America's Next Top Feminist Grad Student?
It's officially moved from It's Cold to Holy Fucking Shit It's Cold! weather here in the Bay State. With snow expected tomorrow. May have to haul out my 10 lb inside-out dead sheep coat, affectionately known as my Flock. It's even cold in my lab. The tips of my nose and fingers are chilly.
No real news to report, except that I have been a) working and b) reading the Carnival of Feminists as well as funny quotes on Overheard in New York. Yesterday I did what would have been a neat experiment using a calcium channel blocking agent but the bastarding reagents got contaminated. First contamination in more than a year. Bugger. ***
But then I went to the gym and the finale of America's Next Top Model (ANTM) was on so I did almost an hour on the elliptical. There were at least six TV screens on different machines tuned into UPN last night. The woman next to me and I decided that fashion modeling is the opposite of lab. If I wear nice clothes to lab, everyone looks perplexed and asks where I'm going.
And, of course, the sight of all those skinny young dim-witted (no offense, but they were really dim) women slinking about in not very much was an excellent motivating factor to do those extra sit-ups. In eating disorder therapy they call that a "trigger". In men's magazines they call it "soft core porn". On UPN it's called "entertainment".
Yet I watch this stupid show and am entertained by it. I liken this to eating ice cream for dinner. You know it's not good for you, you know there's no nutritional value, you know you'll have a gross feeling afterwards, but it tastes good.
My favorite line from the show was, "I really respect her as a model."
"I really respect her as a scientist" is a phrase I've both heard and used (usually followed by a "but"). This makes sense to me - hard work, creativity, dedication to science all seem like respectable attributes. When I mentioned this, chuckling, to my good friend from Kinase Land she was like, "How hard is it to take a nice picture if you've got your hair and makeup done by professionals and you've got a professional photographer? How hard is it to walk in a straight line? What is there to respect about that?"
Although, okay, I'm sure modeling is not as simple as it looks. It fucking can't be, can it? Wait, really? Are you sure? No, seriously, can it? Like hard-hard? Whatever.
But maybe I am just bitter because society values female attractiveness and malleability far more than female intelligence. Even though what Kinase Girl and I do is far more interesting and important than flouncing around in bias-cut dresses (which we are both too short to do professionally) there are maybe a few thousand people in this country who give a shit about it, versus the several million who are interested in being voyeurs to the ridiculous pageant of "top modeling".
Most little girls don't dream of becoming "top scientists", and they won't as long as these kinds of shows are around to reinforce the notion that a woman's primary attribute is her looks. Sadly, this is even true in Lab Land. It's a double bind, really. If you're a woman and you're too cute you have to make an effort to be taken seriously by your colleagues - and not just your male colleagues. If you're a woman scientist who is not cute, then you are unacceptable outside of the lab. It's changing, slowly, but it's still true. A few months ago I saw a woman my age with a high voice and a trendy skirt give a talk and I had to literally say to myself, "Whoah, bitch - this girl is you - and you're sitting here sizing her up and automatically taking her less seriously than the dowdy old men!" And I am a young, female, feminist biology student! It was a creepy moment.
Anyway, while I am often heartily sick of research, at least it is interesting and my profession does not require me to take fierce eyeshadow and luminous powder foundation seriously. "I've learned so much through this experience that changed my whole life!"
Maybe we should have America's Next Top Biologist. Oh wait, we do have that, every time a job announcement goes up . . . America's Next Top Model Organism? Look out, nematoads!
(This is not to say that I don't enjoy eyeshadow and having my hair look nice. I do. Possibly more than I should. But I also know, intellectually, that these things are trivial and unimportant in the grand scheme of life.)
Okay, kids, tissue culture calls.
***It wasn't contamination, actually - it was the gadolinium precipitating out of solution because of the phosphate buffer. People have published using GdCl3 in DMEM, but I am here to tell you it precipitates out of solution even at 5 uM. Lab mate recommended mixing the media plus GdCl3 thouroughly instead of dropping the concentrated solution right into the wells; other lab mate said she used Hepes-buffered medium and that worked fine. Did the people who added GdCl3 every day to DMEM actually look at their plates? Or did they do some sneaky mixing when they added the drug to the medium and just not mention it in the methods sections? Grrrrrr ! Me no like science.
No real news to report, except that I have been a) working and b) reading the Carnival of Feminists as well as funny quotes on Overheard in New York. Yesterday I did what would have been a neat experiment using a calcium channel blocking agent but the bastarding reagents got contaminated. First contamination in more than a year. Bugger. ***
But then I went to the gym and the finale of America's Next Top Model (ANTM) was on so I did almost an hour on the elliptical. There were at least six TV screens on different machines tuned into UPN last night. The woman next to me and I decided that fashion modeling is the opposite of lab. If I wear nice clothes to lab, everyone looks perplexed and asks where I'm going.
And, of course, the sight of all those skinny young dim-witted (no offense, but they were really dim) women slinking about in not very much was an excellent motivating factor to do those extra sit-ups. In eating disorder therapy they call that a "trigger". In men's magazines they call it "soft core porn". On UPN it's called "entertainment".
Yet I watch this stupid show and am entertained by it. I liken this to eating ice cream for dinner. You know it's not good for you, you know there's no nutritional value, you know you'll have a gross feeling afterwards, but it tastes good.
My favorite line from the show was, "I really respect her as a model."
"I really respect her as a scientist" is a phrase I've both heard and used (usually followed by a "but"). This makes sense to me - hard work, creativity, dedication to science all seem like respectable attributes. When I mentioned this, chuckling, to my good friend from Kinase Land she was like, "How hard is it to take a nice picture if you've got your hair and makeup done by professionals and you've got a professional photographer? How hard is it to walk in a straight line? What is there to respect about that?"
Although, okay, I'm sure modeling is not as simple as it looks. It fucking can't be, can it? Wait, really? Are you sure? No, seriously, can it? Like hard-hard? Whatever.
But maybe I am just bitter because society values female attractiveness and malleability far more than female intelligence. Even though what Kinase Girl and I do is far more interesting and important than flouncing around in bias-cut dresses (which we are both too short to do professionally) there are maybe a few thousand people in this country who give a shit about it, versus the several million who are interested in being voyeurs to the ridiculous pageant of "top modeling".
Most little girls don't dream of becoming "top scientists", and they won't as long as these kinds of shows are around to reinforce the notion that a woman's primary attribute is her looks. Sadly, this is even true in Lab Land. It's a double bind, really. If you're a woman and you're too cute you have to make an effort to be taken seriously by your colleagues - and not just your male colleagues. If you're a woman scientist who is not cute, then you are unacceptable outside of the lab. It's changing, slowly, but it's still true. A few months ago I saw a woman my age with a high voice and a trendy skirt give a talk and I had to literally say to myself, "Whoah, bitch - this girl is you - and you're sitting here sizing her up and automatically taking her less seriously than the dowdy old men!" And I am a young, female, feminist biology student! It was a creepy moment.
Anyway, while I am often heartily sick of research, at least it is interesting and my profession does not require me to take fierce eyeshadow and luminous powder foundation seriously. "I've learned so much through this experience that changed my whole life!"
Maybe we should have America's Next Top Biologist. Oh wait, we do have that, every time a job announcement goes up . . . America's Next Top Model Organism? Look out, nematoads!
(This is not to say that I don't enjoy eyeshadow and having my hair look nice. I do. Possibly more than I should. But I also know, intellectually, that these things are trivial and unimportant in the grand scheme of life.)
Okay, kids, tissue culture calls.
***It wasn't contamination, actually - it was the gadolinium precipitating out of solution because of the phosphate buffer. People have published using GdCl3 in DMEM, but I am here to tell you it precipitates out of solution even at 5 uM. Lab mate recommended mixing the media plus GdCl3 thouroughly instead of dropping the concentrated solution right into the wells; other lab mate said she used Hepes-buffered medium and that worked fine. Did the people who added GdCl3 every day to DMEM actually look at their plates? Or did they do some sneaky mixing when they added the drug to the medium and just not mention it in the methods sections? Grrrrrr ! Me no like science.
posted by Joolya at
6:09 PM
11 Comments:
I spent the weekend watching the Top Model marathon leading up to the finale. My only excuse was that I was deathly ill with the 'flu and couldn't handle anything more intellectually challenging than that.
I was stunned by how dim Tyra Banks seemed. She's a successful businesswoman at this point so I don't think she is stupid by any means -- but she could not for the life of her articulate in any meaningful fashion why one model's photograph was "good" and the other's was "bad." I found Twiggy kind of engaging though . . .
What I got of the show is that when they say how hard modeling is, they mean that you have to stay still, be patient, be placed in painful or uncomfortable situations, follow directions, and remember lines. So it's hard in the sense of "not fun" not in the sense of "challenging."
Thanks for checking in at the Carnival!
Okay, I will grant that I'm sure it's not fun and is not so simple. I was an artist's model for a while and that was it's own kind of boring but it wasn't hard like organic chemistry or running a marathon is hard. And no matter what their personalities actually were, what mattered in the end was who looked nicest in the photos - beauty before brains, etc. Which is what the industry is all about. But I think we owe it to ourselves to question the premise of the show, even though we actually totally enjoy watching it!
Twiggy I liked, but she's no Janice Dickinson.
I wonder how many of the girls were convinced to sleep with Nigel after the show . . .
Also, Tyra just so wants to be Oprah. ;)
Gaad, call yourselves feminists? You're totally enjoying the show where women compete to please the men. Pulease.
but, like, ironically.
anyway, they had to please tyra and twiggy. who were, admittedly, just reinforcing the internalized standards of the patriarchy. ;)
hey! it's more than just the prancing;
this show is also fun to watch because the contestants have incredibly dumb conversations which each other, which i like because then i feel superior and smug for a while.
doh. they have those conversations "with" each other.
due to my typo, my wounded sense of superiority now needs another "dose."
i wonder when the reruns will come on.
Yeah, they certainly need their consciousness raising. Or maybe they don't, because then they'll be miserable.
Joolya, you brighten my life. I just want you to know that.
:) [blush]
I completely understand. This show is like a hopeless addiction. I watched the show from the beginning, I since have my best friend and a coworker hooked to the show. Anyways, the girls are not trying to look better for men. That show would be America's Next Top Whore.
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