This month, an unusual new Barbie was born—Computer Engineer Barbie, chosen by popular vote on barbie.com. For the first time ever, you can get a Barbie with her own little laptop.
When I first saw a photo of the doll, I was aghast at her outfit, which seemed garish and drastically outdated for a doll so famous for being fashionable. The press release said she was supposed to represent “geek chic.” I decided to indulge in a little redesign.
First, I swapped the unflattering pink-rimmed glasses for some black ones. I replaced the unlikely Bluetooth headset with some noise-cancelling headphones. The crazy binary-print top complete with flying keyboard keys spelling out “Barbie” was exchanged for a standard tee with just enough binary for the letter B, along with a nice pink hoodie. Finally, the wrist-watch (which actually has a funky circuit board pattern, but seems redundant when you’re always staring at your laptop or cell phone) was swapped for a coffee mug, and I put some command line windows up on the laptop screen.
Anyway! Aside from all this nitpicking (and ignoring the bigger question of Barbie’s overall effect on young girls), I’m really excited about this new variant of Barbie. Every career Barbie has been a cartoonish, glittery representation of the career, and that’s okay; it’s targeting girls who would be attracted to Barbie in the first place, after all. It’s awesome that Barbie now has a computer. I’m happy that millions of girls will see this doll on the shelf and feel that it’s acceptable or even cool for a girl to work on computers. I hope this influences girls to ask for a computer at an earlier age—maybe before their male siblings do, even. It’s really quite impressive that Mattel produces career Barbies at all. I’m sure they don’t sell half as well as the Barbies that come with a unicorn and a glittery princess gown.
Discussions on geek Barbie have brought up some important points about stereotypes. Some people seem to believe that because this new Barbie is so pink and feminine, she couldn’t be an actual computer engineer. In reality, we female engineers range anywhere from highly fashionable to totally tomboyish. I recommend reading through the presentation “I’m a Barbie Girl in a CS World” to see how much of a hurdle the nerdy/boyish stereotype can be for some of us.
I’ve usually worn a t-shirt and jeans to conferences so that I’d look like an average developer rather than a passerby or somebody’s girlfriend who was dragged along. (Yes, I have been asked whether or not I’m a developer. It’s irritating.) However, I also love wearing feminine outfits and I’m interested in both mainstream and alternative fashion, the latter of which has had a lot of influence on my personal style.
I’m starting to loosen up now and wear whatever I want to tech events. One of the nice things about not working for any company besides my own is that I don’t have to represent anyone but myself. By representing myself rather than a stereotype, stereotypes that involve me can become more accurate. One of these days, I hope the US developer community becomes so diverse that these stereotypes weaken and don’t hinder people from joining the field anymore.
(It’s not impossible. There are actually places in the world where these stereotypes don’t exist, and there are also countries with equal numbers of males and females working in technological fields. Egypt is one example.)
Over at the excellent Devchix mailing list, we discussed these topics at length. One person suggested that we blog photos of ourselves coming into work in order to help people see the diversity in the appearance and dress of female programmers. I’ve never posted a photo of myself here—something about pointing to my appearance feels risky—but I realized that if all women worried about this, and thus shrouded their inherent femaleness, it would only exaggerate the gender imbalance in the industry, and stereotypes would continue to go unchallenged.
One of the last tech conferences I attended was about 1% female—and I talked to people who literally knew no female developers back home. it’s hard to blame people for making inaccurate assumptions about female developers if they’ve seen so few of them.
So here’s a photo of me. There might even be more in the future. :)
At the Stables Market in Camden Town, UK.
We met back at nsconference (both iterations), but that’s not important right now. I go to the Stables Market a few times a year, and since the refurbishment often tell people “I’ll meet you by the huge horse’s head”. You are ably demonstrating the phenomenon :)
::laughing throughout:: I really appreciate that you basically used the same color palette as Mattel did. The wristwatch comment is spot-on, though the coffee mug may fuel the popular notion that people in computer science are nocturnal caffeine addicts, as opposed to productive (sometimes ultra-productive) individuals who may be fastidious about getting sun exposure and maintaining panache/general hygiene/etc.
Though I suppose having CEBarbie holding a (buttonless, I suppose) smartphone in her left hand might be a bit heavy-handed.
Not surprisingly, this all reminds me of the sociology concept of having a “Master Status” — the one thing that describes you over anything, and which varies from one environment to the next. At a 99:1 boy-girl ratio dev-con, you are probably “WOMAN” even before you are “ASIAN” even before you’re, even, “HEY, ISN’T SHE WITH WOLF!?” If I didn’t send you my wheelchair paper yet (the first part of it, anyway), I need to make sure I do that.
But anyway, the unfortunate/interesting/etc truth is that you do represent not a company, but multiple demographics of people who share your characteristics. You are an Asian woman, and you are someone’s girlfriend, though not just, and you show up at places on your own accord (oh, String Ensemble concert next Thursday at 7pm at Wentz ::grin:: - just in case you were making a Naperville run anytime soon. By the way, did I tell you about my upcoming poetry reading?).
Until you mentioned it, I didn’t really think about the seriousness of you choosing to put a photo up or not. I guess with Facebook and, uh, “gi Victoria Wang” I assume we’ve left the era where our parents don’t let us have identifiable web presences. But you make a good point — there must be some pressure when you’re attempting to produce a trans-disciplinary blog, to avoid singling it out on any terms but merit.
No wonder you check every line
And angry wince at the mention
Of iJustine. To be noticed or not
The giant horsehead pleads us
Needs us to stand by our purple hair
And make our own master status
Giant, bronze, and neighing
XX- Sino- hacker painter prophets
And exhorts her industry to move.
I would much rather buy your design than Mattel’s for my daughter. It is a much more realistic portrayal, that’s for sure. But since her mom doesn’t like her having Barbies in the first place, I’ll just stick to our little logo sessions :-)
Maybe Mattel should make bubble sorting fairies. Now THAT is a good idea. :-)
Wonderful article, such a deep topic. Just spent an hour to see where I can buy one of those Barbies. I want to take it to geek conferences :) Can you buy them outside of the US?
Pamela Fox’s presentation is also very interesting. The Rubik’s Cube ear ring (p16) cracked me up ^^
Anyway, if a woman walked into my office wearing Mattel’s design, I would have to ask her where the fancy-dress ball is. Or if she lost a bet. But while you’re redesign is more realistic (quite nice, although I would swap the laptop with a backpack), it’s just not Barbie enough.
Let’s try a different angle: Even male hackers/computer scientists in mainstream movies are mostly totally unrealistic, but such role models still helped to create a “cool” halo around male computer engineers. I assume exaggerated role models are simply more powerful. Fiction inspires; documentary merely teaches. Mattel’s barbie is sexy, flashy, and surely looks confident and smart to girls. They will be meeting a real “computer woman” soon enough in their lifes, and asking her whether her laptop is really pink may start their very first geek conversation ;)
Still, I seriously doubt that 6-year-old girls can associate with binary codes or PCBs. Didn’t they do this more for the press (I’m sure they get a lot)? That laptop screen spells “a” and “i” in ASCII - artificial intelligence? Maybe it’s a real easter egg…
About the photo: You’re really pretty :) And to paraphrase Guybrush Threepwood, “That’s the second-largest horse head I’ve ever seen.”
About fitting in, fashion, and stereotypes: I never imagined women into tech would change their style to fit in. I thought that they just wear shirts and jeans because it comes naturally when you are a nerd. (Or because, with less other women around, they didn’t want to expose too much to the drooling mob of pervy and totally unattractive male colleagues. Or because girls that care about fashion would never go into CS. And more stupid ideas.) Thanks for explaining, I really learned something here!
Stereotypes are handy, but dangerous. Fighting them by spreading reality is a great idea. Pictures are a great way to do this. And it may be easy to reach a wider audience for the discussion: Right now, with 1% women in the developer field, each one is recognized easily. Fame to the pioneers!
@Weien: Yep re: master status. There’s imbalances in racial aspects too though, so some diversity groups try to reach out to both women and racial minorities. And I already said it but: awesome poem!! :D :D
@Murphy: You can preorder the barbie here; it ships in October. That’s a great point about flashy, exaggerated role models. Thanks for your thoughts :)