Published on Brown Paper for Bessie on Friday 2 August 2013
Girls can be whatever they what to be…right? Sadly not, JEMIMAH CLEGG discovers…
Some of you may have seen this video floating around on social media today…
It was posted on social media activist site Upworthy yesterday, and we found it on Facebook.
So what is it? It’s a song (by sister duo The Doubleclicks) with an accompanying video clip about ‘geek girls’ who are apparently told by ‘geek boys’ that they’re not geeky enough to be…well, a geek.
Is the little feminist inside you shouting yet? Cause mine is.
Not knowing too much about geek culture (aside from the occasional ‘cosplay’ photos posted by my animator husband’s colleagues) I don’t quite get all the references in this video. But I get the gist.
These girls are just trying to be who they are, which in our mainstream beauty obsessed society is hard enough already, only to be told by boys (and let’s face it most of these ‘boys’ are likely to be fully grown men) that they don’t belong in geek-land either.
Why is it that in 2013, men still seem to have the monopoly on all the things? Sport, business, chefery, many aspects of the arts and now, apparently, being a geek.
I know most men don’t feel this way. Most men have mothers, sisters, wives/partners and daughters who they support and encourage to do whatever they want.
So what’s the problem with some girls being told they’re not allowed to love Star Trek? It’s the tip of the iceberg of a bigger social problem; gender inequality.
We all saw the news about this report from the government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency at the beginning of the year. It shows, sector by sector, the pay gaps between male and female workers.
Women in Australia get paid less to do the same job as men. And it’s not just that they end up earning less over their lifetimes due to taking time off for child rearing. No, it’s that while doing the same job, a woman is likely to take home less in her weekly pay than a man.
It seems as a society we still think a woman’s place is in the home, not in the workforce, or say, at a comic-con (unless she’s dressed as one of the sexy comic book characters – then that’s OK).
This attitude is absolutely rampant in the media and just about everywhere you look. Women should be sexy. They should be skinny. They should be nice and not too outspoken.
These sound like ideals from the 1950s, but in truth our society holds onto these notions today.
In her book Lean In, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg writes that society starts conditioning men and women from a very young age.
“Teachers interact more with boys, call on them more frequently, and ask them more questions. Boys are also more likely to call out answers, and when they do, teachers usually listen to them. When girls call out, teachers often scold them for breaking the rules and remind them to raise their hand if they want to speak.”
Sandberg goes onto to reference this video…
This little girl, Riley, hits the nail on the head. Some girls like superheros…just as we saw in the geek girls video. So why are most little girls dressed in pink and told to like Barbie?
Is it the big corporations and their marketers feeding this idea to girls? Or is it that most girls are born liking the pink stuff? The chicken or the egg?
All I know is I’m sick of seeing things like this. Girls and women should be given every opportunity their male counterparts are.
And when they take those opportunities, they should be respected, accepted and admired by their male counterparts – not told that they don’t belong or aren’t geeky enough.
Even Supergirl has been sexed up and skankified…
FROM THIS…
…TO THIS
Jemimah Clegg 