Also, this shirt pisses me off

[danaeris]

When I see girls wearing this, I want to punch them. Or possibly bitch them out for giving into the evil patriarchy and not fighting the good fight. Given my feelings on militant feminists and how retarded they are, getting me to sound like one is an impressive accomplishment.

Words cannot describe how wrong this shirt is. I truly find myself unable to express how much it bothers me.

In other news, I'm getting some cramping. This is good, because shortly I should bleed, thus showing once again that I still have a chance to contribute to the gene pool. This is bad because cramps and PMS suck the big one and make me unbearably psycho. Like when I rant about stupid t-shirts ditzy vapid little tramps like to wear.

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

My Lady has this shirt (http://www.torrid.com/store/product.asp?LS=0&M=1019187889&SKU=510450-003-2330-0000).

It's amazing the number of dirty looks she gets from "pretty" girls.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Nice!

Those women have been told all their lives that to be worthwhile and desirable, all they have to do is be pretty. Suggesting otherwise is incredibly threatening.

[kineticphoenix.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for the link! I want that shirt!

[johno.livejournal.com]

She has the baby doll version from Torrid, but you can find knock offs on eBay and Cafe Press.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, yeah, it's obnoxious. On the other hand, a lot of people don't like math. Some of those people are female. I don't feel the need to force everyone who doesn't like math into doing it - the world clearly has a lot of places available for people who are not good at math. And if they want to mock their own dislike of math, well, I guess that's their perogative.

I can also see a shirt like that being worn for ironic purposes. It would amuse me to wear it somewhere where I was very clearly going to be doing a lot of math - like an 18.03 final :)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

and just to be clear, I am not intending in any way to suggest that you should feel as I do. just sharing my own reaction to the shirt, which I in no way expect to be right or even typical.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I grok. Thanks for being clear just in case, though. I appreciate it! :)

[athereal.livejournal.com]

I'd wear it to be ironic. Around MIT, I think it'd be pretty hilarious. Then again, if I saw it on somebody I thought was a complete bimbo (like one of the millions of bouncy blonde chicks back home in CA), I'd be pretty disgusted. *shrug*

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

You seem more willing to ascribe them ironic and thus intellectual intent than I am.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have a right to sell or buy or wear these t-shirts. I'm just saying they piss me off and make me want to kick them. Even if you dislike math, I don't think drawing a connection between attractiveness and the need to do math is a necessary way to express it... it's insulting to those who DO like and do math, and it hits a little too close to certain mysogenistic/sexist stereotypes for my tastes. But, again, that's my reaction, and not a rule I feel should be imposed. I just wish I could live in a society where very few people looked at that sort of shirt and thought, "that's so cool!"

[yiab.livejournal.com]

while i agree with you that the world would be a better place if fewer people agreed with the sentiment underlying the message on this shirt, i just have to say:
i can so see a particular female math grad student i know wearing that shirt just for the irony.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

I would totally wear this shirt, with the scrawled addition "Because I've already got a stats degree".

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Or how about with a little carat inserting the word "not" I.E.

I'm too pretty ^ to do math
              not

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I like that idea. I'd buy the t-shirt and a fabric marker just so I could do that to it.

Not that I'm hugely into math - but that's because I didn't choose to be, not because I didn't have the brains for it.

[epicureanangel.livejournal.com]

>I can also see a shirt like that being worn for ironic purposes. It would amuse me to wear it somewhere where I was very clearly going to be doing a lot of math - like an 18.03 final :)

Agreed! A couple of programmers here at work wear a shirt from Target that say "Math is hard". We all think it's a scream.

[aberrantvirtue.livejournal.com]

The comic irony at least makes it funny.

[sassy-fae.livejournal.com]

Oh!
The first few times I read it, I thought it said
"I'm too pretty to do meth".
I thought, hmm, anti-drug shirt? *LOL*

[wingygoth.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought is said, too.

Disregard my previous comment. I hate shirts like this. I also hate the "slut" ones that somehow end up on 10 year olds. Ew.

[wingygoth.livejournal.com]

*it

typos grr...

[kineticphoenix.livejournal.com]

We need to combat this with a lingerie shoot of devastatingly sexy women writing out calculus equations on a whiteboard!

Smart women are sexy!

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

mmmm. Smart women...

Geek Porn was kind of like that. It had pictures of women, mostly from MIT but in general, from around the surrounding areas, doing things like posing with a server rack, or sprawled across public monuments naked with calculus equations written all over them.

A friend of unseelie's used to host a website called bigbrainybustybabes. Same great concept!

[wingygoth.livejournal.com]

maybe i'm being stupid - but what exactly gets you so upset about the shirt?

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

Aside from PMS?

There has been a lot of outreach over the last decade or so trying to teach young women that math, and science and engineering can be exciting and cool. By and large, it's been relatively successful. Schools such as MIT which used to have massive gender imbalances have come a long way towards addressing them; my freshman class as 50/50. The fact that it HAS made a difference seems to be some sort of indication that there IS a stigma, or a stereotype, or societal attitude, that makes women avoid math and related pursuits.

Meanwhile, feminists have been struggling for decades to get equal footing with men. Math is necessary to live every day. It is necessary to conduct your finances, to shop intelligently, etc. What's more, it is necessary for all of the technology and medicine we enjoy so much nowadays. Someone has to design, maintain, and create these things. Someone has to keep running it all. If women don't, that leaves it to men, and if men are exclusively controlling all that, then there's an inherent power imbalance there. While differences in interest and brain structure may preclude a 50/50 split in any given discipline, having some presence is vital to maintain equality on a societal level.

Finally, a lot of women are extraordinarily miserable and neurotic because they believe that their worth and desireability is determined wholly by their looks. This just isn't true, and these women will be a lot happier if this attitude, this myth is no longer perpetuated.

To me, this shirt implies a lot of things:
-girls who do math aren't pretty
-doing math is undesirable, particularly for a woman
-your attractiveness should impact the work you are expected to do
-your attractiveness should impact how smart you're expected to be

I think those are all pretty horrible messages to be sending.

[earthdog.livejournal.com]

To me this shirt means on thing:

"As an attractive woman I have so much sexual capital I do not need anything else."

It is a story as old at time.

The shirt saying All This and Brains Too is not much better.

[wingygoth.livejournal.com]

Agreed. First of all, I misread it and thought it said "meth."

Second of all, while the shirt's message (if taken seriously) is really horrible, if I were to wear it I think it would be hilarious in an ironic, wry kind of way. But for a young girl to hear or read that, well, it's just irresponsible. :(

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should just get one for joedecker, subvert a paradigm or two.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

What Joe really needs is the "math is hard" shirt.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Does it come in bikini underpants?

(eek: that's not what I meant)

[szarka.livejournal.com]

Well, it's definitely one of those shirts where the joke depends on both the personality of the person wearing it and the intelligence of the person viewing it...

It would be pretty damn funny on me, though. I wonder if it comes in guy's sizes?

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

*snort*
See, because of the "sample" printing across the image, I misread it, and thought it said "I'm too pretty to do meth."

It, and your reaction, make far more sense now.

[kkpixie.livejournal.com]

I should buy one of those for my friend Jared. *veg*

[eetmewithtoast.livejournal.com]

I think it's hilarious. I want one. But before I get food stains on it, I must make sure my father sees me in it.

My mathmetician father. *chortle*