Geek can be chic

UNITED STATES: Are you in need of a career change? Barbie, the world’s best-selling doll, has had 124 of them. Now, she’s becoming a geek by popular vote. But was this really decided by little girls?

Barbie entered the toy market in 1959 as a teenager and soon made her first career move as a teenage fashion model. Since then, Barbie has taken a few very modern career decisions. In 1965, for example, she became an astronaut four years before the first man landed on the moon.

To help with her most recent choice, the US toy maker, Mattel, asked fans to vote in an online poll on Barbie’s website this January. The question was: should Barbie become an architect, anchorwoman, computer engineer, environmentalist or surgeon?

At first, the votes showed a tendency towards the anchorwoman. Then, female engineers started a viral campaign on the web to encourage votes for computer engineer as Barbie's next career move. They wrote about it on blogs such as GeekGirlCamp.com.

The computer-engineer Barbie won by popular vote.

More than 600,000 votes were cast, and the computer-engineer Barbie won. Geek can be chic! Her design includes a mini-headset, pink glasses and a T-shirt with “Barbie” printed on it in binary code. “I found the pink [elements of the design] condescending,”  Veronica Belmont, producer of an online-technology video show, told The Wall Street Journal, “But if it will get little girls' attention and get them to play with computers, it’s a good start.”