Awesome commercial showing that girls can be engineers | Golden Skate

Awesome commercial showing that girls can be engineers

O

Olympia

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
That's great, Mrs. P.!

I remember one of the first commercials years ago that showed a woman in a catchy uniform walking up to her job in a plane, and it turned out that she was one of the pilots, not a flight attendant. It was a simple but awesome statement.
 
louisa05

louisa05

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Dec 3, 2011
You can be a girly-girl and an engineer. Really. It could actually happen. Being "girly" is not synonymous with being less smart.
 
dorispulaski

dorispulaski

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Trying to be girly at work at some engineering jobs can be done, but it can be a problem if your work involves what we used to call "tooling" at IBM. When you are involved with building machinery, it doesn't work well, period.

It isn't great with surveying in civil engineering, either.

There are a lot of reasonable girly girl jobs in electrical engineering, but quite often you will be told, "no makeup, no manicures, no hairspray & no high heels," in any engineering or scientific endeavor that involves keeping things hyper clean. Stuffing a skirt into your ninja suit doesn't work well either. And the helmet does nothing for your hair style.

http://www.crtoy.com/img/ptt011.jpg

I spent 30 years with IBM and was often required to wear similar garb.

Even engineering managers/executives often find themselves in that sort of clothing when they have to view things in the laboratories or manufacturing areas, although it is a less frequent occurrence than for non-managerial engineers.

Once "dress down Friday" came to IBM, every day was Friday thereafter, within a year.
 
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CoyoteChris

CoyoteChris

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We have come along way, just in our lifetimes....we went from a society where women were told after WWII to leave the world of work so men could have the jobs, to a society where it is commonplace for women to be scientists, like my wife, or engineers, pilots, doctors, you name it.
Chris who still doesn't "get" high heels.
 
M

Mrs. P

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louisa05 said:
You can be a girly-girl and an engineer. Really. It could actually happen. Being "girly" is not synonymous with being less smart.
Click to expand...

Of course! I definitely know my share of absolutely gorgeous tech/engineering types. In fact, the girls in this video are quite cute, aren't they? They are definitely still girly, even though they are doing "guy's work." I didn't mean to imply that being girly means being less smart.

But the math and science fields are mostly guys, which is the point of the video. When my mother-in-law was in college in the late 1960s,she was considered unusual because she double majored in Spanish and biology rather than home economics.
 
O

Olympia

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I don't "get" high heels either, Chris! But I play with dolls, and my dolls have great shoes.

I know that in many jobs, women workers can't indulge their love for frills, but they certainly can be girly girls in their off hours. Whereas there was a time when it was assumed that you had to be one or the other as a matter of temperament.
 
louisa05

louisa05

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Olympia said:
I don't "get" high heels either, Chris! But I play with dolls, and my dolls have great shoes.

I know that in many jobs, women workers can't indulge their love for frills, but they certainly can be girly girls in their off hours. Whereas there was a time when it was assumed that you had to be one or the other as a matter of temperament.
Click to expand...

This. Which was my point. And the original post was very much written as "Yay! Girls can be smart instead of feminine!"

Sorry to be over sensitive, but I've been treated like a moron quite often in my life because of liking skirts, make-up and traditional "girly" things. One time, in a graduate course, a female classmate actually told me she was surprised I was smart because I looked "too put together to have a brain". That is a stereotypical view of women that must die or we will never truly be equal.
 
M

Mrs. P

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louisa05 said:
This. Which was my point. And the original post was very much written as "Yay! Girls can be smart instead of feminine!"

Sorry to be over sensitive, but I've been treated like a moron quite often in my life because of liking skirts, make-up and traditional "girly" things. One time, in a graduate course, a female classmate actually told me she was surprised I was smart because I looked "too put together to have a brain". That is a stereotypical view of women that must die or we will never truly be equal.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to offend, louisa05.

I guess I should clarify that when I say I wasn't a "girly-girl" I don't mean in the sense that I didn't like makeup or skirts (I have quite the collection actually), but more in my mannerisms. I was sort of a bull in a china shop as a child and I was constantly told that I needed to be more of a girl, i.e. graceful and princess like.

I"m still not very graceful today, but luckily I'm in a career that doesn't require it.

I'm just glad women have a wide range of career choices, such as engineering and aren't limited to some gender-based stereotypes -- that goes both ways. And I agree, if you still want to look pretty while doing it, that's fine with me.
 
louisa05

louisa05

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I think we have to be very, very careful to not continue the stereotype that being feminine means you cannot be powerful or intelligent.

And I see it on skating forums constantly with the derision of skaters who are perceived as too feminine due to music, costuming or balletic lines. The use of "pretty princess" as an insult (or worse, its more insulting counterpart "pwetty pwincess") comes with the strong implication that being feminine in any way is bad and is the antithesis of power and maturity. That idea is not at all empowering to women and girls. A truly empowering attitude is that women can be whoever they want to be.
 
M

Mrs. P

Uno, Dos, twizzle!
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louisa05 said:
I think we have to be very, very careful to not continue the stereotype that being feminine means you cannot be powerful or intelligent.

And I see it on skating forums constantly with the derision of skaters who are perceived as too feminine due to music, costuming or balletic lines. The use of "pretty princess" as an insult (or worse, its more insulting counterpart "pwetty pwincess") comes with the strong implication that being feminine in any way is bad and is the antithesis of power and maturity. That idea is not at all empowering to women and girls. A truly empowering attitude is that women can be whoever they want to be.
Click to expand...

I definitely agree with all those points. I mentioned my mother-in-law earlier. Despite the fact she defied sort of the gender standards with her college major, she was very much a lady, who took pride in awesome shoes and being put together.

She also loves the domestic life--she enjoys cleaning and baking. But yet she can be firm and fierce too. So no, being feminine and powerful are definitely not mutually exclusive.

And again, I want to make clear that in my excitement over this awesome commercial, I did not mean to imply that being feminine was bad.

Actually, I feel the "too feminine" aspect applies to men figure skaters too. A skater like Jason Brown, for example, is considered more "feminine" because he is very flexible and has strong lines/basics, while Max Aaron is considered more masculine because he's known for his jumps rather than his skating skills.

Louisa, I think we actually are more eye-to-eye than my original post seems to give off. :)
 
O

Olympia

Joined
Aug 16, 2009
This discussion reminds me of an article long ago in Ms. Magazine. I forget what the main theme of the article was, but in the course of it, the skating world was criticized because judges preferred "swanlike" Nancy Kerrigan to the strong, athletic skater Tonya Harding. (The point was made that Kerrigan toed the line by skating in an acceptably princesslike manner, whereas the working class hero Tonya was dissed by the judges. I have no idea whether anyone connected with the article had the faintest idea what skating was about, but certainly no one gave any indication that Kerrigan was also a powerful athlete (had to be, to do triple jumps), and that by this time, Harding's programs were less successful because she had been training in a haphazard way, and her jumps had lost their security. The idea was that any respectable feminist would support only Harding. I, a Kerrigan fan, was on the point of writing the magazine that they were misinterpreting what skating entailed, but I knew they wouldn't be interested in such arcane arguments. But the juxtaposition of symbols was the same as it is here: you can tell a strong woman by looking at her manner and how she dresses. Au contraire, thank goodness! Strength comes in all sizes and shapes and styles of dress.
 
dorispulaski

dorispulaski

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Olympia said:
I don't "get" high heels either, Chris! But I play with dolls, and my dolls have great shoes.

I know that in many jobs, women workers can't indulge their love for frills, but they certainly can be girly girls in their off hours. Whereas there was a time when it was assumed that you had to be one or the other as a matter of temperament.
Click to expand...

Absolutely, but there are some limitations. If you work in a "no hair spray" and "no long fingernails or nailpolish," environment, those are not magically happening in your spare time. Your hairdo has to be practical,and manage to look good in both its work & home environment, and so do your nails. OTOH, dresses & shoes: Go for it.

:slink: One of my big indulgences during retirement is getting my nails done, because I never could in my working years. OTOH, having feet that don't hurt is something I treasure and am not giving up on.

louisa05 said:
This. Which was my point. And the original post was very much written as "Yay! Girls can be smart instead of feminine!"

Sorry to be over sensitive, but I've been treated like a moron quite often in my life because of liking skirts, make-up and traditional "girly" things. One time, in a graduate course, a female classmate actually told me she was surprised I was smart because I looked "too put together to have a brain". That is a stereotypical view of women that must die or we will never truly be equal.
Click to expand...

Louisa, Absolutely, you're right. I did not want to imply that your choices are wrong or imply you're not brilliant, only that there are limits to what is practical to wear & dress like at work in the field of engineering.
 
M

Mrs. P

Uno, Dos, twizzle!
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And here's a different view regarding the commercial: http://www.stirrup-queens.com/2013/11/yes-i-saw-the-goldieblox-video/

What I can’t do — and perhaps this is more a reality when you have boy-girl twins with similar interests, a small toy budget, and limited space — is buy gender-specific toys simply because a marketing team told my kids that something is for their sex. I feel that way about all toy companies, not GoldieBlox specifically. But I don’t want the ChickieNob (or myself) to get sucked into clever marketing. I don’t want her to have a knee-jerk, girl power reaction. I don’t want her to buy something just because the company is telling her that girls can do anything! They can, by the way. But the point is that it’s too easy to get sucked into the message and miss whether or not it’s actually a good toy. I have no clue if it’s a good toy, and I suspect that a lot of people who were drawn into the video also have no clue if it’s a good toy insofar as quality and value. But until I know that, I really don’t want to buy my kid something just because they have made a catchy, viral YouTube video.
Click to expand...

The blog also speaks to your point, louisa05:

They spend two straight minutes crapping on girls who like princesses and pink in order to make their point. There are girls out there who like princesses and pink. And that’s okay. It’s also okay if a girl completely rejects that toy narrative and writes her own story. And it’s also okay if she wants to be a princess scientist. If she wants to mix all of her interests into one non-gender-specific salad.

I want the ChickieNob to choose her own interests, and I want the rest of the world to respect her interests, whatever they may be. She will always be swayed by marketing — we all are. But just as my first instinct was “ooooh, me want” (I can’t even use correct grammar when I covet) when I saw the GoldieBlox video, I’m glad I have a second instinct that kicks in and says, “hey, we have toys that not only accomplish the same thing, but both my kids are welcome to play them.”
Click to expand...
 
dorispulaski

dorispulaski

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The toy is now at Toys R Us.

If a kid is a building kid, they will build stuff out of anything. My granddaughter does, despite being a pink- fairy- loving girl with a traditional dolls/dressup mommy.

She also loves bugs, salamanders, and instagram where her "name" includes pinkfairy
 
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