Day Nineteen

It is easy to make missteps when you’re trying to help someone.. We all do it. Today I would like to explore a misstep I was watching today, watching and cringing.

A GIRL THING

I was watching a video today. It was an older video, a couple of years at least, made by the European Commission to help persuade girls to go into science. Now, these are people who have their hearts in the right place. They are allies. So it must be something useful, right? No. This video is a good indication of how people constantly get it wrong.

The video shows a group of women, glamorous, with high heels, make up, and tight skirts. Everything a ‘girl’ should be, right? There is a man at a microscope; he notices the glamor girls. The video shows an occasional petri dish or mathematical formula, but it is mostly the women posing in various sexy positions, showing off their figures and their hair. The video ends with the words “Science, It’s a Girl Thing”.

Now forgive me for being the fun-killing old chaperone aunt, but there’s something seriously wrong with this. First, the outfits. No woman in her right mind would go into a laboratory dressed like that. If she did, it would be a violation of OSHA regulations, not to mention it’s damned uncomfortable to do science in stiletto heels. (I’m assuming it is; I never wore anything but flats into the lab.) Science is not a glamor girl occupation; it is a hard-working, serious enterprise. You can have fun, of course, and even flirt if you want, I suppose, but you must be sensible in how you dress and how you handle equipment and specimens.

That’s another thing. While one or two of the shots show women actually doing things, most of the actual science is divorced from the women, who, like I said, are posing like models while sciency things flash past almost too fast to see. The women? They are there to be seen. The science? Not so much. So the guy in the video is doing science; the women are posing in front of it. And so much pink! Yeah, some things in science are pink, or pinkish, such as some species of bacteria when they are stained, and lots of flowers in bloom. But come on…let’s get real.

Finally, there’s that word again…girl. These are plainly not girls. They are women. Why must fully grown, adult women continually be referred to as girls? This is a form of putting us in our place more insidious even than the dresses, the shoes, the posing, and the pink. It is a reference to women as children, not fully grown. This is the view men had of women throughout a large portion of history; in some cultures, this is still the view of women, that they are children who must be treated like children. Not cool.

Keep in mind, this video was made by adult professional people, people who are on the side of getting more women into science. Why could they not see this? Why did they make such an insulting, infantile video for ‘girls’?

In my experience, very few people recognize the impact of socialization on their views of sex roles. Even those who are enlightened enough to believe that women are fully people, and that they are capable of doing things they used to be prevented from doing still have certain views of women that are so deep and so entrenched they don’t see them, but they do act on them. Both men and women have normalized a view of women that has been fed to us since infancy, and we continue to operate as though it is the truth, even when we know it is not. Our intellect cannot always (or even often) override our ingrained behaviors.

Most people don’t realize they are doing that. It’s just what women are to them, because it’s what they’ve been taught. It isn’t thought about or reasoned through, it just bubbles up from some interior stew pot of ideas that simmer unnoticed until we’re ready for them. In order to escape from these ideas and behaviors, we have to make a concentrated effort. And it’s hard. I know; I’ve been working on that for years, trying to weed out all the invasive ideas my mother planted when I was young. I’m not there yet, but I am working on it.

How do we get beyond these offensive and insulting stereotypes? How do we get to a place where women are women, not girls? Where they are allowed to wear shoes that are comfortable and appropriate for the job they’re doing, even when they’re on television? When being a woman doesn’t automatically mean pink? I wish I could answer that. We’ve been trying for decades, and society is resistant.

One of the biggest problems is trying to persuade people to believe in what they are advocating. Not believe because it’s the right thing to believe. Truly believe. It is funny (not in a humorous way, though) to watch someone who is always talking about how supportive they are of women when they are put in a corner about something they are doing. They will squirm to try to get out of it, but sooner or later, it will come out. “That’s just how it is. Women are [X].” You just knocked over their house of cards; they will not love you for it. They will likely entrench deeper into their ideas and snort with indignation that they could be considered sexist.

So let’s think about the video. How would you try to attract girls to science? Well, start by getting rid of the girls, and replacing it with boys. How would you attract boys to science? A video would focus on the neat things…dinosaurs, microscopes, test tubes, whatever. You would show boys (or men) doing things, neat things. They would not be posing in front of a camera for a beefcake shot, they would be demonstrating what a marvelous world is uncovered when you embrace a life in science.

I think I’ll let you go from here. If I have to spell out what I am saying in the paragraph above, you will not get it. You will not accept it. You will ‘yes, but…’ me until I give up and throw my hands in the air. If you are ready for this, you already understood.