Sexy Female Scientist Video Draws Fire 404
sciencehabit writes "A new video released by the The European Commission — ostensibly aimed at getting girls interested in science — is drawing widespred condemnation from around the web for its depiction of female scientists as sexy models strutting into the frame in high heels and short skirts. A male scientist watching them from behind his microscope doesn't seem to mind that none of them are wearing safe lab attire—he just pops his glasses on for a better look. The rest of the video is a mish-mash of heels, nail polish, lipstick, and sexily smoldering Erlenmeyer flasks, arbitrarily punctuated by girly giggles." The Commission denies that the video (since pulled) was a parody, but they've certainly set the bar high for anyone who wanted to make an actual parody.
Whats the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Whats wrong with sexy female scientists - they have them in movies.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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And I have met much sexier scientists than that.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Informative)
I'm suspicious that the whole thing is an overly complicated marketing ploy by some nail polish company, bribe some science commission to put an ad up. It could easily be a commercial for cosmetics.
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Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Whats wrong with sexy female scientists - they have them in movies.
Or, applying the term "scientist" more liberally, on the Mythbusters - Kari Byron [wikipedia.org] - though technically, she's an artist. (Women, take your pick from the other hosts, I'm sticking with Kari.)
More seriously, I know a few women scientists and I can confirm that in many, many cases, the old adage "Beauty * Brains = Constant" is false. Personally, I think smart girls are sexy - end of story.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Whats wrong with sexy female scientists - they have them in movies.
My favourite person in the whole world is a female (computer) scientist, and it irks me no end that she has no interest in me of a sexual nature. Moan. Drat.
Personally, I think smart girls are sexy - end of story.
Personally, I think the only girls worth even considering are smart girls. You can have the rest. I won't miss the loss.
OBSTRef: Seven of Nine (assimilate me already, damnit!), Jeri Ryan! Drool.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd have to agree that Kari Byron both pulls off the "sexy" and "scientist" part better than these girls. And she's not even a scientist, nor trying (or at least this obviously) to be sexy.
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You mean besides the constant posing Kari Byron does?
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Still not as obvious as this. I stand by my point. Or perhaps I just haven't seen the episodes you have..
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, applying the term "scientist" more liberally, on the Mythbusters - Kari Byron [wikipedia.org] - though technically, she's an artist. (Women, take your pick from the other hosts, I'm sticking with Kari.)
horrible example. She's a film student they hired because she's pretty and they needed a pretty face on the show. [wikipedia.org] BA in Film and Sculpture. Complete opposite of science. No science jobs, no science training, no interest in science, she's just a model.
Jeri Ellsworth is a MUCH better example of a sexy female scientist. [wikipedia.org] She invented the Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, a popular toy that sold well on QVC and at Walmart. And check out these sexy photos of her soldering a circuit board. [lifehacker.com]
Pamela Stephenson (Score:3)
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More seriously, I know a few women scientists and I can confirm that in many, many cases, the old adage "Beauty * Brains = Constant" is false. Personally, I think smart girls are sexy - end of story.
That's true enough, but unfortunately the few exceptions to "beautiful, intelligent, sane; pick two" that I've found are already taken. :-X
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Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainzer. But I guess you were so taken with imagining what her tits look like that you didn't notice what her name was.
Question: why does it matter if she's gorgeous? Is she a better scientist for it? Is her work more notable as a result? She's a remarkably intelligent scientist in her own right, and that's far more important to her scientific credibility than her cup size.
Pairing "gorgeous" with "brilliant" is sort of like saying, "He's a great programmer. And has a horse cock!" They're two characteristics that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER, and drooling over a small handful of smart/pretty women only serves to underscore the sexist, borderline-misogynist, attitudes prevalent in the field.
If you respect a woman's scientific work, there is no reason to bring her looks into it - it's irrelevant to the study of astronomy.
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Pairing "gorgeous" with "brilliant" is sort of like saying, "He's a great programmer. And has a horse cock!"
You called?
-AI
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
An accurate depiction of lab work wouldn't attract anybody, simply because no advert could ever be long enough to capture the true nature of a science (or in fact, any) job.
The problem is in trying to create a video at all. Ask female scientists why they got into science and create something that triggers those buttons in girls.
Most likely female scientists didn't become scientists because they wanted to look at pretty colors in glass tubes all day.
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> simply because no advert could ever be long enough to capture the true nature of a science (or in fact, any) job.
I would say that it's impossible to do *for the people that do ads*. I can think of 3 or 4 different ways of capturing the nature of science in 30 seconds or less.
Trouble is, I know nothing about doing ads.
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The main issue is that this video is not an accurate depiction of lab work. It's an idiotic thing that would have been a great 80s music video.
It's a fricken PSA commercial, and a bad one at that. "Give us some glitz, then sprinkle some science on top, please."
Ick. I'm not sure I'd consider it sexist, but I do consider it bad.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Ick. I'm not sure I'd consider it sexist, but I do consider it bad.
Ohhh, it's sexist.
Using good looking models? Not so sexist. Using very well dressed good looking models? Well women scientists are still women. They can dress nice.
Showing lab equipment, chemical equations, and elements interspersed with cosmetics in a flagrant advertising-douchy way as if that is the only way to keep the attention of women watching it, or to participate in science?
Sexist. Most definitely.
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The main issue is that this video is not an accurate depiction of lab work. It's an idiotic thing that would have been a great 80s music video.
But that video is an accurate depiction of the science of marketing. Sexist, misleading, uninformative, and attention grabbing (even if it is of the wrong reasons).
A great example is veterinary medicine (Score:3)
Time was, the only "acceptable" professions for women were teachers and nurses. Hence part of the reason they still dominate there. However since we've gotten over that, one area women have flocked to is veterinary medicine. My vet (a fairly sizable animal hospital) is ALL women. All the vets, all the vet techs, all the receptionists, everyone.
This isn't because there's some massive push to get women in to it, it is because they want to do it. My mother's theory is that it is the nurturing nature of the wor
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noting more than an attempt to re-engineer human nature, which isn't really malleable.
Fatties were sexy at the turn of the century. Please explain.
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I know slashdotters are younger now but gosh, I was around at the turn of the century, it was only 12 years ago, and I promise you fatties weren't considered sexy then.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
What wonderful strawman you are trying there.
What he's arguing for isn't barring women from entering such professions, but that there's no need for specific recruitment. We don't need more female scientists, we need more good scientists regardless of gender. And I don't think that'll be achieved by asinine videos like this one.
As for your extraordinary evidence, it's right there. They aren't choosing it, hence, they probably don't want to - same as a person who doesn't buy a hamburger doesn't want one.
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4)
Whats wrong with sexy female scientists - they have them in movies.
Movies and real life are not necessarily the same thing, or remotely comparable.
I'm not certain how my oldest daughter will react to this, even if it's presented in a neutral way. Pointing this video out to her without giving away my own views will be difficult, as it's so appalling. We'll find out tomorrow, and I'm not sure whether she'll laugh or snarl at it. Either way, I'll get an ear-full afterwards. BTW, she wants to be an astronaut, and is getting top marks in maths, physics, English, French and Russian to smooth her way (her first language is Finnish), and had completed senior high math while in junior high.
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I'm not certain how my oldest daughter will react to this, even if it's presented in a neutral way. Pointing this video out to her without giving away my own views will be difficult, as it's so appalling.
Don't. Tell her about Marie Curie instead.
It's not really all that appalling; just silly/stupid. It's not like you're watching Madonna or the Bieber, after all.
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I'm not certain how my oldest daughter will react to this, even if it's presented in a neutral way. Pointing this video out to her without giving away my own views will be difficult, as it's so appalling.
Don't. Tell her about Marie Curie instead.
It's not really all that appalling; just silly/stupid. It's not like you're watching Madonna or the Bieber, after all.
Yep. She has heroines as well as heroes. She's well aware of Marie Curie, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, Ingrid Daubechies and many others [wikipedia.org]. The appalling thing is, this video was supposed to inspire females to become scientists, and was made on behalf of the European Commission. Now that really sucks.
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Don't show her this video. It serves no purpose. This video only proves one thing: That the guys that made it don't have the first clue what science is all about.
I can already imagine the big manager / politician saying to his underling: "Get me cool pictures of science"
Underling: Uhhh, what?
Cretin: You know, something beautiful that catches the eye...
U: Uhhhh, like something that explodes with colors?
C: Yeah, that's it! That and girls. Get me sexy girls too.
U: Uhhh, ok boss. Whataver you say.
U (leaving the
Re:Whats the problem (Score:4, Informative)
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Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
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No, like Playboy, we're just looking at the pictures, despite what we may tell others.
Yes, I suppose that's true. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the sense that people read Playboy magazine for the articles.
Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
I can imagine somebody was trying to address a number one concern of girls: It's not a sexy enough job! And I can't be sexy doing it, either.
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And why would we want girls whose number one concern is that in science?
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Well I was confused (Score:3, Informative)
I'll be honest, until I saw the tagline at the end, I thought this was a makeup commercial.
Turnabout is fair play (Score:2)
Well, why not? The advertising industry has been using the trappings of science for decades to push their wares. Why shouldn't science do the same back to them?
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Because it's a recruiting ad. And we really don't want the average scientist to be as smart as the average consumer.
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Real women geeking out? ... I'd watch it.
That's almost bordering on porn, right there!
Speaking as an objective male observer (Score:3)
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Oh God (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really want to close the gender gap, show girls the video of Ariel Waldman's talk at last year's OSCON. That..was awesome.
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http://arielwaldman.com/2011/07/29/oscon/
Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do people insist on closing the gender gap just for the sake of closing the gender gap? Is the goal to make more or better science come out of Europe? No, its just to have more female scientists, so that progressives can have a warm fuzzy feeling, but that will never happen, because someone who wants equality of result will never be satisfied.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
While there may be some who would be content with closing the gender gap on general principle, for most of us the goal is not warm fuzzies, it really is more and better science. One of the problems we have is that since there are so few women in the sciences, it is very hard to attract new women, even if they have the aptitude. So, the woman who had the potential to be a brilliant bio-chemist goes off and gets a degree in French literature instead and we are down a brilliant bio-chemist. Will all of the women who are attracted by these kinds of efforts make significant scientific advancements? Of course not. Most of the men in the sciences won't either. However, if we can't attract new women to the sciences, we are, in essence, shutting out half of the population from whence these advances could come. This isn't the only reason to want to close the gender gap, but hopefully it will at least convince you that the efforts are not just some pointless progressive feel-good program.
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We insist on closing it because there is no evidence to support the theory that biological differences make one gender or another better "suited" to certain roles.
We insist on closing it because there is a constant drumbeat of warnings about how we don't have enough people earning qualifications for STEM careers in college graduating, and we're going to have massive shortfalls - yet somewhere approaching 50% of the population (depending on the field - some fields have higher participation rates than others,
Original YouTube posting now made private? (Score:5, Informative)
Judging by the 'tweets', what seems to be the original [youtube.com] has been made 'private', i.e. taken-down. (I'm assuming that was the official YouTube posting - I can't find anything more official looking.)
As well as the mirror [sciencemag.org] linked in the summary, we have a Youtube mirror [youtube.com], and another non-Youtube mirror [telegraph.co.uk].
Why would they bother? Do they really not realise that if you release something high-profile on the web, it's out for good?
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Do they really not realise that if you release something high-profile on the web, it's out for good?
"The European Commission". You're probably american if you're seriously asking this? They are bureaucrats, the web is something someone prints out for them to read.
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Do they really not realise that if you release something high-profile on the web, it's out for good?
Did the people responsible for that video not realise how the internet works? I'm gonna guess no.
I don't know about American labs... (Score:5, Funny)
First of all (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does anybody want to advertise this way?
Does science career needs THIS type or any type of advertising?
People who go to science and people who science need to go into science, have completely different channels of getting into science, being highborn for example (science is one of the most hereditary professions in the world).
Science does not need extra people, science does not need advertising.
If science had a want in people, postdocs won't be living on meager 50K a year salary, grown 35 old men with beards and wives.
Why don't European commission advertise food serving industry, the situation seems quite deplorable there?
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I looked at the video, and I actually thought it was ironic, a clever satire on the current state of popular culture.
There is no way they were being serious. None.
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Re:First of all (Score:4, Interesting)
Compared to tuition it takes to become a postdoc, it is.
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I lived on 27K in 1996 (postdocs don't get much more than 27K in 1996 dollars nowadays as well). Every month I was given a check and every month before getting that checked, I enjoyed an exclusive delicious damned banana diet. When my family needed extra $3K, I had to enter a testee program.
Postdocs are extremely underpaid compared to their education.
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They don't want more people in science, they specifically want more women. It's an effort to eliminate the embarrassing gender gap, a relative need, than to supply an absolute need.
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You have to remember what "way" do people advertise in the first place.
Typically, they hire an advertising company. Such a company is typically staffed by half-manic artistic types, not skilled enough to for a solo career, but talented enough at faking to be able to impress executive who really haven't got a clue themselves. Thus you have the incompetent leading the blind.
It goes without saying that almost everyone involved in this group is male and scientifically
Re:First of all (Score:4, Insightful)
You know you want to (Score:5, Funny)
Next stop - stirring more male interest in the nursing profession by making an ad with fast cars in a hospital.
Whew. Thank goodness... (Score:2)
I'm just glad that it was the Europeans that did this.
Imagine what a Japanese one would have looked like. Probably too weird to compute. I'm thinking exploding android head like in I, Mudd.
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Europeans can be just as bad...remember the performance art cake that was made in protest of female genital mutilation in Africa? You know, the one that screamed when you cut a piece? This is along those same lines.
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Yes, this one here. [youtube.com]
Sexist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong gender (Score:3)
Because he was hot. It's like they screwed up and made an ad appealing to men instead of women. They should have had a bunch of attractive male scientists strutting around a pretty but not-too-pretty female scientist.
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There's a difference between using photogenic actors and actually sexualizing a character. If the male scientist had been performing his work in a Chippendale outfit, people would be more likely to complain. Except, of course, that treating men as sex objects is so uncommon that if they did it, it would have to be some sort of parody.
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He was on the screen for literally two seconds. He looks up from his microscope, sees the models walking in, puts on his glasses, and that's it. You could recut that same scene so that it was a random, properly attired coworker coming into the lab, remove the "sexy" music, and you'd have an ordinary day at the office. Sure, the guy's handsome, but that's not the same thing as being sexualized.
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Oh, he was a sex object. He was far more than merely photogenic. Putting a guy that hot in that role makes it sexual. He was also extremely well-groomed--look at his hair and eyebrows--and he had sexy glasses on. His makeup gave him an extremely smooth face, which is one of the two main sexy male faces, the other being lots of stubble (cf. Ryan Reynolds).
I can certainly imagine the difference here being too subtle for many straight guys. I certainly didn't analyze the women.
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Science isn't gay.
Actually, science is pretty gay, since science has lots of smart people and smart people tend to be gay.
There is published evidence [cambridge.org] (sorry, paywall) of a moderately strong correlation between very high intelligence and homosexuality. That is, very smart people are significantly more likely to be gay than people of normal or even just somewhat high intelligence (the numbers I've seen are a factor of ~2-3). This "large tail" isn't enough to bring up the IQ of gay people as a full group since there aren't that
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Sorry, but your hypothesis doesn't correspond to current research. Basically the current literature shows gay men score similarly to women in IQ tests.
And certainly anecdotal results from a dorm are not meaningful. As a math major you should realize this.
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That's one of the explanations I've thought of. My current list of hypotheses (completely untested, mind you):
* More studying from social exclusion during adolescence
* Less emphasis on family starting during early adulthood
* Some genetic, womb-environmental, or early childhood-environmental factor causing both increased intelligence and homosexuality
* Increased acceptance of latent bisexuality amongst the intelligentsia, so smart bi people might have more sex with the same ge
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One more:
* Smarter circles are more tolerant, so more people are willing to declare themselves in public.
In my country, there was a far-right gay politician who refused to declare himself (despite many people secretly knowing about it), because that would have been very bad for his career. Only after he killed himself in a DUI car accident after having visited a gay bar, his party officially admitted that he was bisexual.
Right.. (Score:3)
Because after we fill girls' head with garbage about needing to be tall and thin, needing to wear high heels and makeup and the rest of it; getting them to follow celebrities who do the above... THIS is a problem.
Baby steps.
I'm sure every single girl wants to look like an unattractive female scientist wearing a labcoat and geeky safety equipment and looking plain. Especially after the garbage everyone else is throwing into their head.
huh (Score:2)
This is nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
There are some REAL problems in the world. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There are some REAL problems in the world. (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's exactly why we could use more women in positions of research and power. And for that, we need to stop treating them like shit among other things, and also stop casually dismissing low lifes like you excusing it with a bullshit bluff like that one. You are obsolete and overstayed your welcome, how's that for a response.
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Exactly. That's why you little fuck post anonymously, don't you.
And then there is your mother. What a brave woman, what a risk she took, and look what it got her. Here's hoping you have siblings.
Horrible (Score:5, Funny)
I knew girls who loved science (Score:3)
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Functioning alarm clocks are pretty cheap. Acquiring one might have constituted a sensible investment in your career.
Re:I knew girls who loved science (Score:4, Insightful)
An Actual - Real - Female Scientist Responds (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3eZQHwGQE0&feature=g-u-u [youtube.com]
I agree with Dr. Meghan Gray. She is spot on.
For those not familiar with Brady (the interviewer and editor of the videos), don't take too much offense. He commonly takes an antagonistic view to help draw out a more in-depth response.
take it easy (Score:3)
"Condemnation"? Isn't that a bit strong for what at most deserves a "that's silly"?
We have completely devalued outrage to the point where it has almost no meaning left at all.
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I would write more, but fuck it.
This is the right way to do it (Score:2)
Related: exciting video, "Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqdoXwLBT8 [youtube.com]
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I totally agree... they were obviously aiming for a dual-sponsored message.
Science: it's a girl thing
maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline
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Perhaps you're unaware that the modern American chic is 80s and 90s dominated. I was at the Protoman concert last night (with unexpected guest Tenacious D), and everybody was there wearing 80s style clothing. Including my wife, who has a PhD in Chemistry, and does theoretical chemistry research at Vanderbilt.
That said, while she was dressed up for the concert, she wears professional attire at work. In other words, science is a job like any other.
However, having heard her rant about things like this, she'
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http://highvisibilityproject.org/ [highvisibi...roject.org]
It's not science, but coding.. but hey, even better, right?