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By Maya Dusenbery • @mayadusenbery • 10 years ago

New favorite meme: Feminist Hacker Barbie

feministhackerbarbie

Last week, the internet was disappointed to discover that, countary to the title, Mattel’s illustrated book Barbie: I Can be a Computer Engineer sends pretty much the opposite message. Instead, Barbie says things like: “I’m only creating the design ideas. I’ll need Steven’s and Brian’s help to turn it into a game.” She infects her sister’s computer with a virus and can’t even restart it on her own.

Enter Feminist Hacker Barbie.

Real-life computer programmer Kathleen Tuite launched a website where you can hack the original book, creating re-captioned and much improved images. Check out some more of the user-submitted images here.

St. Paul, MN

Maya Dusenbery is executive director in charge of editorial at Feministing. She is the author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick (HarperOne, March 2018). She has been a fellow at Mother Jones magazine and a columnist at Pacific Standard magazine. Her work has appeared in publications like Cosmopolitan.com, TheAtlantic.com, Bitch Magazine, as well as the anthology The Feminist Utopia Project. Before become a full-time journalist, she worked at the National Institute for Reproductive Health. A Minnesota native, she received her B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. After living in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Atlanta, she is currently based in the Twin Cities.

Maya Dusenbery is an executive director of Feministing and author of the forthcoming book Doing Harm on sexism in medicine.

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