.
The
two new ventures for the world's most popular fashion doll
were chosen for the first time by the public, who cast more
than 500,000 votes to select Barbie's 125th and 126th
careers, toymaker Mattel said on Friday.
The popular
vote went to Computer Engineer Barbie, who will be launched
in the fall of 2010 looking "geek chic" in a binary
code-patterned T-shirt, pink-framed glasses, a pink laptop
and a Bluetooth earpiece.
Funny... but I think that if it were
authentic... the glasses would be black and not a trendy
pink color... =]
dual monitors... and a
laptop... its not a data phone, though...
The binary on the computer
screens is pretty funny...
Here's what WIRED had to say:
The takeover of the world by
geeks has just made another giant leap forward. Yesterday,
Mattel announced that, as a result of a poll of fans, for
Barbie’s next career, she will be a computer engineer.
We at GeekDad are all for anything that might encourage
girls to pursue tech careers when they grow up, and this new
Barbie might just fit the bill. We especially like that its
accessories were chosen with help from the Society of Women
Engineers and the National Academy of Engineering, which
explains the geek chic shirt with the binary code all over
it, and the smartphone with Bluetooth headset.
We’re
concerned, however, that the doll will create unrealistic
expectations of what a job as a software engineer actually
entails. Some of these expectations may be encouraging and
some discouraging. For instance, Computer Engineer Barbie
is, like most (if not all) Barbies, wearing high heels,
which seems a ridiculously uncomfortable shoe choice for a
job where nobody really cares what you’re wearing so long as
it’s decent.
Here, then, are five ideas that we think
would make Computer Engineer Barbie more realistic (in no
particular order):
1. The choice of a coffee cup or
Mountain Dew can that, once put in her hand, can’t be
removed for two hours.
2. A cubicle farm playset,
with optional foosball table.
3. A switch to turn on
dark circles under Barbie’s eyes from having worked until
2:00AM three days in a row to get all the bugs fixed before
the new release is deployed.
4. A wrist brace for
when Barbie gets carpal tunnel syndrome.
5. The
choice between Mac Computer Engineer Barbie, Windows
Computer Engineer Barbie, and Linux Computer Engineer
Barbie. Then they could publicize the sales figures daily to
encourage geek parents to buy the version they want to win
for their kids.
Read More
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/02/5-ideas-to-make-computer-engineer-barbie-realistic
