jym%mica.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.berkeley.EDU (Jym Dyer) (06/06/91)
o+o The attached is from Desperado, a wonderful on-line magazine
started by a wonderful tech writer at DEC.
<_Jym_>
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From: MRKTNG::DUGDALE "Susan Dugdale, VMS Service Product Management"
To: CLOSET::T_PARMENTER
Subj: For Desperado
While I can't say that I particularly think of Desperado as a feminist rag,
the following excerpt from the New Hampshire NOW Newsletter was so
outrageous that I had to share it. So as my first ever contribution, I
offer you ...
Parker Brothers' New Game "Careers for Girls"
The head of the US Small Business Administration cited Parker Brothers as
showing "insensitivity to modern realities" in a game that lists "supermom"
and schoolteacher as key careers for girls. SBA Administrator Susan
Engeleiter stated, "Parker Brothers is sending the wrong message to young
girls. Even Barbie dolls come with business suits these days."
"Careers for Girls" is a new board game targeted for girls ages 8-12.
Players select from six "careers": supermom, schoolteacher, rock star,
fashion designer, college graduate, and animal doctor. Instructions for
the game, packaged in a hot pink box, include "Show us how you slow dance
with your main squeeze," "Describe your dream husband," "Tell us the names
of your eight children," and "Burn all your chocolate chip cookies."
Parker Brothers' spokesperson Patricia McGovern stressed that the game is
purely for entertainment and "is certainly not to communicate that only
certain careers are limited to women." The game was designed by a woman,
art was managed by a woman, and the product manager was a woman, she said.
Ironically, "Careers for Girls" is an update of the 1957 version that
listed such professions as big business, prospecting, politics, going to
sea, expedition to the moon, farming, Hollywood, and college.
-*-
I just wish someone had told me that "college graduate" was a career. I
would have quit while I was ahead.
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Please think of Desperado as a feminist rag. We're all for more everything
good and less everything bad over here. As we used to say back in the 60s,
"Life to the Life Culture and Death to the Death Culture".
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Not an official publication. Forward with daring and whimsy. Circle the earthnadel@aero.org (M.H. Nadel) (06/08/91)
> >Parker Brothers' spokesperson Patricia McGovern stressed that the game is >purely for entertainment and "is certainly not to communicate that only >certain careers are limited to women." The game was designed by a woman, >art was managed by a woman, and the product manager was a woman, she said. Working Woman magazine had a brief piece on this game a few months back. The reporter persisted in trying to talk to people who actually designed and produced the game. Despite having been told repeatedly that all of the people involved were women, when the reporter finally did get to the game design group, it turned out the game was designed by a man. Not that that makes it any worse, actually, but it's interesting that Parker Brothers thinks that letting people know that would turn them off. > >I just wish someone had told me that "college graduate" was a career. I >would have quit while I was ahead. Actually college was one of the choices in the original game (I played it as a kid and always had a rough time deciding between astronaut and uranium prospector :-) ) but it wasn't enough to win. You had to have either completed college or gotten certain experience points before you could enter some of the careers. For example, you needed either a college degree or some number of science experience points to sign up for the moon mission. Each career got you certain points in three categories - money, fame and happiness and, at the beginning of the game, you had decided on how to divide up 100 points between those as your formula for success. (Most people divided them up roughly equally, but Jill Robinson wrote in _Bed/Time/Story_ that she always went entirely for fame, figuring that if you were famous money and happiness would follow.) Incidentally, I've heard the Careers for Girls version is *not* selling well. I hope Parker Brothers is as humiliated as Lionel was by their "girl's train" with pastel pink, blue and yellow cars. That was back in the 40's I think and girls who were brave enough to play with toy trains then wanted trains that were normal, not this pastel nonsense. Miriam (Pink is Evil) Nadel -- "The dollar fell sharply today, slightly injuring a New Yorker on his way to work." - Nicole Hollander nadel@aerospace.aero.org