Perhaps Europe is nostalgic for 1982 when Britain’s Thomas Dolby’s pop hit “She Blinded Me with Science” was topping the charts. Time Magazine’s Jeffrey Kluger has another explanation for the EU’s “Science: It’s a Girl Thing Campaign” video:
Maybe it’s the Euro crisis that seems to have turned the brains of the European Union’s…image-makers soft. You can hardly spend all week trying to bail out Greece, hang onto Spain and keep Germany from getting surly (never a good idea) without making a mistake or two somewhere else.
The Wall Street Journal has another explanation:
Apparently they are there to prove that girls can rock science in micro-mini skirts and five-inch stiletto heels. Look! Makeup is chemistry! Ooooh, the inside of a smart phone is sort of, like, techie!! OMG, a lipstick looks like the “I” in science!
Portraying women like immature imbeciles does nothing to make science more attractive women or men—although it does speak volumes about the ones behind the video. But the general attitude that women need to be cajoled or quota-ed into the “right” kinds of advanced degrees—as many Title IX proponents are trying to do today (See here, here, here, and here)—is insulting, too.