Ironically, the ad milks emotions, with mawkish violins and the sad faces of young girls — every single one of whom is pretty. There's nothing scientific about this presentation.
And that's quite aside from the iffy statistics that Christina Hoff Sommers highlights in her critique, here (via Instapundit):
My favorite part of that critique is the part that begins at 4:00: The ad "conveys the message that science is masculine," and "conventional girl culture" is "shown as an obstacle to girls' science careers." It's as if what is feminine is inherently bad, and what's masculine is good, so shake off the feminine and be masculine. That's misogyny, precisely.
In this light, consider how we treat boys who feel drawn to girly things. I'm thinking of the "Go Carolina" chapter in the David Sedaris collection "Me Talk Pretty One Day." As a 5th-grader, he's one of the students chosen for speech therapy:
None of the therapy students were girls. They were all boys like me who kept movie star scrapbooks and made their own curtains. “You don’t want to be doing that,” the men in our families would say. “That’s a girl thing.” Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing. In order to enjoy ourselves, we learned to be duplicitous. Our stacks of Cosmopolitan were topped with an unread issue of Boy’s Life or Sports Illustrated, and our decoupage projects were concealed beneath the sporting equipment we never asked for but always received. When asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, we hid the truth and listed who we wanted to sleep with when we grew up. “A policeman or a fireman or one of those guys who works with high-tension wires.” Symptoms were feigned, and our mothers wrote notes excusing our absences on the day of the intramural softball tournament. Brian had a stomach virus or Ted suffered from that twenty-four-hour bug.Anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing... Now, there's some material for an "Inspire Her Mind" ad we never see. Or for an "Inspire His Mind" ad....
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39 comments:
What's with the off-camera father always telling her to hand that power tool to her older brother or to put down that marine life?
Mothers and the government never do that!
There's nothing scientific about this presentation.
Of course not. It is targeted at women, so you have to talk down to their level.
Women are a significant majority in most colleges. Clearly, we need not do anything for boys.
"It is targeted at women, so you have to talk down to their level."
Oh, yeah, who was that Republican lady who recently got excoriated for coming out and saying that?
Anyway, yeah, it's targeted at women and, more/less generally, dumb people.
And that's what Hoff Sommers misses. Even if the percentages of women in science look very good, that's because more affluent/elite/educated families are doing well at channeling their daughters into prestigious, lucrative careers.
There are still plenty of young females languishing in a brain-dead culture of pink tutus and lip gloss and gazing at Kardashians… or whatever the elite are trying to change.
I'm sure there are plenty, that is. I'm too girly to have collected the statistics.
Rep. Renee Ellmers.
"Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing."
I'm sorry - following that list with the words "anything worth doing" made me burst out laughing - and I'd already made it past making his own curtains as a child. (Talk about being bored - and bor-ing. Or what? Our curtains aren't good enough for you?)
There's a homeless white drag queen on my block, who just started digging through the trash for food, so I've started buying him stuff when I can. Even the gays are ignoring him, letting him starve, because he doesn't fit the "new" gay model of looking, both, successful and responsible.
But, alas, they're still white - he'll die out there with those so-called "Americans" by his side.
I look upon an ocean of evil - every day - courtesy of The Cabbage Patch Kids.
The Boomers Fucked Up:
It's one thing, to say we shouldn't be cruel to each other but, entirely another to outlaw admitting some "People Are Strange,…."
And that goes double for the folks who've run the joint,...
Women in science is mostly pre-med in college.
They want to be pediatricians.
Ann Althouse said...
"It is targeted,
"It's targeted at women and, more/less generally, dumb people."
Ought to get a groundswell of support and approval,...
Women like emotions. That's why they're not in math and science.
They drop out when it turns out to bore them.
I also took issue with the opening line "isn't it time we tell her she is pretty SMART?"
No. We don't tell kids they are smart just to make them feel better. Its not the same thing as telling some girl she looks nice today.
Stupid self-esteem movement. No wonder the kids are growing up all broken and stupid.
My spouse hates that commercial, especially the statistic at the end. Someone posted it on fb and he replied back, "Do you know that 89% of 4th grade boys want to be a fireman when they grow up? But only 2% will ever actually become one."
And as to the "girly"/smart trap; I find it demeaning. I have a family member who is the girliest girl in all our family (we all tended to be a little punk or tomboy---she just got back from seeing Celine Dion in Vegas). She also happens to be a project engineer for a major construction company. You can like pink tutus and be competent at math and science.
Given a choice, women will let the man do it. It makes both parties feel worthy.
Odd that a "feminist" blogger who seeks to mask her political leanings would post this and not note the 45th anniversary of Chappaquiddick.
But Crack will be along soon to tell us how this is really racist, perpetrated by those traitors who've infiltrated "his" party.
Clearly boys do not need any prodding. So while the next generation of girls are busy becoming engineers, the boys will be smoking weed and playing XBox. Then those same girls will wonder why there are no men to marry.
Crack - your incessant blaming of whitey is just laughable at this point. Nobody gives a shit.
They should have used Emmy Noether.
Cohen: Let me make an observation on Emmy Noether's appearance. As I say, I sat in on her seminar for about a week. At first glance she looked like the cleaning woman who had come to erase the blackboard. As a matter of fact, she would stand in front of the class with a sponge, which she used to wipe the blackboard. She was a large woman in a shapeless gown, but her eyes, behind absolutely clear glasses, had an intensity that was in stark contrast with the rest of her slack appearance. Now, I don't know what a penguin's eyes look like.
No safety glasses on those kids. How about:
"Wow, be careful with that. Where are your safety glasses?"
Oh well. I guess this is why there are no starfish in outer space.
Baking scones and cupcakes for the school janitors, watching Guiding Light with our mothers, collecting rose petals for use in a fragrant potpourri: anything worth doing turned out to be a girl thing.
I now have much deeper insight into why David Sedaris drives me up a wall. It's not the being an effeminate gay thing. That's bearable. But, being the sort of smug, smarmy asshole who would say something like watching Guiding Light with our mothers and ending the sentence with anything worth doing, as if what his fellow boys were doing wasn't at all worthwhile. Sheesh!
I'm really sorry that what David Sedaris got out of his childhood was how to be a judgmental putz, I really am.
Where is this world where girls are discouraged in such a way?
"Odd that a "feminist" blogger who seeks to mask her political leanings would post this and not note the 45th anniversary of Chappaquiddick."
1. Things not blogged are only meaningful if you know I have noticed them.
2. Even when I have noticed something, I only blog if I have something to add in some way, and my blogging it is not a statement about how important it is.
3. My historical posts are nearly all in the "50 years ago" or "60 years ago" category. I do the 10s. Not the 5s.
4. But I've never been one to continually bring up Chappaquiddick. I'm not a "Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment" type blogger. Others are doing that. Althouse isn't a standard-form right-wing blogger, as you may have noticed.
My father, born in 1925, always said to us, "I don't care if you are girls. You need to know how to change your own oil."
I can change my own oil. I was always welcome in my dad's toolbox, and built stuff all the time. I got dirty, and no one ever told me to stop.
These little girls need to get involved in FIRST Robotics. They'll get to handle everything from crescent wrenches to drill presses, electronic circuit boards, and video and audio equipment, and write computer programs to run a robot that is so powerful you should stand well back, and drive it in the Championships in St. Louis.
It's good for girls to learn to do math and science, because then when they drop out of the workforce to have babies, they can raise their children doing interesting things like building tree houses and fixing their own bicycles, not just polishing their nails NTTAWWT.
So even though Engineering might lose the women who start out there, they gain the next generation raised by smart mothers instead of Spanish-speaking nannies.
I really do like a lot of what Christina Hoff Sommers says. Which may be why she works for the AEI.
Ann maybe a little correct about Sommers concentrating on the smart girls, while it is the dumb ones who are the ones to worry about. Was at my kid's college graduation a year or so ago, and 70% or so of the Summas were female, but probably close to that, of them, were getting BS degrees in hard science. And, typically, with a double major. The interesting thing, to me, is how many had their second major as mathematics - and I think part of it was that math didn't require a separate senior project. And, yes, some of those young ladies did go on to med school.
But, I think that the assumption that they all want to go to med school is a bit off. My kid started a engineering PhD program a year ago, and of their entering class, half were women. Women are moving very strongly right now into engineering, excluding EE, CS, and maybe mining, and already form a majority of those graduating in some engineering disciplines (though, interestingly, they seem to be better represented in graduate school, than undergraduate).
As a father of young woman and a grandfather of two girls, I am highly insulted that Verizon has fathers speak so dismissively to their daughters. Making the decision to move my phone service NOW. I will not be preached at or insulted, and I don't want the women in my life to be used so shoddily.
Clearly boys do not need any prodding. So while the next generation of girls are busy becoming engineers, the boys will be smoking weed and playing XBox. Then those same girls will wonder why there are no men to marry.
Boys do need a lot more prodding than girls these days, but I don't really think that it is their fault.
Think about this. For probably millions of years, human males have had their status defined by their ability to essentially bring home the bacon, and support their mate and children. Our large brains made our effective childhoods much longer, and, as a result, females could not support, by themselves, enough children to statistically reproduce their own genes. A male out hunting, and a female staying put, taking care of the children, etc., working together, ended up with many more descendants than either working separately. Thus, the big shift towards monogamy, as contrasted with our closest genetic relatives, the chimps and pygmy chimps.
For the upper middle class, two parent families are still the best way of assuring the success of one's children. But, the further you go down the economic scale, the less part males play in their childrens' lives. And, the economic side of their labors is provided by Uncle Sugar, and his state level partners. And, they don't require sex, or, really, much of anything else, except to pull the Dem lever at elections ever two or four years. And, hence, part of the reason for the Julia commercials during the last elections. And, the guys? Since they are essentially redundant, after donating their sperm, have often turned into slackers.
The basic weakness though of this system, with Uncle Sugar replacing fathers (above and beyond the resulting violence and teen aged pregnancies) is that financially supporting all these lower middle and lower class females costs money, and that means taking it from somewhere. BUT, males are the ones who have, over the eons, and, esp. over recent history, provided the increase in GDP that has allowed this sort of socialism to flourish. Part of this is from the reality that most important inventions are by males. Part of this is from males being more willing to take risks. And, part from them being willing to work 70-80 hour weeks for decades to support their families. And, this is where I expect the whole system of wealth transfer from makers to takers to fall apart. By cutting out the connection between males and the success of their progeny, their incentive to work long hours and create wealth in this country disappears.
As a father of young woman and a grandfather of two girls, I am highly insulted that Verizon has fathers speak so dismissively to their daughters.
Does this mean that you wouldn't be interested in a "Math is Hard" Barbie for your granddaughters?
There's a homeless white drag queen on my block, who just started digging through the trash for food, so I've started buying him stuff when I can. Even the gays are ignoring him, letting him starve, because he doesn't fit the "new" gay model of looking, both, successful and responsible.
But, alas, they're still white - he'll die out there with those so-called "Americans" by his side.
I look upon an ocean of evil - every day - courtesy of The Cabbage Patch Kids.
The Boomers Fucked Up:
It's one thing, to say we shouldn't be cruel to each other but, entirely another to outlaw admitting some "People Are Strange,…."
And that goes double for the folks who've run the joint,...
I just realized that Crack's posts are absolute gold, provided you mentally narrate them in Rorschach's voice from Watchmen.
Isn't this ad about a decade late, and wrong to boot? Anecdotes:
My daughter is a recent MIT grad in bioengineering, Phi Beta Kappa, and is having a hell of a time finding good work. MIT was about half women (undergrads) while she was there.
The best engineering program manager I ever worked with in Silicon Valley was a very fashionable Brazilian woman with a background in construction project management in Brazil.
My baby sister was a bio major who worked on Aleve, among other things, 15 years ago.
About half of the startup companies now applying (20 of 40 per quarter) and presenting to my angel investor group are run by women.
I dunno - maybe this ad just does not play well to a silicon valley native.
Anyone else remember the time Daisy Duke entered the local beauty pageant, where the talent competition involved tearing down an rebuilding a carburetor?
This kind of well-meaning propaganda comes from the blank-slaters who think that since all outcomes should be equal since everyone starts with the same capacity *and interest*, girls must have been discouraged somehow.
I have my anecdotal experience: I wanted to do physics SO BAD, and when I got to MIT in the mid-70s I started there. The particle and theoretical physics guys (99% male, mostly from New York) had an aggressive culture of interruption and self-promotion which (like most modest Midwesterners) I couldn't stand or compete with. I moved over to the Astrophysics and Planetary area, where people were polite and kind, and which also had about 30% women students and staff. For various reasons I had to take a graduate geophysics course with Prof. Marcia McNutt, who then went on to head the USGS. In that specialty, there was only concern for good ideas and good work -- zero discrimination or discouragement of women.
Later I spent time in electrical engineering - computer science. Hardware was 5% female, software 30% female. The mental absorption in a completely abstract world is such that sex is irrelevant, and the intense focus on work inside the head and with machines, and not teams, means women who were *interested* could do very well.
Larry Summers was bounced from Harvard for saying it, but there *are* innate differences in both interest and ability, especially at the extreme end of the bell curve. So you would expect that sorting by interest and ability will tend to leave women underrepresented, even in the absence of unequal treatment.
No one wants to see bright girls discouraged, but we also don't want to see science and engineering dumbed down to accommodate feelings-based research or engineers lured into the field who aren't that focused on it.
I had to take a graduate geophysics course with Prof. Marcia McNutt
I knew her, a bit in college. Dated at least one fraternity brother of mine. My next (biological) brother and she were together in a lot of math classes. They were the two prodigies in the math department, which was hard on me, being two years ahead of them, and being routinely compared to them. She was very bright and hard working, which is why, I expect, that she ended up for awhile at MIT.
I am proud that my daughter is both stunning and a working astrophysicist. When she wasn't playing with her My Little Pony(ies), she was painting the ceiling and walls of her room with images from outer space.
I'll be forever grateful to NASA (James Hansen notwithstanding) for pointing out to her at Space Camp how to scholastically connect the dots between her sitting there at age 12 and sitting in a space shuttle as an adult.
She came home and immediately planned her course schedule through high school...and designed her prom dress.
- Krumhorn
Paul Zrimsek wrote "Anyone remember ... Daisy Duke..."
That reminds me of this:
May I have permission to treat Ms. Vito as a hostile witness?
No one wants to see bright girls discouraged, but we also don't want to see science and engineering dumbed down to accommodate feelings-based research or engineers lured into the field who aren't that focused on it.
I don't see that happening. Or, at least outside of government contracting and employment. The problem is that there is a bottom line in engineering, and it can be pretty dramatic. You either have a product in the market in time, or you are history. The bridge either stands, or it falls. The company that hires too many affirmative action hires is going to get eaten alive by those that don't.
What is interesting to me is what is happening in the department where my kid is working on their PhD. The undergraduates have nearly doubled in the last couple of years, as the Millenniums apparently are discovering that many college degrees are not really worth the paper they are printed upon, in terms of getting good jobs. And, yes, the number of PhD students has also risen greatly, with half now being women.
In the past though, they didn't have a "flunk out" class, just figuring that those who stuck it out had the aptitude and dedication to make it. They are now developing such, not wanting to wait two years before a lot of these young engineering aspirants who lack the aptitude for the field find out that they are in the wrong major.
What I would say though to a lot of those aspiring engineers is to be careful, and look carefully at the supply and demand in the various engineering disciplines (unless you are as one sided as I am, in my case, in computer science and engineering - the rest of engineering and science is not nearly as compelling). One big problem facing engineers today, and esp., I suspect, in EE and CS, is that they will be competing with the best in the world. Not just with overseas companies, but also in the U.S. A lot of the money in the push for "Immigration Reform" came from tech companies wanting to increase their H1B visas, which many of them use to bring in foreign engineers. Notably, the Gang of Eight legislation would give a path to citizenship to illegals here with 5th grade educations, but would provide no such path to STEM PhDs legally here on H1B visas.
"It's as if what is feminine is inherently bad, and what's masculine is good, so shake off the feminine and be masculine. That's misogyny, precisely."
Doesn't this apply in other contexts? Feminists are always trying to convince women that in order to be truly "liberated", they have to be more like men. For example, women need to have access to abortion and birth control so that they can have sex without consequences (like men).
I couldn't even tell which was the girl and which was the boy, so completely have I internalized the leftist teachings that gender is just a social construct and nothing more.
I'm sure Betamax3000 "Male Feminist AVENDGER" will have many words of praise for my "gender blindness".
People should quit messing with girls' minds, trying to make them feel inferior if they aren't interested in STEM. We do need people to study other things as well.
People should quit messing with boys' minds too, making them think that the culture only cares about girls.
As someone who has worked with (and for!) women in science:
What's wrong with a woman scientist wanting to be pretty? Do women have to deny their femininity to be scientists, now?
I think it's generally accepted (or should be!) that treating women scientists like defective men is a bad idea. Having an overly aggressive, overly competitive, crass, or fraternity-like atmosphere is a bad idea.
But I think it's equally bad to treat women scientists as defective women -- to set up a conflict between looking pretty and being smart. Or a conflict between being nice to people and being individually outstanding. It seems to me that what this ad is doing is telling people that a perfectly natural and healthy interest in looking good is somehow sandbagging them for a scientific career.
> I had to take a graduate geophysics course with Prof. Marcia McNutt
I knew her, a bit in college. Dated at least one fraternity brother of mine. My next (biological) brother and she were together in a lot of math classes. They were the two prodigies in the math department, which was hard on me, being two years ahead of them, and being routinely compared to them. She was very bright and hard working, which is why, I expect, that she ended up for awhile at MIT.
That was one of those "road not taken" moments for me - I did so well in her class the she asked me to join her Pacific expedition that summer. But I already knew I was going into AI and declined. I wonder what tanned, diving me would have been like?
I don't see that happening. Or, at least outside of government contracting and employment. The problem is that there is a bottom line in engineering, and it can be pretty dramatic. You either have a product in the market in time, or you are history. The bridge either stands, or it falls. The company that hires too many affirmative action hires is going to get eaten alive by those that don't.
This is why the recent diversity census of companies like Facebook and Google is a bad idea. Everyone knows they are highly discriminatory - by age and ability. Now they are opening Pandora's box and discovering that they would have to fire a lot of Asians and hire Latinos to remotely reflect the population. Which would be damaging. They reflect the population of *tech geeks* fairly well (except for the refusal to give older engineers much of a chance.)
In the past though, they didn't have a "flunk out" class, just figuring that those who stuck it out had the aptitude and dedication to make it. They are now developing such, not wanting to wait two years before a lot of these young engineering aspirants who lack the aptitude for the field find out that they are in the wrong major.
A screen to weed out the less dedicated fast seems wise and will reduce damage to both the program and the hopefuls. There is in fact a great place for people who like science and tech but want to have a life as well - and that's in management. Being a management major with a tech focus sets you up well if you get the tech focus right.
What I would say though to a lot of those aspiring engineers is to be careful, and look carefully at the supply and demand in the various engineering disciplines (unless you are as one sided as I am, in my case, in computer science and engineering - the rest of engineering and science is not nearly as compelling). One big problem facing engineers today, and esp., I suspect, in EE and CS, is that they will be competing with the best in the world. Not just with overseas companies, but also in the U.S. A lot of the money in the push for "Immigration Reform" came from tech companies wanting to increase their H1B visas, which many of them use to bring in foreign engineers. Notably, the Gang of Eight legislation would give a path to citizenship to illegals here with 5th grade educations, but would provide no such path to STEM PhDs legally here on H1B visas.
Good advice. The H1B program is shameful -- I'd rather see a work visa to permanent residence program for anyone who has the smarts. H1Bs are like indentured servants and undercut salaries for others. Let everyone who can work at a high level in and let them do citizenship tests later to become citizens. The illegals should have a path to residency but be judged for citizenship just like entries from abroad.
BTW, took a look at your profile -- I spent years managing money for a RMBS founder, so I spent a lot of time thinking about patents!
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