A Female PhD Student in Computing Re-Wrote That Horrible “Barbie Computer Engineer” Book and Made It Awesome

Yesterday, we told you about a new Barbie book called I Can Be A Computer Engineer, which—while it sounded so promising—actually taught girls that they need a man’s help in order to code games, or even just use a computer without breaking it, really. But fear not—awesome women to the rescue!

Casey Fiesler, a PhD student in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech, was not down with the content in this latest Barbie offering, so she decided to fix it herself (which she did using a computer without giving it a virus I believe). She’s writing her dissertation on copyright and online remix communities, and what she loves about the remix community is the theme of “If you don’t like the narrative, change it!”

So Fiesler went ahead and re-wrote the entire book with a much more positive message. You can download the whole thing for free right here, but here’s an idea of what you’ll find inside:

Barbie, Remixed is under a creative commons license, so continue to remix and share across the internet! Or you can create your very own version in no time with the Feminist Hacker Barbie website’s page generator.

C’mon, Barbie. You used to be an astronaut rock star. You should know better.

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