Geek vs. Gorgeous

This is a post I've been meaning to write about for a little while. A few weeks ago, there was an article about a calendar intended to promote Women working in the IT industry and to encourage other young women to consider it as a career. The thinking behind the calendar and its images, was that many women get put off by the geeky stereotype of the industry and can't reconcile the idea that women can be both smart and sexy. I can relate to this perception. As an engineer, I've seen any number of times men's eyes glaze over (and in one case bow several times chanting "im not worthy", before hitting on my friend) and co-workers who think its a compliment to tell you you're one of the boys.

Whilst I admire the intent of the calendar and if you read behind the 'sexy' pictures, you see that they've got a wide variety of backgrounds and age groups, there's still a lot of issues with it. Mainly it doesn't address that men are often the worst offenders when it comes to accepting that women can be both smart and sexy, or even just accepting that the women they work with are capable of doing their job without obsessing about make-up/boys/shopping etc. Another personal example: A couple of months after I started a new job, one of the guys I worked with (it was all guys except for a secretary and me) started talking about the other people he'd seen coming in for the interviews. One of them was this gorgeous women that they all agreed could not be hired because she was so distracting to look at. When I tried to ask about her skills it was still just about her appearance. Of course the flip side of this, is that I was not attractive enough to be distracting. Naturally, this guy couldn't see why I felt insulted because I got the job after all. So far as these guys were concerned, me and this other woman could only be "geeky" OR "gorgeous", not both and more importantly, nor should we expect to. Maybe I or other women shouldn't be so upset about this focus on appearance, but regardless of skills the pressure is still on women to be physically attractive and desirable. There was some controversy regarding this calendar, with some people going great, good on you girls, others suggesting that it was just requiring women to conform to another stereotype and still others showing the inherent sexism in the industry. Freely admitting that he hadn't bothered to read the backgrounds, one guy stated that it was unlikely these women were real IT people, but just support staff, eg marketing, HR etc. Other trotted out the old line that women's brains weren't cut out for the work, or that obviously women just didn't want these jobs.

Women in IT. Ha what a joke! Every woman in IT is just taking the place of a
better man.
Stay in the house girls and leave the real work to the men!

Lets face it. Most guys dont like being hairdressers, its nothing to do with the image of a hairdresser & their pull factor. In fact, any male hairdresser ive known has been very popular with the ladies. Same goes for women in I.T. Most women dont enjoy tinkering with technology. Its genetic. Lets move on and stop trying to generalise the sexes too much.

"Girls and computers? I don't think so. I'd wager none of the girls in the calendar are hard-core techies. I guess IT is a wide industry but I'd speculate the ladies (or bimbos, as their calendar presents them) are recruiters, designers or otherwise engaged in creative or soft-skill fields."

However, back to the calendar, there is one photo in particular that creeps me out - the Princess Leia picture. You just know that this is the one that all the anti-social, IT, computer game playing (yes, I can stereotype too) male geeks are drooling over.