"12 Stunning Photos That Prove There's No Such Thing As 'Men's Work.'"

That's the headline of the Huffington Post story touting photographer Chris Crisman's "Women's Work," a collection of photos of female butchers, fishermen–oops, I meant "fisherpeople"–taxidermists, and so forth. All occupations where men predominate.

Crisman had a mission:

The one thing Crisman hopes young people, but women especially, take away from this series? “Gender should not determine professional opportunities,” he told HuffPost.

The photos are indeed stunning. They're beautiful. And so are the people and things in them. Philadelphia web designer-turned-butcher Heather Marold Thompson, clad in a workaday but stylish black-and-white plaid shirt under her bloody-but-not-too-bloody apron with her knife at her belt looks downright glamorous. So do the primal cuts of beef among which she's posing: black-and-white against the meat's red-and-white. So thoughtfully composed.

Maine lobsterwoman Sadie Samuels, her long blonde hair in two braids, squirming crustaceans in her gloved hands, looks athletically gorgeous on her fishing boat. Equally good-looking is Pennsylvania pig farmer Nancy Poll–and the hogs she's slopping look so pretty that you want to take one home. The sky-blue eyes of Ohio firefighter Mindy Gabriel peer out toward the viewer from a shower of sparks and the ombre effect of dense gray-on-gray smoke. (My thought about that last photo: Shouldn't Mindy be fighting that fire instead of using it as a background for an artful pose?)

The lesson seems to be: If you gussy up a male-dominated occupation enough–remove from viewer's eye the mess, the dirt, the physical toil, and the chill of the Maine morning and the meat locker–maybe, just maybe some women will want to join the ranks. That is, if they can look attractive enough in their work togs.

The truth is, as female advice-blogger Staked in the Heart points out, the reason there is such a thing as "men's work"–work that you have to sweeten with photographic tricks in order to make it appealing–is that "men's work" consists essentially of dirty, physically demanding jobs, many of them outdoors in the elements and some of them downright dangerous, that most women simply don't want to do:

Women are 52% of the population. If they were holding their own—like feminists claim they can—we would see equal numbers of men and women working at the DDD jobs. We don’t.

Discrimination based on gender is illegal in the U.S. If a woman applies to work as a logger or iron worker, and is even semi-qualified has a pulse, the company must hire her. Women aren’t working at the DDD jobs because they are being “discriminated against.”

Women don’t work at these jobs because they aren’t applying for them. 

Staked analyzed Census and Bureau of Labor statistics and discovered that 99 percent of the people working "Dirty, Difficult, and Dangerous" jobs–such as coal miner, auto repairman, and roofer–are men. When it comes to deep-sea fishing, installing electrical power lines, and oil-drilling, the percentage rises to 100.

So, ladies, if you can fool yourself by looking at pretty pictures into wanting to be a butcher or pig farmer–occupations that do actually attract a few women, as Crisman's photos show, go right ahead. But don't complain that anyone is stopping you.