Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Barbie's Confused

A third gender choice available to young participants of a poll on the Barbie doll website was changed after initially offering children the options of "I am a Girl," "I am a Boy," and "I don't know" – eliciting charges that Mattel, the company that owns Barbie, is intentionally promoting gender confusing among kids.

Apparently due to the criticism, the third gender option has now been changed to "I don't want to say."

"I don't know?" OK, if you're old enough to go online & vote on whether or not Barbie should have breast augmentation surgery, you're certainly old enough to determine your own sex. If you don't know if you're male or female, you're either a hermaphrodite, brain dead, an extraterrestrial, or yer parents didn't learn you right.

I doubt this was a mistake on Mattel's part. If it was, it was a rather obvious one. It's curious that no change to the poll was made until the complaints began pouring in.

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