Twenty years ago, I played "guess my major" as a frehsman at Carnegie Mellon. My roomie, a petite blonde and me, a statuesque brunette with mother who loved buying off price designer clothing, would inevitably get "English" and "Drama." She was a chemE and I was a CivE. Another girl in my year and major was a Delta Gamma, known by reputation as the "pretty girls'" sorority. And she was gorgeous in all her floaty blond-haired glory. But we were nerds. Despite being attractive, we were all socially awkward or late bloomers. We thought science was cool, but we also liked dressing up, dancing and acting like GIRLS.

The problem is not that these girls are attractive and using it. The problem is that women in engineering and science are somehow supposed to leave the idea of being a woman behind to work in their field. A woman should not have to stop being a woman to work in engineering. She should not have to be unattractive. That doesn't mean wearing heels when workboots are indicated. It does mean breaking the stereotype of the sturdy, bespectacled girl with the frumpy clothes and the frizzy hair.

I'm glad these girls are standing up and saying, "I'm a nerd and I'm gorgeous. Get over it."

As an engineering student and then an engineer turned lawyer, I have a couple thought to offer on why engineering (both as a student and as an employee) is hostile to women. First, very few students at top colleges can get through the very rigerous engineering programs without an awful lot of collaboration with other students. You need to study with other students, attend work group sessions with other students, work together with other students in figuring out problem sets, etc. If you try to do the classes alone, you will fail. Unfortunately, at least in my engineering program, there weren't any other female students, professors, session leaders, etc. Consequently, I could only succeed by spending a whole lot of time with male students, grad students, etc. in an "other than dating" way. This worked for me, because as a kid and then a young adult, I was always more comfortable with men than women. However, many men are not comfortable spending non dating time with women and visa versa. Consequently, absent a peer group of other women engineering students and then colleagues (in a work envirnoment), women who don't naturally get along with men in other than dating/social environments have a much harder time both in school and at work than men. So with respect to the "nerd girls" thing, its great in that it provides a network of women to work together on classes, projects, problem sets, etc. But it also makes it less likely that these women will get along with the male students, teachers, colleagues, etc. And right now, most engineering students and engineers out there in the real world are men. Until that changes (hopefully someday the world of engineers will look more like doctors and lawyers), to succeed in engineering, women need to develop the skills to be comfortable working with men in mostly male work/study environments (as opposed to social environments). I don't know that focusing on fashion and traditional "girl" stuff achieves this goal.

I'm a woman and hot.And I think that there is some merit to showing women who are both attractive and smart. As an attractive woman it seems that anything I do to look attractive makes men think Im stupid.Its as if they think putting on lipstick depletes one of brain cells. So for women who are scientists and intelligent to take a stand and say "we can be smart and attractive and socially adept"is to me, a good thing.

Perhaps when we see that being a "typical" female and being science oriented arent mutually exclusive, that a woman doesnt have to forgo her femininity or the trappings of femininity in her culture, to do well on the job ,things will be better.

I make a point when discussing science with young girls to be attractive, not a model, but to be a role model. TO let them know that THEY can be scientists, of whatever sort, and still have a romantic future. IF girls look around and say "gee, if i want to be a techie, I have to be ugly and dress badly and neglect my appearance. I think Id rather do something where I can still be cute and maybe date". Minority girls especially, are concerned with being socially excluded. TO know that I can study computer science, date, marry and have children and Look Good, gives them hope that they can do it all. That it isnt Be a Geek or Be A Woman. Be BOTH.

Of course we dont want being attractive to be a prereq, but should being attractive EXCLUDE people. Men harass women if they are ugly or attractive, trust me. Are we going to continue to live in a world where we refuse to be at all attractive because we're afraid men wont take us seriously? Where we downplay our femininity, become pseudomales to get acceptance?

As long as women in traditionally male fields act and look like men to get acceptance, women arent accepted. When a woman can be a woman,like any other woman, and do her job and be respected THEN we have equality IMO.

...because they're passing on comfy clothes. They're engineers. They're expected to be smart. Not cute. Not sexy. Not hot. Just smart.

What's better than that? Hell, what's sexier than that?

And they get to wear smart clothes that don't deform their feet, pinch, squeeze, and heft.

@ Maddiebear

Thank you, thank you, thank you for speaking up! I, too, am a gamer girl, and sometimes the overt sexism of Geek Guys is distressing. First, they assume that you could never know or be as good as them at anything they do.... and when they finally do come around to accepting you may be able to play a mean GM, they almost refuse to see you as a girl unless you are drop-dead, anime-babe attractive. It's such a fascinaing dichotomy...to be valued for your brains, you cannot be valued as a female unless you are the epitome of female-ness.

Go to any anime or gamer convention, and you'll see female Co Players decked out in the most ridiculous outfits that scream only one thing: JAIL BAIT. Choose to dress more modestly, and you get no attention or acclaim. Flaunt your assets and make out with other girls to show how "hip" you are, and you are rewarded to the skies. There was a recent storm about this at a tech con... anyone remember the "Wear a Pin, Grab my Boobs" story?