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Barbie the Spy!
Alfredo Lopez
For many reading this, there are two concepts that offend.
One is surveillance, about which we've written often on this site. The other is the Barbie doll: the ubiquitous doll that has for decades molded girls' concept of “the perfect female” as an impossible to achieve figure derived from sexist fantasy and taught them that their lives should be about dressing up and attracting the attention of a boring male named “Ken”.
There are, of course, many other offensive things going on in the world but these two catch the writer's attention because, in a product toy-maker Matel is introducing to the market this Fall, they are combined. Barbie, the girl you can never be (and shouldn't ever want to be), is now a spy.
Hello Barbie: Reporting for Duty
The company introduced its new doll, called “Hello Barbie” at a February trade fair in New York and…well, you can't make this stuff up.
The doll can converse with you (or with your child unless you play with dolls) and record the answers. It then transmits these answers to a data-bank at the company's headquarters and stores them under the child's name and other personal information, then analyzes this data and responds to it…immediately or months later. It has profiled your child and turned the child into an information gathering source.
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Source: http://thiscantbehappening.net/barbiespy
