EXPERTS have slammed a new Barbie doll incorporating a hidden video camera, as a potential paedophile's paradise.
Barbie Video Girl encourages children to get creative and film themselves playing.
A tiny camera is built into the doll's necklace.
The report fails to justify its rabid claim that paedophiles will be using this as their new 'paradise'. They get a quote from a clinical psychologist who says
"I am calling for all Australians to boycott this product and to refuse to shop in any store that justifies selling this potentially pornographic tool."
which is not quite the same thing, and a spokeswoman from the Australian Council on Children and the Media who describes the doll as "disturbing".
EoR wonders just how many girls already have mobile phones. With cameras in them. The horror.
Or how many potential paedophiles lurking right near your daughters have laptops. With cameras in them. The horror.
And how much of this is simple technophobia from adults who aren't digital natives and who feel threatened by the younger generations' ease of use with these devices?
The New York Times provides a more sober account of the new toy.
“Creepy!” said nearly every boy I showed her to; “Cool!” said the girls, who immediately got the idea of the toy — to make movies from Barbie’s point of view.
It's interesting to note that the "creepy" response in the Herald Sun was from a boy journalist. Rather than focusing on how technology might be abused (Shut down the internetz! There's pr0n on it!) shouldn't the fact that this toy seems to have a specifically female-oriented attraction, and is designed to provide an outlet for girls' creativity be celebrated?
Or perhaps we should only be giving girls toys that prepare them for their proper place in the world: pregnant, in the kitchen, and definitely not competing with men?
Actually, the only thing that EoR finds truly creepy about this toy is the New York Times' x-ray photo of it...
I found the "barbie and her dog" set much more disturbing. The dog came with food pellets that you put in the mouth, and when the toy dog's tail was lifted the pellets came out as poo. Barbie was a equipped with a pooper scooper too collect same and reconvert them to "food".
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the poor chinese assembly-line workers think of western society as they pack this stuff?
Harbo..are you serious? Have a terrible vision of Barbie reconverting via reverse cycle.
ReplyDeleteAs for the workers, if they remember past CPC campaigns it may not surprise them.