Gender choices, Barbie-style
January 7, 2006 by Laura | Trackback URI
Well, Barbie, the least PC doll on the market, in the sense that it promotes glamor and sexiness, has succumbed to political/gender correctness at least on the website. CWA sent out an email awhile back and I grabbed a screen shot with the intention of doing a post later. Then I got busy at work and forgot all about it until I saw the post at RightFaith on this issue.
I have to wonder what kind of person even thinks this garbage up. Any child of four - heck, way younger than that - knows if it is a girl or boy. Is it an honest mistake of a really stupid webmaster who has had no contact with little kids and thought he was being helpful? Some bizarre attempt at societal engineering? One of RightFaith’s commenters said that it was standard web practice, especially for corporate websites, to include an “I don’t know” option but I have to disagree. I’ve been building websites for a long time, and using the internet since there was one - heck, I started working for AOL back in ‘93 and was using Usenet l o n g before that. I still remember Archie, Veronica, and Gopher. This is the first time I’ve ever seen an “I don’t know” option for gender. Standard practice is to not make it a required field and include an option to leave it blank. The rules on under-13 websites don’t include regulations to require this, in any event. The whole thing seems very odd.
I’m also curious how many boys these days would browse the Barbie website. My brother’s only interest in my Barbie dolls was to use them as target practice or hostages for GI Joe, or to rip their heads off just to get a rise out of me. Times can’t have changed that much… can they?
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