14 DAY TRIAL // No brand can exist today without dabbling a little with 'social media', or at least that the popular view. True or not, many brands are now using Twitter, Facebook and company to 'connect' with their customers, most of the times with less stellar results. Every once in a while one of them gets it right, the latest being toymaker giant Mattel, creator of the popular Barbie doll line, which held an online contest to determine Barbie's latest career. Half a million votes later, the voice of the people has been heard, Barbie will get to be a "computer engineer," in retrospect, perhaps the predictable choice for an online vote.
Mattel announced last week that the winners of its effort to spruce up the brand's image and the 125th and 126th careers would be News Anchor and Computer Engineer. The latter has sparked quite a heated debate in the tech community, mostly populated by male figures. With the number of women in tech-related jobs actually declining, many are quick to praise the move hoping it will clear away some of the stereotypes and maybe open a generation of girls to the idea of a profession in technology.
Others, though, were not so convinced because, well, Computer Engineer Barbie doesn't exactly look like the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this particular profession. She has all the right accessories, a laptop, a smartphone, even a Bluetooth headset and the must-have pink glasses. For extra geek-cred, she even sports a binary code patterned shirt. But this is Barbie after all and everything is in pink and other bright colors.
So the complaint is that the look is 'unrealistic' enough and still plays on old stereotypes. But, in the end, which one is the stereotype, that girls predominantly like pink or that girls in technology can't be too 'girlie'? This is a toy after all, it's not designed to be an accurate depiction of reality, if it did, you'd see a lot more depressed kids than we have already, and even with all the nitpicking, it's a healthy move for the tech industry and maybe even society as a whole.