Computer Engineer Barbie can’t program computers (and takes credit for her male colleagues’ work)—but she sure is a snazzy dresser with hair to die for.
Apparently that’s what matters most in superficial plastic feminism land, at least it sure seems like it based on the response of some outraged “feminists” to a historic breakthrough in science exploration.
Last Wednesday, the European Space Agency’s Philae probe landed on a comet 310 million miles from Earth. According to CNN, the mission:
“…is trying to answer the very big questions about the history of our solar system," said Matt Taylor, ESA Rosetta project scientist. "What were the conditions like at its infancy and how did it evolve? What role did comets play in this evolution? How do comets work?" …
Rosetta took off from Earth 10 years ago, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, and traveled a total of 6.4 billion miles before rendezvousing with the comet in August.
While Taylor and his team are trying to answer some very big questions, some feminists here at home have the petty ones covered—namely, vilifying the shirt Taylor was wearing during the live stream landing. To be sure, Taylor’s shirt was a garish, multicolored mish mash, covered with images of scantily-clad women. As the Federalist’s Heather Wilhelm describes it:
First, it was not just “a shirt”—it was a…“Big Lebowski”-style bowling shirt. Second, it did not just feature “women in lingerie” [As CNN reported]. It featured women wearing crazy bondage-style undergarments, all while smirking, scowling, cavorting amid random spotlights and explosions, and shooting massive guns as well as what appear to be various space-age lasers. …
Feminists across the globe condemned Taylor for his “offensive,” “appalling” garment. They slammed his insensitivity to women. Using the hashtags #ShirtStorm and #ShirtGate, Twitter activists expressed their horror at the offending piece of cloth, which was, somewhat ironically, designed and crafted by a woman and gifted to Taylor for his birthday. “This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields,” huffed Chris Plante and Arielle Duhaime-Ross at The Verge. “They see a guy like that on TV and they don’t feel welcome.”
Within days, Taylor offered a tearful apology.
But I’m more embarrassed by so-called feminists whose delicate sensibilities make them short circuit over a tacky shirt. Individual women’s own juvenile and shallow sensibilities—not any deep-rooted misogyny—is the more likely reason they don’t feel “welcome” in the hard sciences.
Let’s face it. Anyone—man or woman—who ultimately enters the cut-throat world of the hard sciences also managed to survive the brutishness of high school. Academically-oriented students likely had to endure endless name-calling and teasing (perhaps even outright bullying), not to mention being social outcasts from the popular crowds to one degree or another.
Developing thick skins in high school likely helped those students develop the focus and discipline necessary for them to succeed in scientific fields later in life.
I’m also embarrassed by the hypocrisy of these women who took the Twittersphere by storm. Where’s the outrage when members of our own gender dress inappropriately in the workplace? Low-cut blouses leaving little to the imagination, up-to-there skirts, and dresses more suitable for a bar room than a boardroom are commonplace these days.
But those women’s choices are tolerated, even celebrated as a sign of “empowerment.”
Taylor’s shirt was undoubtedly in bad taste—regardless of the gender of the person who designed it and gave it to him.
What’s worse, in my opinion, is the characterization based on the behavior of these women that we’re all such timid and feeble creatures that the thoughtless fashion choice of one man at one (early morning) moment will send us into a tizzy—and running away from an entire career field.
After all, if this is the way some women behave in response to a tasteless shirt, whatever will these would-be rocket scientists do when they encounter Vectors, Differential Equations, and (horrors!) Statics and Dynamics?
Probably do what Computer Engineer Barbie does: get her male colleagues to do the work for her and then claim victory—“ I guess I can be a computer engineer!”