"Science: It's a Girl Thing" Says Controversial Ad

[doublenix]

My biggest problem: The damn thing doesn't even make sense. From beginning to end, it's just a bunch of images mashed together. Take out the science-based ones and it is just a Revlon or Covergirl commercial.

 

[1337mokro]

What if a girl really just does like pink, pretty clothes, baubles, shiny stuff and babies and all that stuff, but then an add comes around telling her how wrong it was for her to be that way and that she shouldn't like that stuff. Instead she should become a chemist. Because being a chemist is so much more awesome than becoming a florist or a botanist.

You told her it was so much better. Just like how the media tells her the other stuff is so much better.

There's the crucial problem, you are counteracting the media, by doing the exact same thing.

Boiled down to the crucial point, for sake of brevity.

I'm not saying anyone should tell girls that liking the stuff is wrong. I'm saying we need to be aware that tons and tons and tons of people are constantly telling her that not liking it is somehow wrong. Not in the "go to jail" sort of wrong, but in the "people will think you're weird" sort. (And to a lot of kids, that might as well be jail! We, as people, naturally want to be accepted by the people with whom we identify.)

It's not about programming girls not to like pink, or programming them to like science. It's about trying to remove the programming that, unintentionally, tells them to like pink and not like science.

What you're talking about is the danger of over-correcting the problem, but that's always a danger anywhere. If I'm in a car that's veering wildly to the left, the answer isn't to veer wildly to the right... but that doesn't mean I should completely ignore the steering wheel because it's the same wheel that got me into this mess. I need to take hold of that wheel and use it in a responsible, balanced way.

Just because the method of undoing the problem seems superficially similar doesn't mean it is bad or won't work. If someone is holding up a bank using a gun, we get them to stop by pointing a gun at them, too. If someone's body is ripped open by a bullet, sometimes we have to rip it open a little further to get the bullet out. What matters is why we're doing it, because that will already put a major check on how.

What I'm getting at here: We don't have a system in which a little girl starts from a neutral position and then chooses to head toward fashion or science as a primary interest. We start with a system that directs very, very young girls toward fashion... and then we present them with the choice, knowing full well which they'll choose... and then we use that as a defense by saying, "See? They keep choosing it, so who are we to challenge their preferences?"

(See also: self-fulfilling prophecy)

(Your MMO comparison is flawed though. The reason why WoW won't die is because of investments. People have invested time and considerable amounts of money into it, thus abandoning it is not a feasible option. Your comparison holds up better if you let's say want to entice a woman to study physics when she is now in her last year of Media Communication study. No matter your marketing it isn't going to happen because of investment of time and money.)

No, my MMO comparison stands, and your point upholds it. My point is that these companies can't "beat WoW at its own game," because WoW has had all this time to refine their game. You present me a game that gives me everything WoW gives me, and I'll tell you, "So? I'm already playing that game, and I've already got tons of time invested in it."

If you want someone to switch, the other option needs to be more enticing... but also enticing in a very different way that highlights why it is simultaneously 1) a good idea to move and 2) a less good idea to stay.

If it quacks like a duck. Walks like a duck. Has duck feathers. Duck DNA and of course it's hatchings are also ducks. Then it's probably a duck. Saying "Oh sure my methods might seem the exact same and use the exact same methods, but it's totally different I assure you" is a statement that only holds up in politics.

If someone is holding up a bank with a gun, he doesn't have 100's of thousands of rules to follow. If you run up and shoot that man you are arrested for excessive force. In other words if you use the gun the same way as he/she is, you will be reprimanded. The funny thing about the bullet is sometimes we just leave the bullet in. Ever wonder why people have shrapnel in their bodies? Because taking it out would do more damage than leaving it in.

It's a case by case basis. Some girls will always be "girly" some girls will be "tomboys" and others will be inbetweens. Just like some bullets are extracted, some bullets are left in the body and some bullets just pass right through you. Same way if we just start bombarding young girls with adds about how cool it is not to like girly stuff, or how bad it is to like those things you are essentially replacing one problem with another.

We used to dress up boys as girls and raise them as girls until they were 12. So the evil demons wouldn't get to them. These boys strangely enough still acted like boys even though they were raised as girls, might have been that they weren't raised 100% as girls, but it might also have been that there is no neutral status. Your gender might already give you a predisposition towards certain tendencies.

How are you going to determine when to stop. In a car you have a clear indication of when to stop turning the wheel. When your car is centred you will attempt to stop. You might swerve to much to the right, then left and right again to correct it but eventually you have a clear goal to work to. What is the goal here?

Achieve 50-50 occupation of scientific research fields? 50-50 occupation of all jobs in the world? 50-50 occupation of politics, hospitals, garbage collecting, prisons whatever? What stick is your measuring tool for "goal achieved"? The answer is you have none. The goal is vague and very fuzzy, get more women into science studies. How about we give every woman who does a science study a scholar ship. That should more women into those studies. The amount of successful cases though that a different story. In a nutshell when will you know you have "counter programmed" enough?

You can't, you can't know that because as you say women never started in a neutral position. So the neutral position is unknown. Instead of having the media tell women to be what the current culture perceive as feminine you are telling them not to be that kind of feminine, but instead to be your kind of feminine. I honestly have never in my life heard a woman who didn't want to do a science course give the reason "Because I am a woman and women belong in the kitchen or because the reactor isn't painted pink".

It has always been other reasons, boring subjects, long hours, bad job market, horrible tests, ungodly amounts of studying, a 12 year learning period, impossible to reconcile with desire to start a family one day. (Some) Similar reasons as why men didn't pick those studies. Maybe it has something to do with the jobs and studies rather than the female idea.

How about we first focus on perception of those professions and courses rather than start counter brainwashing people until we hit the tipping point where you are brainwashing them into doing things the way you perceive as being right.

Also. Eve Online

 

[Iron Criterion]

For (girl) science!

At least they didn't have a pillow fight or play spin the bottle...

 

[drthmik]

as the saying says; "Good enough for government work."

 

[Iron Criterion]

What if a girl really just does like pink, pretty clothes, baubles, shiny stuff and babies and all that stuff, but then an add comes around telling her how wrong it was for her to be that way and that she shouldn't like that stuff. Instead she should become a chemist. Because being a chemist is so much more awesome than becoming a florist or a botanist.

You told her it was so much better. Just like how the media tells her the other stuff is so much better.

There's the crucial problem, you are counteracting the media, by doing the exact same thing.

Boiled down to the crucial point, for sake of brevity.

I'm not saying anyone should tell girls that liking the stuff is wrong. I'm saying we need to be aware that tons and tons and tons of people are constantly telling her that not liking it is somehow wrong. Not in the "go to jail" sort of wrong, but in the "people will think you're weird" sort. (And to a lot of kids, that might as well be jail! We, as people, naturally want to be accepted by the people with whom we identify.)

It's not about programming girls not to like pink, or programming them to like science. It's about trying to remove the programming that, unintentionally, tells them to like pink and not like science.

What you're talking about is the danger of over-correcting the problem, but that's always a danger anywhere. If I'm in a car that's veering wildly to the left, the answer isn't to veer wildly to the right... but that doesn't mean I should completely ignore the steering wheel because it's the same wheel that got me into this mess. I need to take hold of that wheel and use it in a responsible, balanced way.

Just because the method of undoing the problem seems superficially similar doesn't mean it is bad or won't work. If someone is holding up a bank using a gun, we get them to stop by pointing a gun at them, too. If someone's body is ripped open by a bullet, sometimes we have to rip it open a little further to get the bullet out. What matters is why we're doing it, because that will already put a major check on how.

What I'm getting at here: We don't have a system in which a little girl starts from a neutral position and then chooses to head toward fashion or science as a primary interest. We start with a system that directs very, very young girls toward fashion... and then we present them with the choice, knowing full well which they'll choose... and then we use that as a defense by saying, "See? They keep choosing it, so who are we to challenge their preferences?"

(See also: self-fulfilling prophecy)

(Your MMO comparison is flawed though. The reason why WoW won't die is because of investments. People have invested time and considerable amounts of money into it, thus abandoning it is not a feasible option. Your comparison holds up better if you let's say want to entice a woman to study physics when she is now in her last year of Media Communication study. No matter your marketing it isn't going to happen because of investment of time and money.)

No, my MMO comparison stands, and your point upholds it. My point is that these companies can't "beat WoW at its own game," because WoW has had all this time to refine their game. You present me a game that gives me everything WoW gives me, and I'll tell you, "So? I'm already playing that game, and I've already got tons of time invested in it."

If you want someone to switch, the other option needs to be more enticing... but also enticing in a very different way that highlights why it is simultaneously 1) a good idea to move and 2) a less good idea to stay.

If it quacks like a duck. Walks like a duck. Has duck feathers. Duck DNA and of course it's hatchings are also ducks. Then it's probably a duck. Saying "Oh sure my methods might seem the exact same and use the exact same methods, but it's totally different I assure you" is a statement that only holds up in politics.

If someone is holding up a bank with a gun, he doesn't have 100's of thousands of rules to follow. If you run up and shoot that man you are arrested for excessive force. In other words if you use the gun the same way as he/she is, you will be reprimanded. The funny thing about the bullet is sometimes we just leave the bullet in. Ever wonder why people have shrapnel in their bodies? Because taking it out would do more damage than leaving it in.

It's a case by case basis. Some girls will always be "girly" some girls will be "tomboys" and others will be inbetweens. Just like some bullets are extracted, some bullets are left in the body and some bullets just pass right through you. Same way if we just start bombarding young girls with adds about how cool it is not to like girly stuff, or how bad it is to like those things you are essentially replacing one problem with another.

We used to dress up boys as girls and raise them as girls until they were 12. So the evil demons wouldn't get to them. These boys strangely enough still acted like boys even though they were raised as girls, might have been that they weren't raised 100% as girls, but it might also have been that there is no neutral status. Your gender might already give you a predisposition towards certain tendencies.

Instead of having the media tell women to be what the current culture perceive as feminine you are telling them not to be that kind of feminine, but instead to be your kind of feminine. I honestly have never in my life heard a woman who didn't want to do a science course give the reason "Because I am a woman and women belong in the kitchen or because the reactor isn't painted pink".

It has always been other reasons, boring subjects, long hours, bad job market, horrible tests, ungodly amounts of studying, a 12 year learning period. Similar reasons as why men who didn't pick those studies. Maybe it has something to do with the jobs and studies rather than the female idea.

How about we first focus on perception of those professions and courses rather than start counter brainwashing people until we hit the tipping point where you are brainwashing them into doing things the way you perceive as being right.

Also. Eve Online

Is your meandering post supposed to have point?

The reason people dislike the ad is not because girls shouldn't like pink fluffy stuff, but rather it treats women like children - "look there's pink beakers, isn't science exciting girls!"

We should be looking to help forge careers and enforce equality rather than make science look appealing, because you are right it is boring - those with no interest in the subject won't take any convincing.

 

[1337mokro]

What if a girl really just does like pink, pretty clothes, baubles, shiny stuff and babies and all that stuff, but then an add comes around telling her how wrong it was for her to be that way and that she shouldn't like that stuff. Instead she should become a chemist. Because being a chemist is so much more awesome than becoming a florist or a botanist.

You told her it was so much better. Just like how the media tells her the other stuff is so much better.

There's the crucial problem, you are counteracting the media, by doing the exact same thing.

Boiled down to the crucial point, for sake of brevity.

I'm not saying anyone should tell girls that liking the stuff is wrong. I'm saying we need to be aware that tons and tons and tons of people are constantly telling her that not liking it is somehow wrong. Not in the "go to jail" sort of wrong, but in the "people will think you're weird" sort. (And to a lot of kids, that might as well be jail! We, as people, naturally want to be accepted by the people with whom we identify.)

It's not about programming girls not to like pink, or programming them to like science. It's about trying to remove the programming that, unintentionally, tells them to like pink and not like science.

What you're talking about is the danger of over-correcting the problem, but that's always a danger anywhere. If I'm in a car that's veering wildly to the left, the answer isn't to veer wildly to the right... but that doesn't mean I should completely ignore the steering wheel because it's the same wheel that got me into this mess. I need to take hold of that wheel and use it in a responsible, balanced way.

Just because the method of undoing the problem seems superficially similar doesn't mean it is bad or won't work. If someone is holding up a bank using a gun, we get them to stop by pointing a gun at them, too. If someone's body is ripped open by a bullet, sometimes we have to rip it open a little further to get the bullet out. What matters is why we're doing it, because that will already put a major check on how.

What I'm getting at here: We don't have a system in which a little girl starts from a neutral position and then chooses to head toward fashion or science as a primary interest. We start with a system that directs very, very young girls toward fashion... and then we present them with the choice, knowing full well which they'll choose... and then we use that as a defense by saying, "See? They keep choosing it, so who are we to challenge their preferences?"

(See also: self-fulfilling prophecy)

(Your MMO comparison is flawed though. The reason why WoW won't die is because of investments. People have invested time and considerable amounts of money into it, thus abandoning it is not a feasible option. Your comparison holds up better if you let's say want to entice a woman to study physics when she is now in her last year of Media Communication study. No matter your marketing it isn't going to happen because of investment of time and money.)

No, my MMO comparison stands, and your point upholds it. My point is that these companies can't "beat WoW at its own game," because WoW has had all this time to refine their game. You present me a game that gives me everything WoW gives me, and I'll tell you, "So? I'm already playing that game, and I've already got tons of time invested in it."

If you want someone to switch, the other option needs to be more enticing... but also enticing in a very different way that highlights why it is simultaneously 1) a good idea to move and 2) a less good idea to stay.

If it quacks like a duck. Walks like a duck. Has duck feathers. Duck DNA and of course it's hatchings are also ducks. Then it's probably a duck. Saying "Oh sure my methods might seem the exact same and use the exact same methods, but it's totally different I assure you" is a statement that only holds up in politics.

If someone is holding up a bank with a gun, he doesn't have 100's of thousands of rules to follow. If you run up and shoot that man you are arrested for excessive force. In other words if you use the gun the same way as he/she is, you will be reprimanded. The funny thing about the bullet is sometimes we just leave the bullet in. Ever wonder why people have shrapnel in their bodies? Because taking it out would do more damage than leaving it in.

It's a case by case basis. Some girls will always be "girly" some girls will be "tomboys" and others will be inbetweens. Just like some bullets are extracted, some bullets are left in the body and some bullets just pass right through you. Same way if we just start bombarding young girls with adds about how cool it is not to like girly stuff, or how bad it is to like those things you are essentially replacing one problem with another.

We used to dress up boys as girls and raise them as girls until they were 12. So the evil demons wouldn't get to them. These boys strangely enough still acted like boys even though they were raised as girls, might have been that they weren't raised 100% as girls, but it might also have been that there is no neutral status. Your gender might already give you a predisposition towards certain tendencies.

Instead of having the media tell women to be what the current culture perceive as feminine you are telling them not to be that kind of feminine, but instead to be your kind of feminine. I honestly have never in my life heard a woman who didn't want to do a science course give the reason "Because I am a woman and women belong in the kitchen or because the reactor isn't painted pink".

It has always been other reasons, boring subjects, long hours, bad job market, horrible tests, ungodly amounts of studying, a 12 year learning period. Similar reasons as why men who didn't pick those studies. Maybe it has something to do with the jobs and studies rather than the female idea.

How about we first focus on perception of those professions and courses rather than start counter brainwashing people until we hit the tipping point where you are brainwashing them into doing things the way you perceive as being right.

Also. Eve Online

Is your meandering post supposed to have point?

The reason people dislike the ad is not because girls shouldn't like pink fluffy stuff, but rather it treats women like children - "look there's pink beakers, isn't science exciting girls!"

We should be looking to help forge careers and enforce equality rather than make science look appealing, because you are right it is boring - those with no interest in the subject won't take any convincing.

If you are late to a discussion, please don't butt in. All you do is make yourself look like a massive, massive twat.

Go back a few post. My entire point is that making adds like these do nothing and serve no purpose other than wasting money that should be better spent on making the studies themselves look more appealing.

Also if you had actually read it you might have noticed the sentence "How about we first focus on perception of those professions and courses rather than start counter brainwashing people" so yes, thanks for repeating what I said in a more... crude fashion.

 

[newwiseman]

That.. was pretty bad, and the europop really didn't help anything.

The Maxim spread of Kari Byron from Mythbusters doing the mentos and coke myth was hotter, and less insulting.

 

[aattss]

I can't see how this video is supposed to target girls.

Oh, and this also reinforces both the stereotype that the government is stupid and that both nerds and the government sees girls as sex objects. Not that the one about nerds is true.

 

[snave]

X: It's a girl thing, with lipstick as the letter I? Got it. To the mememobile!

 

[FinalHeart95]

I don't even understand what happened here. I guess it's offensive, but it's more confusing. How did they expect to attract girls to science with this?

 

[bootz]

Maybe its will be a recruitment tool for aperture science.
I mena real women doing real sciencin' would have served better

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

Who in their right mind ever thought this was a good idea?

Someone without a right mind (or even a mind at all), I'm guessing.

Well obviously we've reached a place where ads for women should just start casting frumpy man hating femonists wearing bib overalls on top of a heavy flannel shirt and just be done with it. My god people are overly sensitive these days. If you are someone that honest to god took offense to that video you really should look into pulling the stick out of . . . . . errrr I mean lightening up.

I think they should have cast real female scientists and got them to talk about their experiences while interspersing clips of them performing relevant scientific activities.

My biggest problem: The damn thing doesn't even make sense. From beginning to end, it's just a bunch of images mashed together. Take out the science-based ones and it is just a Revlon or Covergirl commercial.

Even with the "science" imagery it looks like an ad for cosmetics, with "Science" being the brand name of the product. :-/

 

[ShinobiJedi42]

Here at Aperture Science, our women love science! But they wouldn't dream of working without their SCIENCE LIPSTICK. It's lipstick made from Mars dust, so you know damn well it's as deep a red as any lipstick those idiots at Black Mesa have.

 

[FamoFunk]

Wait, there was science in that video?

My thoughts exactly. I almost thought, when I first saw it, I was going to be tricked into watching porn, or at least they'd strip and do sexy dancing for the bloke.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Actually. Science has been a girl thing for quite a while.

The average male to female ratio in the past three years of university has never been 50-50. The most equal it ever got was 40-60, for every man currently studying or working in a field of medicine, chemistry, biology or even physics, there are two or more women. The only field of science where I can see a clear male predominance is in mathematics, but even there it's only a slight advantage.

Really? I'm studying Chemistry, and there are easily more blokes than girls. I'd say about 80% of the people on the course are male, total sausage-fest.

I could say the same thing. Granted, it was 10 years ago now, but I was studying physics.
And among all the classes I took, it was at least 95% male.

To top it off, because the different subjects were shared amongst people with majors in a variety of things, the girls I managed to get to talk to didn't seem to be science students as such.
Especially in the physics classes. (I met a radiology student, and a few more taking biology or in the very simplest physics classes. But even the advanced math classes had more women than the physics classes...)

So... I don't really know. While I can believe more women than men go to university, from what I saw, they aren't studying science. And definitely not physics.

 

[Dastardly]

You can't, you can't know that because as you say women never started in a neutral position. So the neutral position is unknown. Instead of having the media tell women to be what the current culture perceive as feminine you are telling them not to be that kind of feminine, but instead to be your kind of feminine. I honestly have never in my life heard a woman who didn't want to do a science course give the reason "Because I am a woman and women belong in the kitchen or because the reactor isn't painted pink".

How about we first focus on perception of those professions and courses rather than start counter brainwashing people until we hit the tipping point where you are brainwashing them into doing things the way you perceive as being right.

This is exactly the problem. You're framing it perfectly for me, but you're inside it, so you can't see what I'm saying (apparently).

The "perception of those professions" is shaped very differently for men and women based on how society treats them from a very young age. The perception is crafted by exactly the "brainwashing" we're talking about, so you can't treat them like separate issues.

There is nothing about the sciences that turns away girls on a genetic or biological level, so that leaves the problem on a social level. And yeah, "personal preference" is largely shaped by social influences, so saying it's just that "some girls don't like science" is a non-answer.

This isn't about telling women to be one kind of feminine versus another kind. It's about acknowledging that the very idea of "women acting feminine" is almost entirely defined by a male-dominated cultural model that persists behind the scenes even today. It is a term that has no meaning, except that which we give it.

Women are, barring abnormalities, programmed genetically to identify with females of their species. And there are a select few behaviors to which women are instinctually programmed to gravitate -- the so-called "nurturing instinct" perhaps among them. But outside that, the specific behaviors we term masculine/feminine are based on the social status-quo.

The social programming that directs women away from science does so gently. It's not going to be as obvious as, "Ew! Science doesn't have pink things, gross!" Instead, it's going to work like any other social programming -- it's going to feel natural, because it's what she's used to. Society has told her girls like shopping, makeup, clothes, and mothering.

What you're calling "counter-brainwashing" is ridiculous. I'm talking about making a conscious effort to stop the current brainwashing. And it will require a conscious, positive effort to do it, because the brainwashing process is such an ingrained part of our culture. Things that we do without evening thinking (like associating pink with girls, which wasn't even a "thing" until the 1940's), we have to stop and think about them, because they have unintended consequences.

You want to make this some kind of "brainwashing in reverse" thing, when it's not. Our goal shouldn't be to "trick girls into liking science." Our goal should be making sure we're not accidentally tricking them into not liking it. That requires that we understand the mechanism that got us into this mess, and it requires that we behave in a way that is more conscious of it. And, to get the ball rolling, it means it can't hurt to work the other way just a little.

There are hallways that, while maybe we haven't closed them off to women, we've made them appear uninviting. We could simply open up the hallways and trust that maybe at some point they'll realize they're open now, but that's too passive to work in our cultural climate. But we also don't want to try to lure them down those hallways (that's the reverse brainwashing stuff). What we need to do is open up those hallways and then make sure girls know they're open, inviting, and worthwhile, whereas before they were made to seem otherwise.

 

[idodo35]

wait... they are advertising science?

that seems... stupid...

hahahahahha!!!! i googled "you are stupid" to find a meme for this and i found a picture of a girl i know XD no kidding! this is fucking hellerious! (and no its not the one i put...

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

...

That is so insulting on so many levels I can even begin to put the thoughts to actual words.

1.. Wearing high heals and short shorts while handling dangerous chemicals seems like a GREAT idea to me.

2. SCIENCE ISN'T JUST CHEMICALS BUBBLING AND MAKING A POTIONS.

3. So, first science is a "girl thing," thus implying men should get out of the lab coat and let the models handle it.

4. Oh, you thought you could be ANY woman to do science? No, that would make sense, you have to be a super model to be a scientist. Doesn't matter what is on your mind, it is the 2 inch waists that matter.

Spoiler: Because what have ugly people ever done for science anyway?

So, it at very least insulting to lab safety, science, men, women, and most of the greatest minds of the last century.

Good job ad.