There was a child’s t-shirt sold years ago that was colored pink, and said “Math Is Hard!” with a picture of a Barbie Doll. Mothers went ballistic, saying it was sexist to even imply that a girl would have trouble at math. They weren’t saying that, but the shirts were removed from the markets anyway. Now this!
One of my grandsons has on his computer screen “I like Math”
at the top, then “It makes people cry.” at the bottom.
The story is juicier than that. In 1992, Mattel came out with a talking Barbie doll. She said almost 300 phrases such “I love shopping!” and Let’s have a pizza party” and “Math class is tough!” On that one, women libbers went completely nuts, or should we say, more nuts than normal.
Mattel caved and offered buyers a replacement Barbie who thought math was fun. Smart shoppers, almost no one turned in their old Barbie for the sterilized version. Those Barbies are now big collector’s items and sell for over $1,000. Mattel made 100,000 of them before they were pulled.