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There has been a fair amount of comment on a video called "Science--it's a girl thing" that was intended to encourage teen girls to stay interested in science. Unfortunately it went about this, I am told, by having beautiful young women dressed to attract sexual interest dancing in lab-like backgrounds under the approving gaze of an older man in a lab coat.
My thoughts on this are that the best way to keep teen girls from dropping out of science might be to show diverse women doing interesting science. Because let's face it---the girls you want to attract to science are the girls who like *science*--if they're in it for the lipstick, they're not going to stick with it. It's okay to have *one* of the women shown be a Hot Chick, because that's part of diversity, as long as 1) she's there for the science, not the men, and 2) she doesn't get special rewards onscreen, like extra male attention or extra status, or extra airtime. But you really need enough diversity that a fat girl or a girl of color or a disabled girl can all say to themselves "people like me can do that--it's not just for" fill-in-the-blank. Because when they're saying it, you can bet the straight white girls have got the message too.
And yeah, you need a fair amount of airtime to deal with all these things. But folks--it's not just one commercial that should be handling it. It's everything. The Bechdel movie measure is still relevant, and it shouldn't be. And while it's specifically about women, the problem it points up--that some sets of people are presented for our attention way out of proportion to their numbers, while others are effectively shrouded away from sight and relegated at best to specific limited roles--applies to way more than just women.
So anyway--I realize I'm Jenny-behind-the-fair on this, but now that my life is not all-album all the time I thought I'd mention it.
My thoughts on this are that the best way to keep teen girls from dropping out of science might be to show diverse women doing interesting science. Because let's face it---the girls you want to attract to science are the girls who like *science*--if they're in it for the lipstick, they're not going to stick with it. It's okay to have *one* of the women shown be a Hot Chick, because that's part of diversity, as long as 1) she's there for the science, not the men, and 2) she doesn't get special rewards onscreen, like extra male attention or extra status, or extra airtime. But you really need enough diversity that a fat girl or a girl of color or a disabled girl can all say to themselves "people like me can do that--it's not just for" fill-in-the-blank. Because when they're saying it, you can bet the straight white girls have got the message too.
And yeah, you need a fair amount of airtime to deal with all these things. But folks--it's not just one commercial that should be handling it. It's everything. The Bechdel movie measure is still relevant, and it shouldn't be. And while it's specifically about women, the problem it points up--that some sets of people are presented for our attention way out of proportion to their numbers, while others are effectively shrouded away from sight and relegated at best to specific limited roles--applies to way more than just women.
So anyway--I realize I'm Jenny-behind-the-fair on this, but now that my life is not all-album all the time I thought I'd mention it.
