Okay Geek Farm
Barbie's next Occupation: Computer Engineer
Ashley England
Mattel recently held an internet contest for Barbie to choose the bombshell blonde's newest career path. This was the first time Mattel has allowed the public to participate in selecting Barbie's occupation. Among the options were: environmentalist, surgeon, architect, news anchor, and... computer engineer! So 51 years and 124 different jobs later, Barbie will be gracing stores around fall or winter 2010 as Computer Engineer Barbie, to hopefully broaden the choices of careers for young girls in mass.
Originally, the contest ended with a dual win between computer engineer and anchor (which is also going out on store shelves), but computer engineer won by popular vote whilst anchor won via vote of young ladies. In lieu of popular vote, it can be speculated that computer engineer won as the overall trend of women perusing technology in a line of work has significantly declined with the ever popularized notion that scientists, mathematicians, or computer technicians are just lonely lab coat nerds that aren't popular and have no social standing. (I resent that remark, thank you! Minus the cool lab coat...)
Mattel even partnered with the Society of Women Engineers - such a society that I shamefully had no idea even existed, who helped design Barbie to be, yes, geektastic but still fashionable. So, to encourage impressionable girls that there is more to life than Twilight and Taylor Swift, Computer Engineer Barbie will throw caution to the wind and at least keep the female youth of today curious about those binary 0's and 1's, the grand eduction of science, and that computers don't just have to be a way to play Barbie's Grand Sparkly Horse Veterinarian Adventure 2.
Hear me my fellow fem-geeks, There is hope for the next generation yet!
Ash out.
