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“The stereotypical nerd is a guy, and the media reinforces that stereotype at every turn.” (Newitz) Hackers are stereotyped as adolescent boys in the basement of their mother’s house eating potato chips and hacking into the FBI for fun between chores and homework. It’s hard to say if ‘hackers are boys’ is an entirely true statement, but it has been proven incorrect in a vast number of instances. It is just as likely that a girl who loves to bake will be just as interested in hacking into a computer and using it for her own means as a boy who likes video games. It is not that hard to link females to hacking scenes, and it is not that hard to link the culinary arts to the hacking scene either.
Ada Lovelace, daughter of famous author Lord Byron, was technically the first female programmer, and yet when the media thinks hacker it produces a picture of Kevin Mitnick. Lovelace worked with men in the field of science but when she made her findings and discoveries, she managed to remain separate enough from her partners to make discoveries in her own name, while still using the research that was done together. Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, authors of the book She’s Such A Geek, remind the public that women are “everywhere. We’re in your company’s information technology departments, as well as in laboratories and public policy debates, at comic book conventions and gaming tournaments. But we’re still struggling to be seen and heard. “ Women get the hard task of not caring about their gender and then also having to constantly reaffirm to the cyber-neighborhood that women are in the area.
Newitz has the facts, too, that say that there are more women than men graduating with undergraduate degrees in science, but being shut out of the science world as there are still more men in that field of expertise. Some women thrive and love that pressure to succeed because of their sex, but so many are crushed under the harsh magnifying glass they are put under because of their gender.
The media doesn’t help women either. In John Badham’s WarGames, Lightman seems to be a typical hacker. We see the “hackers” when he goes to visit his computer friends. They’re attached to their computers, get nervous around girls, could not be geekier, and know every answer. Lightman and his friends are what the media portray as the hacker-type. In that movie, the female roles are Lightman’s oblivious mother and Lightman’s clueless love-interest. But it’s just as possible that a girl could have starred in Wargames, if given the chance. In the movie Hackers, however, Angelina Jolie plays one of the few and rare girl hackers. She’s smart and moves fast in her area of expertise. She’s still bested by the lead male role, unfortunately, which does not help the image that girls can do anything boys can do, but her character is there and is helpful, smart, intuitive, and computer-savvy. Her understanding of computers and the hacking world was a great way to jump into the idea that women can be just as geeky as men can, and in some cases, do it better.
My project combines two forms of play that are considered “appropriate” for young women to be involved with and twists them to mean something else. In the 1950s, women were expected to cook and girls were expected to play with dolls. Boys could have jobs and be scientists. The closest thing to experimenting girls would have would be playing with make-up or inventing new recipes. This is the 1950s era “domestic wife” ideal and that kind of mentality is what kept women out of the workforce. This project is then an “experiment” in baking. A Barbie, the girliest of all dolls, is sitting atop a computer-shaped cake. My plan for this cake is that it symbolizes how even girls can be involved in the computer world. We cannot be shut out. Girls are just as good and there are just as many as boys who hack computers. The stereotype tat only guys can be hackers is something that needs to be broken. That stereotype is quickly becoming obsolete and the computer world is changing so rapidly all the time that obsolete is not an option.
The point is that she-geeks “are tomboys and girly-girls, cheerleaders and lab rats. Some women dealt with testosterone-heavy environments by suppressing all femininity in themselves…others flaunted their femininity, daring men to doubt their competence because of their flowy skirts,” and anyone can be a geek. (Newitz) This cake is from the geeky world in which I live. I bake, sing, wear dresses and thrive on the Internet. This doll is comfortable in who she is and owns the land she sits on, that of the computer cake. Gender stereotypes is something that women have had to deal with a for a long, long time, but as the internet age, or the age of information, booms and moves so fast, stereotypes should not be what hinders technology and it’s progress. That she-geek next to you is just as important, if not more, than yourself, because it means that girls are gaining access to places they haven’t before and are being respected and acknowledged for it.
Ada Lovelace, daughter of famous author Lord Byron, was technically the first female programmer, and yet when the media thinks hacker it produces a picture of Kevin Mitnick. Lovelace worked with men in the field of science but when she made her findings and discoveries, she managed to remain separate enough from her partners to make discoveries in her own name, while still using the research that was done together. Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, authors of the book She’s Such A Geek, remind the public that women are “everywhere. We’re in your company’s information technology departments, as well as in laboratories and public policy debates, at comic book conventions and gaming tournaments. But we’re still struggling to be seen and heard. “ Women get the hard task of not caring about their gender and then also having to constantly reaffirm to the cyber-neighborhood that women are in the area.
Newitz has the facts, too, that say that there are more women than men graduating with undergraduate degrees in science, but being shut out of the science world as there are still more men in that field of expertise. Some women thrive and love that pressure to succeed because of their sex, but so many are crushed under the harsh magnifying glass they are put under because of their gender.
The media doesn’t help women either. In John Badham’s WarGames, Lightman seems to be a typical hacker. We see the “hackers” when he goes to visit his computer friends. They’re attached to their computers, get nervous around girls, could not be geekier, and know every answer. Lightman and his friends are what the media portray as the hacker-type. In that movie, the female roles are Lightman’s oblivious mother and Lightman’s clueless love-interest. But it’s just as possible that a girl could have starred in Wargames, if given the chance. In the movie Hackers, however, Angelina Jolie plays one of the few and rare girl hackers. She’s smart and moves fast in her area of expertise. She’s still bested by the lead male role, unfortunately, which does not help the image that girls can do anything boys can do, but her character is there and is helpful, smart, intuitive, and computer-savvy. Her understanding of computers and the hacking world was a great way to jump into the idea that women can be just as geeky as men can, and in some cases, do it better.
My project combines two forms of play that are considered “appropriate” for young women to be involved with and twists them to mean something else. In the 1950s, women were expected to cook and girls were expected to play with dolls. Boys could have jobs and be scientists. The closest thing to experimenting girls would have would be playing with make-up or inventing new recipes. This is the 1950s era “domestic wife” ideal and that kind of mentality is what kept women out of the workforce. This project is then an “experiment” in baking. A Barbie, the girliest of all dolls, is sitting atop a computer-shaped cake. My plan for this cake is that it symbolizes how even girls can be involved in the computer world. We cannot be shut out. Girls are just as good and there are just as many as boys who hack computers. The stereotype tat only guys can be hackers is something that needs to be broken. That stereotype is quickly becoming obsolete and the computer world is changing so rapidly all the time that obsolete is not an option.
The point is that she-geeks “are tomboys and girly-girls, cheerleaders and lab rats. Some women dealt with testosterone-heavy environments by suppressing all femininity in themselves…others flaunted their femininity, daring men to doubt their competence because of their flowy skirts,” and anyone can be a geek. (Newitz) This cake is from the geeky world in which I live. I bake, sing, wear dresses and thrive on the Internet. This doll is comfortable in who she is and owns the land she sits on, that of the computer cake. Gender stereotypes is something that women have had to deal with a for a long, long time, but as the internet age, or the age of information, booms and moves so fast, stereotypes should not be what hinders technology and it’s progress. That she-geek next to you is just as important, if not more, than yourself, because it means that girls are gaining access to places they haven’t before and are being respected and acknowledged for it.
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