What's Wrong with This Picture?
The image below has been making the rounds on my Facebook. It originally popped up on my feed on the page for “It’s Okay to Be Takei”, and has been posted around by about five or six other people. Images travel fast on Facebook.
Quixotic Autistic: Geek Culture Wants a Cookie & A Pat on the Head for Not Creating Kim Kardashian
Images like this irritate me. I don’t like the self-congratulatory aspect of geek culture which appears to have become an epidemic spread via images on websites like Facebook. But what good is complaining when I can, instead, unpack the image and try to start a dialogue on why geek culture needs to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror before patting itself on the back for the creation of such great female role models?
I’ll start with some minor quibbles before building up to the big stuff. The women in the top row, except for Bella Swan, are all real people. The women in the bottom half of the image are all fictional characters from television shows. Wouldn’t a more compelling, interesting, and challenging comparison for celebrating an alternative to mainstream role models for girls have been real-life women who are involved in geek culture? How about Lauren Faust, creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Or Lindsay Ellis, the Nostalgia Chick? Rebecca Watson, from Skepchick? Jane Goodall, the world-famous Primatologist? Dr. Alice Roberts, from Digging for Britain? Lisa Randall, the Harvard Physicist? Kate Beaton, the brilliant comic artist? Or Mayim Bialik, the actress turned neuroscientist turned actress? All of these women are talented, famous, and well-known for being badass in their decidedly geeky fields. I would love to see them celebrated as role models for budding geek girls.
Read the rest of the article here
Source
I really think the most important point is that it's real and fictional women being compared, not to mention the fact we're meant to draw our comparisons from the photos alone...more or less...
Quixotic Autistic: Geek Culture Wants a Cookie & A Pat on the Head for Not Creating Kim Kardashian
Images like this irritate me. I don’t like the self-congratulatory aspect of geek culture which appears to have become an epidemic spread via images on websites like Facebook. But what good is complaining when I can, instead, unpack the image and try to start a dialogue on why geek culture needs to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror before patting itself on the back for the creation of such great female role models?
I’ll start with some minor quibbles before building up to the big stuff. The women in the top row, except for Bella Swan, are all real people. The women in the bottom half of the image are all fictional characters from television shows. Wouldn’t a more compelling, interesting, and challenging comparison for celebrating an alternative to mainstream role models for girls have been real-life women who are involved in geek culture? How about Lauren Faust, creator of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Or Lindsay Ellis, the Nostalgia Chick? Rebecca Watson, from Skepchick? Jane Goodall, the world-famous Primatologist? Dr. Alice Roberts, from Digging for Britain? Lisa Randall, the Harvard Physicist? Kate Beaton, the brilliant comic artist? Or Mayim Bialik, the actress turned neuroscientist turned actress? All of these women are talented, famous, and well-known for being badass in their decidedly geeky fields. I would love to see them celebrated as role models for budding geek girls.
Read the rest of the article here
Source
I really think the most important point is that it's real and fictional women being compared, not to mention the fact we're meant to draw our comparisons from the photos alone...more or less...