7 ms·

I'm a Barbie Girl in a CS World

90 points by llimllib 17y ago

chime 17y ago
This was wonderful. I'm a guy but I can definitely relate to never fitting in with the typical CS-crowd. I don't game, I don't play D&D or any RPGs, and I don't watch/read Sci-Fi. All of this is completely orthogonal to my skills/knowledge. I like reading celebrity gossip and watch cheesy movies that geeks despise. Sure, I watched and liked Primer but I also liked Wanted. People need to stop stereotyping. That's also kinda why I like HN and reddit because there is such a huge amount of diversity on these sites that transcending past stereotypes is an everyday occurrence.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  Wanted is a terrible example, since it's a comic-book movie. :)
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    Wanted is a terrible example because it's a terrible movie. All that proves is that you have bad taste in cinema. At least go with an example like... Wedding Crashers or Old School, or Bad Boys if it has to be an action movie. ANYWAY, games are not a geek exclusive thing anymore (at least not if all of the frat bros I used to know in college are any indication). Comic books still are somewhat, but there is an ever growing independent movement that's causing the interested parties to become more diverse. Science Fiction is clearly no longer niche since like, 9 out of 10 of the top earning films are Science Fiction or Fantasy.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  This seems like a bit of divide between 20-somethings and 40-somethings. I played the original D & D at a kid but there was no crowd for which this meant fitting-in. The idea of conformist geek culture is something that I've gradually become aware of - just as, I think, geek culture seems to have become more conformist. Funny...
  - TheSOB88 17y ago
    But that makes no sense: you must have played with other people if you played regularly. Did you not fit in with those?
- caryme 17y ago
  I totally agree with you. I'm on the listserv for ACM at my school, but I rarely participate in their events because they are overwhelmingly gaming-related. I went to get pizza with them recently and had the feeling I didn't fit in. I study both CS and Vocal Performance (opera). I'm not a gamer in the slightest. I'm also a gay male.
lmkg 17y ago
My first reaction (and I assume most people's) to the CS barbie was along the lines of "... really?" but the more I think about it, the more I'm ok with it. Let's be serious here, barbies aren't realistic. To expect the CS barbie to give some sort of objective perspective of real computer engineers would be delusional, and out of character. The big idea was to get girls excited about something related to computers. The execution was about as far off-base as you could get. The only redeeming quality is just that initial idea... but it may be enough to have an impact on its own. The point is, it helps break down the subliminal barrier that computers are a "guy thing." That's what the article is talking about at first, and then takes that point and goes even further. Actually, that's the type of barrier-breaking that I would prefer more of. The whole "we'll give you the help you need" type of barrier-breaking seem in outreach programs implicitly reinforces that "you need the help." The implicit message with the CS barbie is the exact opposite, and that's a good thing.
- lena 17y ago
  But do people seriously think that computers are a guy thing nowadays? The CS barbie looks just like a secretary or any other profession to me. All moms I know (and my daughter is in the barbie demographic) have computers, most have laptops or netbooks. They use them for e-mail, internet, they are on Twitter, facebook, play online games, etc. Now, I have no idea how a CS barbie should look. I totally agree with the author of the presentation that it is a good thing that Mattel did not make the CS barbie extra dorky. However, as it is now, I don't think girls will make any connection with programming.
  - dusklight 17y ago
    Yeah they are using computers. but computers are increasingly like appliances, and there is a huge gulf between clicking buttons in an UI and messing with code in an editor. I remember way back, when I had to learn all this stuff about DOS and RAM just to get Ultima 7 to work on my computer. I had a friend who couldn't get sound to work correctly on his PC in StarCon2, so he soldered together his own sound card to get it to work. Nowdays you don't need to do that with modern computers and most of time you can't even do that even if you wanted to, because modern software and hardware are exponentially more complicated now.
shaddi 17y ago
I remember reading a post similar to this on here recently... Ah yes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145648 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145648 There is a woman in my CS department that I met in a Bollywood Cinema class I was taking. She's totally non-geek; I see her in the lobby talking the fairly standard social drama banter of college students, not about this week's ACM programming problem. At first I was kind of dismissive about her, since I didn't feel she was /really/ a CS student (I remember thinking once, "I wonder if she's here to meet a boyfriend"; I'm really ashamed of that thought). Reading Patrick's piece made me reconsider that view. Regardless of what her motivations are for joining the department, I respect the fact that she's here. It also makes me wonder about our Women in CS initiatives. Here we have a woman who, from all I can tell, does not define her identity primarily in terms of her field of study (which is something I feel like many of us do). She is not a CS woman, but rather a woman that happens to study computer science, kind of like a man who happens to study pharmacy. I'm still developing my thoughts on this, but meeting her and the discussion around this new Barbie have ironically enough really challenged my existing beliefs.
- swolchok 17y ago
  I wrote this post before reading the parent; I've moved it to be a reply to the parent because it's clearly related. I have some cognitive dissonance on this issue. I'm not sure what to conclude, so I'll just air it. On the one hand, I would love to see people in the field who are both high-performing and high-functioning socially. On the other hand, the degree to which undergraduates (and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general) "live and breathe CS" seems to be a very good heuristic for their proficiency with the nitty technical details. By "live and breathe" CS, I am not talking about passion for traditionally geeky activities like video games, DND, and so on; I am referring to their penchant for work as entertainment (not that we don't all need a break from time to time). This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some of the time. On the third hand, lots of researchers I've met seem to be better rounded.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    > and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general > This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some of the time. The best programmers I know (and I tentatively include myself here; though Im really an engineer) are highly social work hard/play hard type people.
btilly 17y ago
It would be nice to link to the original pdf rather than scribd. Their buggy website wouldn't work under Chrome, so I had to fire up Firefox to read the article. Which let me page forward through the article, but not backwards. Yes, I know that scribd is a YC company, is what the cool kids use, etc. But. It. Doesn't. Actually. Work. The pdf reader I have does. That said, I liked the article. Once I actually managed to read it.
- matrix 17y ago
  You know a product is bad when people prefer to PDF... (apologies for going off-topic - I just couldn't resist this one)
  - jpablo 17y ago
    PDF is not that bad as long as you have an good enough reader (i.e. no acrobat)
    - joe_the_user 17y ago
      Evidence? I'm on Linix, I've tried the default readers and they are all horrific. What would you recommend, seriously. I have never found a pleasant PDF reader on any platform but I'm open to the idea they might exist.
      - boucher 17y ago
        Preview is a pretty solid app. Unfortunately, I've never across anything remotely well done on any other platform.
        ecuzzillo 17y ago
        Except when you have pdfs that use certain funny image-compression things that make it look fantastic in Acrobat and xpdf-based viewers; Preview does horribly on those. I agree in general about Preview, though. (It might be jpeg2000; I just know that when my dad scans a book, it looks good in acroread and xpdf, but in Preview it's very slow and pixelated.)
jpablo 17y ago
From my point of view the anti-cs view in many girls forms a few years after they stop playing with Barbies. So I wonder if this could really make a difference. I have seen my nieces playing with barbies and I don't think they really notice if Barbie has a computer, a bikini or a purse. Could be reading things wrong tought
- jasonlotito 17y ago
  I have a friend who likes to share his "Daughter with a Barbie" story. However, we need a little back story first. A professor at McGill University, he's an avid role player and war gamer, amongst other things. He raised his children on that, and they had a grand old time. They have pictures, and all sorts of things around the house from growing up playing D&D with dad. The daughter is still very much into gaming, and is apart of our regular gaming group (along with her dad). And she is still in high school. So, onto the story. Apparently, one day at McDonalds, she ordered a happy meal. She was rather young, when McDonald happy meals with toys were awesome and fun. Anyways, being who she was, she would normally pick the cards, or the other "Boy" toys. However, this time, she asked to get the Barbie. Her father was shocked, because this was unusual for her, but she got the Barbie. Anyways, they went home, and she ran to her room with the Barbie. After some time, she came out, and proudly displayed her barbie to her father. The barbie had been changed, shortened hair, different clothes and other assorted accessories. She explaimed proudly: "Look dad! It's Lt. Ripley!" I can only hope my kids and I have that kind of relationship when they grow up.
  - eru 17y ago
    He watched Alien with his smallish kids?
    - protomyth 17y ago
      My Mom is a horror movie lover, and I saws JAWS when I was 5. Different kids can deal with different things. Although, I had some issues with our vacation to the Oregon beach that summer.
dasil003 17y ago
I love this presentation! It has a strong point and doesn't fail to entertain. The best slide is #17. You should be able to be a fashionable construction worker, a cross-dressing politician, a preppy tattoo artist, or a sex-crazy golfer Instant classic.
- protomyth 17y ago
  Construction workers dress for safety / function not for fashion. It's like saying I will be a fashionable doctor in the ER.
  - zasz 17y ago
    Presumably she meant dressing fashionably when not at work.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
araneae 17y ago
I'm sorry, girl geeks don't wear mini skirts? She must know different geeks than I do.
jeff18 17y ago
"Once my CS friends realized I wasn't a "true geek", I wasn't invited to most of their hangouts - D&D nights, sci-fi screenings, or gaming nights. Eventually, I just wasn't invited to anything at all. I was sad, but busied myself with extracurriculars." I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! If you just walk across campus you will be aggressively flagged down and invited to all sorts of things. If you are on Facebook, you will be shamelessly spammed with invites to all sorts of events. I just can't picture someone getting shunned from even an IEEE meeting or hardcore hackathon because they are "not a true geek". I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all. She then goes on to say that she bought vintage gaming t-shirts and worked on some video games and afterwards, all the geeks were "cool" with her again. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here other than this seems totally unbelievable.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  It's called dramatic license.
- jcmhn 17y ago
  I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all. People who aren't into geek things often display contempt of them, viewing rpgs and sci-fi as immature and weird. My guess is that she didn't even see that she giving off a "listen dorks, don't invite me to play pretend wizard with you" vibe. Because my experience is that geeks are enthusiastically inclusive.
- llimllib 17y ago
  > I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! Alright, I'm a dude, but I think I can say a few things on this. Here's my biases: I train for and play sports for fun, I've never played D&D, I don't watch or read sci-fi, and I don't really play video games (and if I do, they're sports games). In my college CS department, I was definitely not invited to anything that any of the other students were doing. I'm not saying I wanted to be, but probably greater than 90% of my CS classmates were in the D&D sci-fi crowd. I think you underestimate the intimidation factor; I truly don't think that I was mean or overbearing to them, and we worked together just fine on projects, but we all kind of believed implicitly that we belonged to different speheres. I suspect that a similar dynamic is often at work when women interact with that kind of group. (edited to add: except the Jordanians! I forgot, we had a small group of Jordanians in the group that I got along with great, they taught me to smoke houkah and we watched soccer together. They weren't involved with the CS kids either.)
ansostuhmieng 17y ago
Questions for the author whom I presume is unavailable... If it was clear to both parties that the other did not enjoy the same activities... why would you expect to be invited to those activities? Why would it bother you to not be invited to an activity you probably would not enjoy? The only answer seems to be that she was lonely, so she put on a mask to fit in... not really surprising but seems a bit shallow and I can't imagine it really being personally fulfilling. Would not her time have been better sent seeking out those with whom she shares more common interests? Hope I am not too badly missing the point.
- sliverstorm 17y ago
  > If it was clear to both parties that the other did not enjoy the same activities... why would you expect to be invited to those activities? Why would it bother you to not be invited to an activity you probably would not enjoy? Agreed. The main feel I get from the article seems to be frustration about how she doesn't fit in, but that and it's inevitable result are not her fault, and not the other people's fault. We are more than happy to have diverse people working in our field, and it's totally ok to like different things.
  - ErrantX 17y ago
    I guess the trouble is you share a common interest in cs with the group. But because your social interests are so disparate it's hard to then be part of the group. The areas you want to hang out and talk to then about are overshadowed by the opposite interests. I can see how one might conform a little so you could have a decent cs conversation :-)
- pamelafox 17y ago
  Yeah, that's a good point. I guess I think that I would have enjoyed some of the activities (e.g. I do watch some Sci-fi flicks), but as they had a perception of me not being like them, they assumed I wouldn't like anything at all. But, right, ultimately, its about realizing that I am not as interested in most of the things that my colleagues were interested in, and I am hoping that the diversity of my colleagues increases so that would not be the case. I seek out other stuff like dance lessons, art classes, etc, but it does take time to meet the strangers at those activities. I still prefer that stuff (even if its by myself) to going to the pub, which is the defacto activity around here.
araneae 17y ago
So CS compelled her to look like this? http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncarney/3515851216/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncarney/3515851216/ I'm not really buying that she's a Barbie girl.
- pamelafox 17y ago
  The title was more about mirroring the Aqua song, less about me being an actual Barbie Girl. I'm personally a mix of alot of things. More a wannabe 80s rock star than anything else.. if only I could sing. :)
  - araneae 17y ago
    Ok, but your look is classic geek. Short hair, dyed, eyebrow piercings, barcode shirt? It's totally cute, I'm just saying that you don't seem to be as far away from the stereotypical look as that the slideshow suggests. Of course, you're welcome to camouflage as much as you like, I'm just sayin' I think a better example of someone who's like that is Isis (she's in research- but the same sort of thing applies in science too http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/ http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/ Exhibit A: http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/weekly_shoe/ http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/weekly_shoe/ Exhibit B: http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need_for_women_to_defen.php http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need... )
- yacin 17y ago
  You're clearly missing the point. You don't have to look/act like a geeky girl just to be in CS. What the author looks like makes no difference.
llimllib 17y ago
Side note: why is this article (atm, 64 points 2 hours ago) below one on the home page with 22 points submitted 3 hours ago?
- allenbrunson 17y ago
  i believe there is also a 'velocity' aspect. like, a bunch of votes in a short time is assumed to be a spike of interest, giving a particular article a boost. i'm just guessing, though. i haven't actually read the arc source code.
hristov 17y ago
I do not get this stuff about women feeling lonely or ignored in CS. I studied computer engineering (which had even more skewed gender ratios than CS), and there the few women that we had had absolutely no problems being part of our group. In fact if they had any issues, it was getting too much attention. Of course everybody liked to be friends with the few girls in our classes. Even if we were not attracted to them, it was nice to actually chat with a girl once in a while.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  The sex-ratio and geekiness ratio might not be exactly correlated. Engineering has always been male dominated, for whatever reason. What disturbing about CS is that it has become more male dominated over time.
- smokey_the_bear 17y ago
  I studied computer engineering in college too, and I'm a woman. It wasn't a huge deal, and there was some extra attention sometimes that was nice, and other times was not nice. But there were also small things like that the computer engineering dorm floor was male only or when I got a microsoft internship and my lab partner said "must be nice being female" that made me feel different.
dgallagher 17y ago
This reminded me of the nerd/geek/dork method of categorization (or perhaps stereotyping): http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-geek-and-dork/ http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-g... You can be an extreme of either, or more likely a custom mix of all three. The thinking goes not all combinations necessary mesh perfectly with one another.

90 points by llimllib 17y ago

chime 17y ago

This was wonderful. I'm a guy but I can definitely relate to never fitting in with the typical CS-crowd. I don't game, I don't play D&D or any RPGs, and I don't watch/read Sci-Fi. All of this is completely orthogonal to my skills/knowledge. I like reading celebrity gossip and watch cheesy movies that geeks despise. Sure, I watched and liked Primer but I also liked Wanted. People need to stop stereotyping. That's also kinda why I like HN and reddit because there is such a huge amount of diversity on these sites that transcending past stereotypes is an everyday occurrence.

randallsquared 17y ago
Wanted is a terrible example, since it's a comic-book movie. :)
- DannoHung 17y ago
  Wanted is a terrible example because it's a terrible movie. All that proves is that you have bad taste in cinema. At least go with an example like... Wedding Crashers or Old School, or Bad Boys if it has to be an action movie. ANYWAY, games are not a geek exclusive thing anymore (at least not if all of the frat bros I used to know in college are any indication). Comic books still are somewhat, but there is an ever growing independent movement that's causing the interested parties to become more diverse. Science Fiction is clearly no longer niche since like, 9 out of 10 of the top earning films are Science Fiction or Fantasy.
joe_the_user 17y ago
This seems like a bit of divide between 20-somethings and 40-somethings. I played the original D & D at a kid but there was no crowd for which this meant fitting-in. The idea of conformist geek culture is something that I've gradually become aware of - just as, I think, geek culture seems to have become more conformist. Funny...
- TheSOB88 17y ago
  But that makes no sense: you must have played with other people if you played regularly. Did you not fit in with those?
caryme 17y ago
I totally agree with you. I'm on the listserv for ACM at my school, but I rarely participate in their events because they are overwhelmingly gaming-related. I went to get pizza with them recently and had the feeling I didn't fit in. I study both CS and Vocal Performance (opera). I'm not a gamer in the slightest. I'm also a gay male.

lmkg 17y ago

My first reaction (and I assume most people's) to the CS barbie was along the lines of "... really?" but the more I think about it, the more I'm ok with it. Let's be serious here, barbies aren't realistic. To expect the CS barbie to give some sort of objective perspective of real computer engineers would be delusional, and out of character. The big idea was to get girls excited about something related to computers. The execution was about as far off-base as you could get. The only redeeming quality is just that initial idea... but it may be enough to have an impact on its own. The point is, it helps break down the subliminal barrier that computers are a "guy thing." That's what the article is talking about at first, and then takes that point and goes even further. Actually, that's the type of barrier-breaking that I would prefer more of. The whole "we'll give you the help you need" type of barrier-breaking seem in outreach programs implicitly reinforces that "you need the help." The implicit message with the CS barbie is the exact opposite, and that's a good thing.

lena 17y ago
But do people seriously think that computers are a guy thing nowadays? The CS barbie looks just like a secretary or any other profession to me. All moms I know (and my daughter is in the barbie demographic) have computers, most have laptops or netbooks. They use them for e-mail, internet, they are on Twitter, facebook, play online games, etc. Now, I have no idea how a CS barbie should look. I totally agree with the author of the presentation that it is a good thing that Mattel did not make the CS barbie extra dorky. However, as it is now, I don't think girls will make any connection with programming.
- dusklight 17y ago
  Yeah they are using computers. but computers are increasingly like appliances, and there is a huge gulf between clicking buttons in an UI and messing with code in an editor. I remember way back, when I had to learn all this stuff about DOS and RAM just to get Ultima 7 to work on my computer. I had a friend who couldn't get sound to work correctly on his PC in StarCon2, so he soldered together his own sound card to get it to work. Nowdays you don't need to do that with modern computers and most of time you can't even do that even if you wanted to, because modern software and hardware are exponentially more complicated now.

shaddi 17y ago

I remember reading a post similar to this on here recently... Ah yes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145648 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145648 There is a woman in my CS department that I met in a Bollywood Cinema class I was taking. She's totally non-geek; I see her in the lobby talking the fairly standard social drama banter of college students, not about this week's ACM programming problem. At first I was kind of dismissive about her, since I didn't feel she was /really/ a CS student (I remember thinking once, "I wonder if she's here to meet a boyfriend"; I'm really ashamed of that thought). Reading Patrick's piece made me reconsider that view. Regardless of what her motivations are for joining the department, I respect the fact that she's here. It also makes me wonder about our Women in CS initiatives. Here we have a woman who, from all I can tell, does not define her identity primarily in terms of her field of study (which is something I feel like many of us do). She is not a CS woman, but rather a woman that happens to study computer science, kind of like a man who happens to study pharmacy. I'm still developing my thoughts on this, but meeting her and the discussion around this new Barbie have ironically enough really challenged my existing beliefs.

swolchok 17y ago
I wrote this post before reading the parent; I've moved it to be a reply to the parent because it's clearly related. I have some cognitive dissonance on this issue. I'm not sure what to conclude, so I'll just air it. On the one hand, I would love to see people in the field who are both high-performing and high-functioning socially. On the other hand, the degree to which undergraduates (and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general) "live and breathe CS" seems to be a very good heuristic for their proficiency with the nitty technical details. By "live and breathe" CS, I am not talking about passion for traditionally geeky activities like video games, DND, and so on; I am referring to their penchant for work as entertainment (not that we don't all need a break from time to time). This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some of the time. On the third hand, lots of researchers I've met seem to be better rounded.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  > and, by extension, probably front-line programmers in general > This seems to preclude being a social individual who happens to do CS some of the time. The best programmers I know (and I tentatively include myself here; though Im really an engineer) are highly social work hard/play hard type people.

btilly 17y ago

It would be nice to link to the original pdf rather than scribd. Their buggy website wouldn't work under Chrome, so I had to fire up Firefox to read the article. Which let me page forward through the article, but not backwards. Yes, I know that scribd is a YC company, is what the cool kids use, etc. But. It. Doesn't. Actually. Work. The pdf reader I have does. That said, I liked the article. Once I actually managed to read it.

matrix 17y ago
You know a product is bad when people prefer to PDF... (apologies for going off-topic - I just couldn't resist this one)
- jpablo 17y ago
  PDF is not that bad as long as you have an good enough reader (i.e. no acrobat)
  - joe_the_user 17y ago
    Evidence? I'm on Linix, I've tried the default readers and they are all horrific. What would you recommend, seriously. I have never found a pleasant PDF reader on any platform but I'm open to the idea they might exist.
    - boucher 17y ago
      Preview is a pretty solid app. Unfortunately, I've never across anything remotely well done on any other platform.
      - ecuzzillo 17y ago
        Except when you have pdfs that use certain funny image-compression things that make it look fantastic in Acrobat and xpdf-based viewers; Preview does horribly on those. I agree in general about Preview, though. (It might be jpeg2000; I just know that when my dad scans a book, it looks good in acroread and xpdf, but in Preview it's very slow and pixelated.)

jpablo 17y ago

From my point of view the anti-cs view in many girls forms a few years after they stop playing with Barbies. So I wonder if this could really make a difference. I have seen my nieces playing with barbies and I don't think they really notice if Barbie has a computer, a bikini or a purse. Could be reading things wrong tought

jasonlotito 17y ago
I have a friend who likes to share his "Daughter with a Barbie" story. However, we need a little back story first. A professor at McGill University, he's an avid role player and war gamer, amongst other things. He raised his children on that, and they had a grand old time. They have pictures, and all sorts of things around the house from growing up playing D&D with dad. The daughter is still very much into gaming, and is apart of our regular gaming group (along with her dad). And she is still in high school. So, onto the story. Apparently, one day at McDonalds, she ordered a happy meal. She was rather young, when McDonald happy meals with toys were awesome and fun. Anyways, being who she was, she would normally pick the cards, or the other "Boy" toys. However, this time, she asked to get the Barbie. Her father was shocked, because this was unusual for her, but she got the Barbie. Anyways, they went home, and she ran to her room with the Barbie. After some time, she came out, and proudly displayed her barbie to her father. The barbie had been changed, shortened hair, different clothes and other assorted accessories. She explaimed proudly: "Look dad! It's Lt. Ripley!" I can only hope my kids and I have that kind of relationship when they grow up.
- eru 17y ago
  He watched Alien with his smallish kids?
  - protomyth 17y ago
    My Mom is a horror movie lover, and I saws JAWS when I was 5. Different kids can deal with different things. Although, I had some issues with our vacation to the Oregon beach that summer.

dasil003 17y ago

I love this presentation! It has a strong point and doesn't fail to entertain. The best slide is #17. You should be able to be a fashionable construction worker, a cross-dressing politician, a preppy tattoo artist, or a sex-crazy golfer Instant classic.

protomyth 17y ago
Construction workers dress for safety / function not for fashion. It's like saying I will be a fashionable doctor in the ER.
- zasz 17y ago
  Presumably she meant dressing fashionably when not at work.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

araneae 17y ago

I'm sorry, girl geeks don't wear mini skirts? She must know different geeks than I do.

jeff18 17y ago

"Once my CS friends realized I wasn't a "true geek", I wasn't invited to most of their hangouts - D&D nights, sci-fi screenings, or gaming nights. Eventually, I just wasn't invited to anything at all. I was sad, but busied myself with extracurriculars." I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! If you just walk across campus you will be aggressively flagged down and invited to all sorts of things. If you are on Facebook, you will be shamelessly spammed with invites to all sorts of events. I just can't picture someone getting shunned from even an IEEE meeting or hardcore hackathon because they are "not a true geek". I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all. She then goes on to say that she bought vintage gaming t-shirts and worked on some video games and afterwards, all the geeks were "cool" with her again. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here other than this seems totally unbelievable.

yummyfajitas 17y ago
It's called dramatic license.
jcmhn 17y ago
I'd like to think adults are more mature than kindergarten-level exclusion, fellow hackers most of all. People who aren't into geek things often display contempt of them, viewing rpgs and sci-fi as immature and weird. My guess is that she didn't even see that she giving off a "listen dorks, don't invite me to play pretend wizard with you" vibe. Because my experience is that geeks are enthusiastically inclusive.
llimllib 17y ago
> I hate to be that guy, but seriously? I have never witnessed this kind of behavior before. In fact, from my experience at Cal, all of the student groups are absolutely desperate for anyone to join, let alone a girl! Alright, I'm a dude, but I think I can say a few things on this. Here's my biases: I train for and play sports for fun, I've never played D&D, I don't watch or read sci-fi, and I don't really play video games (and if I do, they're sports games). In my college CS department, I was definitely not invited to anything that any of the other students were doing. I'm not saying I wanted to be, but probably greater than 90% of my CS classmates were in the D&D sci-fi crowd. I think you underestimate the intimidation factor; I truly don't think that I was mean or overbearing to them, and we worked together just fine on projects, but we all kind of believed implicitly that we belonged to different speheres. I suspect that a similar dynamic is often at work when women interact with that kind of group. (edited to add: except the Jordanians! I forgot, we had a small group of Jordanians in the group that I got along with great, they taught me to smoke houkah and we watched soccer together. They weren't involved with the CS kids either.)

ansostuhmieng 17y ago

Questions for the author whom I presume is unavailable... If it was clear to both parties that the other did not enjoy the same activities... why would you expect to be invited to those activities? Why would it bother you to not be invited to an activity you probably would not enjoy? The only answer seems to be that she was lonely, so she put on a mask to fit in... not really surprising but seems a bit shallow and I can't imagine it really being personally fulfilling. Would not her time have been better sent seeking out those with whom she shares more common interests? Hope I am not too badly missing the point.

sliverstorm 17y ago
> If it was clear to both parties that the other did not enjoy the same activities... why would you expect to be invited to those activities? Why would it bother you to not be invited to an activity you probably would not enjoy? Agreed. The main feel I get from the article seems to be frustration about how she doesn't fit in, but that and it's inevitable result are not her fault, and not the other people's fault. We are more than happy to have diverse people working in our field, and it's totally ok to like different things.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  I guess the trouble is you share a common interest in cs with the group. But because your social interests are so disparate it's hard to then be part of the group. The areas you want to hang out and talk to then about are overshadowed by the opposite interests. I can see how one might conform a little so you could have a decent cs conversation :-)
pamelafox 17y ago
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess I think that I would have enjoyed some of the activities (e.g. I do watch some Sci-fi flicks), but as they had a perception of me not being like them, they assumed I wouldn't like anything at all. But, right, ultimately, its about realizing that I am not as interested in most of the things that my colleagues were interested in, and I am hoping that the diversity of my colleagues increases so that would not be the case. I seek out other stuff like dance lessons, art classes, etc, but it does take time to meet the strangers at those activities. I still prefer that stuff (even if its by myself) to going to the pub, which is the defacto activity around here.

araneae 17y ago

So CS compelled her to look like this? http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncarney/3515851216/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/johncarney/3515851216/ I'm not really buying that she's a Barbie girl.

pamelafox 17y ago
The title was more about mirroring the Aqua song, less about me being an actual Barbie Girl. I'm personally a mix of alot of things. More a wannabe 80s rock star than anything else.. if only I could sing. :)
- araneae 17y ago
  Ok, but your look is classic geek. Short hair, dyed, eyebrow piercings, barcode shirt? It's totally cute, I'm just saying that you don't seem to be as far away from the stereotypical look as that the slideshow suggests. Of course, you're welcome to camouflage as much as you like, I'm just sayin' I think a better example of someone who's like that is Isis (she's in research- but the same sort of thing applies in science too http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/ http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/ Exhibit A: http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/weekly_shoe/ http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/weekly_shoe/ Exhibit B: http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need_for_women_to_defen.php http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/2008/11/on_the_need... )
yacin 17y ago
You're clearly missing the point. You don't have to look/act like a geeky girl just to be in CS. What the author looks like makes no difference.

llimllib 17y ago

Side note: why is this article (atm, 64 points 2 hours ago) below one on the home page with 22 points submitted 3 hours ago?

allenbrunson 17y ago
i believe there is also a 'velocity' aspect. like, a bunch of votes in a short time is assumed to be a spike of interest, giving a particular article a boost. i'm just guessing, though. i haven't actually read the arc source code.

hristov 17y ago

I do not get this stuff about women feeling lonely or ignored in CS. I studied computer engineering (which had even more skewed gender ratios than CS), and there the few women that we had had absolutely no problems being part of our group. In fact if they had any issues, it was getting too much attention. Of course everybody liked to be friends with the few girls in our classes. Even if we were not attracted to them, it was nice to actually chat with a girl once in a while.

joe_the_user 17y ago
The sex-ratio and geekiness ratio might not be exactly correlated. Engineering has always been male dominated, for whatever reason. What disturbing about CS is that it has become more male dominated over time.
smokey_the_bear 17y ago
I studied computer engineering in college too, and I'm a woman. It wasn't a huge deal, and there was some extra attention sometimes that was nice, and other times was not nice. But there were also small things like that the computer engineering dorm floor was male only or when I got a microsoft internship and my lab partner said "must be nice being female" that made me feel different.

dgallagher 17y ago

This reminded me of the nerd/geek/dork method of categorization (or perhaps stereotyping): http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-geek-and-dork/ http://www.goingthewongway.com/208/difference-between-nerd-g... You can be an extreme of either, or more likely a custom mix of all three. The thinking goes not all combinations necessary mesh perfectly with one another.