Would you be shocked to hear that the readership of general-circulation science magazines is overwhelmingly white, male, and middle-aged? Probably not. Of course, you might comfort yourself with the thought that lack of interest in such magazines is programmed into the DNA of women, young people, and non-Caucasians, despite evidence that the relevant genetic information is apparently evolving awfully rapidly.
Would it surprise you to learn that overtly sexualized images of women cause tangible harm to adolescents and young women? Maybe it would. Not that there’s anything wrong with sexy images of people of any gender in appropriate contexts, but in the actual context in which children grow up in our culture, the way in which these images appear enacts a vastly disproportionate toll on young girls.
Are you at all taken aback by the cover of the latest catalogue for Edmund Optics, purveyor of scientific optical equipment?
The same image appeared in ads in Physics Today. Which, by the way, is not a biker magazine.
This sales pitch has caused a bit of consternation, including a lot of conversation on the AASWomen mailing list. But it’s not just those uppity wymyn who are upset. Geoffrey Marcy of Berkeley has written to the company to complain:
Dear Mr. Radojkovic and Mr. Delfino and Mr. Dover,
As representatives of Edmund Optics, I hope you will pass the following message to the appropriate management at Edmund Optics.
I just saw the images from the Edmund Optics catalog that show a woman in a tight red skirt lounging next to some optical devices, some with the caption, “Red Hot”. I hope Robert Edmund and the board of directors of Edmund can be alerted to this problem.
As a scientist and professor at UC Berkeley I am embarrassed on behalf of the many female science students coming along. I wonder what message such images of sex objects in your ads send to bright young scientists
of both genders.Moreover, after decades of overt discrimination against women in the physical sciences, including precluding their admission to the best universities and the denial of access to the world’s best telescopes, your ad represents a setback. It reminds us of a dark era of clear discrimination against women, a time that I’m sure Edmund Optics hopes is long gone. If so, you have made a very serious error that insults the scientific community.
As you can imagine, your ad has already generated extraordinary discussion in the scientific community, analogous to the discussion over the comments by Harvard’s president who implied that women might not have what it takes to be great scientists. In short, your company has left open the question of your equal and unbiased treatment of women in your company and in your contracts.
Sincerely,
Geoffrey Marcy
Professor of Astronomy, UC Berkeley
Elected Member, United States National Academy of Sciences
To which Bill Dover at Edmund replied, in a classic example of “not getting it”:
Hi Geoff,
Thank you for your feedback regarding the EO catalog and our recent cover. No need to be embarrassed for the many female science students coming along. Rather, encourage them to celebrate that another smart, young, and attractive female has joined the ranks of women in a technical field, which breaks the pattern of discrimination you describe. You see, the woman featured on the cover is a six-year employee of Edmund and our Trade Show Manager and Spokesperson. Over the years we’ve received numerous positive comments and she has proven herself to possess the needed technical and social ability to successfully coordinate our tradeshows that showcase our products.
The recent cover photo emphasized a new product launch by Edmund. Our Trade Show Manager coordinated the showcase of these products at Photonics West last month. Had you happened by our booth for a visit, you would have had the opportunity to meet and speak with her about our Kinematic mounts as well as receive additional technical information from two other smart, young, and attractive, female optical engineers present at the time. So that you know, this line of Kinematic Optical Mounts, Table Platforms, and Mechanical Accessories are technically situated to become the standard for optical positioning equipment in the marketplace. We are excited about the quality, features, and price of these products and know that they will be very difficult to compete with and we chose our Trade Show Manager to help commemorate their release.
Professor Geoff, please encourage ALL of your female students to join the technical, engineering, and science ranks. There are too many that fall prey to the stereotypical concepts of what a person should look like or dress like which keep them from significant contributions in our society. That said, we value the opinions of our customers and we evaluate the feedback in developing our future strategies. I appreciate the time you have taken to mention your concerns here. I hope you will take the opportunity to encourage your female students to meet our female optical engineers at Edmund Optics. I think they, and you, will be impressed with their ability to support and represent woman [sic] in engineering.
Best Regards,
Bill
As far as I can tell, he’s saying that “she” is smart (so smart that she doesn’t need a name, apparently), so it’s okay! This is America, so any talented and attractive young woman with an interest in engineering can grow up to be a Booth Babe. He forgot to mention that “Better Performance. Better Price.” is the kind of slogan that any female should be proud to be associated with!
Actually it’s not okay. We’re not going to see this any time soon:
A little parity goes a long way, though. I have a vision of the next catalog cover–it features a handsome young man, maybe in chinos or a nice pair of jeans, barefoot, shirt halfway unbuttoned, an alluring gleam in his eye. Maybe a caption like “Well Oiled Mounts.”
And even if we did, it still wouldn’t be okay. (Although it would be highly amusing.) These images don’t appear in a vacuum; as long as the way that women and men are put on display in a wider cultural context remains dramatically imbalanced, a little equal-opportunity cheesecake here and there isn’t going to fix things.
Feel free to email Bill Dover (wdover-at-edmundoptics.com) and VP of Marketing Marisa Edmund (medmund-at-edmundoptics.com) to let them know what you think. (Thanks to Chaz Shapiro for the pointer.)
Thanks for all the posts criticizing this blatantly sexist catalog cover, folks. Having gone to a liberal Ivy league school I thought it was just me overreacting…
However lame the ad. itself, my feeling was that the response to Marcy really put it over the top: by twisting his words to imply that Marcy thought that women who were plain of dress or appearanc, “Bill” seemed to be imagining that this cover would somehow encourage women to pursue technical careers. Which (I am willing to bet) was not what they were thinking when they designed it (especially with the “red hot” copy).
If this *was* their intention then they have done a terrible job of it — especially as some actual, real women have responded to this thread to say that they DO find this sort of thing objectionable and it DOES have a material impact on women in science. Perhaps this clown should talk to a few women in science who do not also depend on him for a paycheck.
“Gee, now that you mention it, it may not be that smart. We’re sorry and won’t do it again” would have been a good response. “It was post-modern irony: a self-satirizing tongue in cheek evocation of old fashioned advertisements where pretty women were always draped across the hood of cars. Surprised you smart professor-types didn’t spot it” would have been imaginative, if almost certainly untrue. But their idiotic response is simply contemptible.
Sorry some sort of editing glitch here. ” imply that Marcy thought that ONLY women who were plain of dress or appearance COULD SUCCEED IN SCIENCE”
The smartest woman I have ever met (and is a very good young physicist incidentally) talks and dresses like something out of ‘clueless’ and is quite attractive to boot.
I thought hte whole point of the pc movement was to lose the stereotypes. If someone wants to dress like that, and sees empirical evidence that such feminine attire boosts the sale of a product at the company she works in. Then good for her, its her proffessional perogative.
All the people complaining about it (b/c it promotes negative in their world view images) reminds me of something the crazy Christians might complain about. I find it so ironic how the ends can meet like that.
I love it when people congratulate themselves for knowing attractive women.
I would not have thought that the distinction between “blaming a woman for looking attractive” and “blaming a company for using overtly sexualized imagery to sell optical equipment” would have been all that subtle and hard to grasp. And yet, I am constantly surprised.
OMG! Using women to sell stuff! Stop the presses! Quick, let’s burn all the catalogs with models next to the sale items! Get real.
I mean its not like this is science porn. It’s a damn catalog of boring gear (and apparently the gear and girl are not to scale?). Personally, I’m all for adding beefcake to the next version, for the gay scientists if not the female scientists. How many models do you need to get a representative sample of the various scientist body types, male and female? One guy here suggested they should be doing real science in the photo instead of posing, as if anything about a photo shoot is real.
Sheesh. Everybody who thinks this is bad, go out and hire a woman to do something beside pose. That would be a lot better than complaining about something as worthless as a stupid catalog photo.
In terms of using ‘sexy images of people of any gender in appropriate contexts’, I often find myself as a ‘smart’ lady astronomer casually posing beside a telescope hand on thigh with a bit of cleavage and shoeless. It’s the only way I can get any work done!
I too am suprised at how many people missed the point.
Heh companies use models all the time to sell their stuff. Frankly its smart advertisement, as its a simple fact that it increases sales. The only reason this is newsworthy and has all the feminists up in a huff is b/c this time the model in question happens to work at the company. If you read the blogs about it, they are somehow blaming her for wanting to sell her product /boggle
Its completely absurd and just goes to show people will whine about anything.
There are plenty of things going wrong in capitalism, and this is a brilliant example. Companies hire a pro to come up with an ad that fulfils the purpose to cause attention, no more, no less. Now look at this post, and isn’t that exactly what they get? Does that help selling the product? I don’t think so. But to be honest, I belong to those people who have developed a complete blind spot for ads, even if they are 3×2 meter high, or hit me directly in the face. And if I take notice of one, you can rely on me to forget who made it. Ads that use photos of men or women for no other purpose than making a product ‘sexier’ cause people to look. But, hey, you don’t want people to look, you want them to buy the stupid product.
That as a preface, imo the above ad isn’t worth getting upset about. The concern raised in the SEED article that sexed up women’s photos distort young girls self-perception is an important issue, but this ad hardly falls into the category of underweight, computer-retouched, artificial beauty. Okay, maybe it’s just because I’m European, but without this post I wouldn’t even have taken any notice of this.
Yeah, I guess if a women gives a talk in a tight dress, a considerable part of the audience will be kind of distracted. Well, if there were more women in the audience, I guess, more people would pay attention to the talk.
I’m continually amazed by how many dumbass people there are out there. I thought stupid comments were the domain only of youtube, but some commenters here have proven me wrong.
The original post is simple and clear: Using women as sex objects to sell science products undermines the fight for equality for women in science. This is a fairly self-evident observation to anyone who has been in science, but somehow that results in:
#10: Doesn’t realize that the “trade show manager and showperson” on the cover is merely a booth babe (see #7), not a scientist.
#19 and #54: Justify positions via “I have beautiful friends, I’m beautiful, etc.” Reminds me how whenever people make racist comments, they defend themselves by saying “But I have lots of black friends, I know all about black people!”
#30: See #32 for rebuttal.
#33: Misses the point of the whole post, and is apparently insensitive to any social issues because they do not involve “who has what, when”. Eerily resembles the stereotypical socially ignorant scientist.
#41, 42, 44: Any discussion on any topic is always a great segue to attack “you Americans”. After all, we Americans are ALL prudes who love violence and George Bush.
#56: Thinks that anything less than science porn is appropriate. Presumably also thinks that anything less than slavery doesn’t constitute racism.
Well, fortunately these responses were actually balanced out by some intelligent ones.
A more blatant example
http://thehathorlegacy.info/inappropriate-attire/
And another
http://www.msmusings.net/archives/2005/07/advertising_wee.html
FYI:
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/jul/med-roles.htm
“Two major differences in female role portrayals were noted:
1. Some of the common stereotypical portrayals seem less prevalent in Indian ads. For example, unlike in British magazine ads, women in Indian magazine ads were more likely to be portrayed in “neutral/other” ways and less likely to be portrayed as sex objects. Women modelling for mobile phones, cars and two-wheelers, painkillers, and as protagonists carry neutral portrayals. Women were also less likely to be portrayed in “dependency” roles in Indian ads than in British ads. It is noteworthy that these results are similar to those found in two other Asian countries–Korea and Japan–where, again, females were less likely to be portrayed in very negative stereotypical ways than in western nations. As mentioned earlier, the religious and cultural differences between India and western nations may account for this finding.
2. The polarizing trend found in the West, i.e., a tendency to portray women in dependency and housewife roles and in nontraditional activities, career-oriented, and authority figure roles (in British magazine ads), was not found for India by Das’ study. ‘Polarizing’ means strong opposites where one woman is shown driving all alone in a car with an expression of confidence on her face juxtaposed against the image of a woman sensually posing for a cosmetic product or spouting forth the advantages of a health drink for children. In India, the trend seems to be to portray women less often as housewives or concerned with looks, but not more often in nontraditional, career-oriented, or authority figure roles. Instead, there seems to be an increase in neutral portrayals of women, due, in part, to the dramatic increase in the number of ads for such products.”
http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2005/nocomment.asp
Im glad both Sean and Eric missed the point w.r.g to post 54. I don’t know exactly *how* you read into it the way they do, but indeed they do. I was merely pointing out that stereotypes are stupid and used an example of a smart person who doesn’t fit the feminist profile, nothing more. /boggle
Anyway in this case the lefties appear to be promoting the premise that a smart woman cannot dress in a sexual or feminine manner b/c somehow that demeans the rest of them. I too am a European so perhaps I am missing something here, but frankly I see it as quite the opposite. I merely view it as a woman who has no qualms about her sexuality, and uses it to entice a certain audience for her own gain as well as that of her company. That to me is the very essence of empowering women. Not only does she use her god given looks, but she also breaks the stereotype that only dumb booth babes are given a position.
Its a small, completely common matter, that as usual is amplified way out of proportion by silly inconsistent idealogy.
Haelfix — the point (for me, at least) isn’t about what an individual woman chooses to do (as an employee or, specifically, as a model). The issue is that the optics company chose to use an exclusively *female* sexuality as its major selling point. It’s not that a woman can’t dress in a feminine manner. It’s that femininity, and sexuality, and barefootedness, have nothing to do with optics.
The ad is one thing. But the letter Prof. Marcy received back, trying to claim that by NOT putting women in sexually suggestive poses on the cover of catalogs, we’re actually PREVENTING young women from entering the scientific and technical fields, is truly insulting to our intelligence. That letter may claim that a woman’s intellect is what really matters, but the printed matter displays the opposite attitude.
@ Annie: If it is not about sex (in relation to gender, naturally) then why do you feel offended? And if it is only about gender, then why do you feel disturbed that a female is being used in an optics catalog? Because she is female? Would it be better if it was a guy – attractive or not?
-Kasper
Optics and a model have about as much in common as I don’t know, motorcycles and models. For one reason or another the latter is associated in popular culture, but the former isn’t. If outraged female motorcyclists complained on some other board, they would have logically the identical argument fundamentally.
As for the letter itself, I suspect the author was just pointing out that perhaps we might be scaring females away b/c our field is viewed as too stiff and formal. I have no opinion on that matter whatseover.
Haelfix, I’ve provided other examples, the one discussed here is somewhere in that continuum. I assume you find none of those examples troublesome? (because when you did, you’d understand why people find the Edmund optics example troublesome, even if you thought that the Edmund optics example was at the mild end of the range).
The problem with the stereotyping in this ad is that the ad is clearly designed to target men. Yes, beautiful women are great for advertisement. But typically they are best at selling to men. As such, Edmund Optics is essentially making a statement that the astronomers to whom they want to sell are men. Yes, you can say this is nothing more than a statement of the status of astronomers as being primarily male.
The problem is that the physics community in general has held a rather discriminatory attitude towards women for quite some time now. That needs to change. And a company selling scientific equipment stating in pictures that they are selling to men, well, that’s just reinforcing discrimination and making the field more hostile for women.
When I was scanning the comments I misread “Healfix” as “Healpix” and was very disappointed in the algorithm!
Jason, thank you. I don’t know how many times the point you made so clearly needs to be repeated before some of these people commenting on here get it.
Haelfix said (#65):
Im glad both Sean and Eric missed the point w.r.g to post 54. I don’t know exactly *how* you read into it the way they do, but indeed they do. I was merely pointing out that stereotypes are stupid and used an example of a smart person who doesn’t fit the feminist profile, nothing more. /boggle
It’s odd that in one post you suggest that stereotypes are stupid, and in another post (e.g., #58) point out that this kind of advertising is absolutely common in certain areas, but don’t make the connection. You’re right that this sort of ad is very common. It is, in point of fact, a stereotype (a rather tedious one).
It’s a visual stereotype dating back to at least the 1930s (as evidenced by the WW2 airplane paintings LisaP linked to). It’s also a visual stereotype associated with, e.g., advertising cars at trade shows, which is what prompts people to refer to her as a “booth babe”. (You can see the stereotype at work in this very thread: attractive and attractively dressed young woman in a sensual pose next to a piece of high-tech equipment, no pretense that she’s actually using it = well, she must be a booth babe.)
It’s also an implicit social stereotype, because it repeats the message that the connection between women and scientific/engineering technology is purely decorative. The reality is that when ads of this type have male models in them, they are shown as users of the equipment. They’re often stereotypes as well (e.g., wearing lab coats and maybe glasses to let you know they’re Real Scientists and Real Engineers), but the fact that they outnumber “technical” women in these ads, and the fact that they don’t appear in sexy, purely decorative roles, simply reinforces the stereotype.
Anyway in this case the lefties appear to be promoting the premise that a smart woman cannot dress in a sexual or feminine manner b/c somehow that demeans the rest of them. I too am a European so perhaps I am missing something here, but frankly I see it as quite the opposite. I merely view it as a woman who has no qualms about her sexuality, and uses it to entice a certain audience for her own gain as well as that of her company. That to me is the very essence of empowering women. Not only does she use her god given looks, but she also breaks the stereotype that only dumb booth babes are given a position.
Ignore what Bill Dover of Edmund says about the cover model — that’s not part of the ad. The catalog cover does not say, anywhere, “This is our really very smart and accomplished Trade Show Manager.” In the ad itself, there are no clues to her identity, profession, technical savvy, or intelligence. There’s no reason to conclude that she’s smart, because she’s not shown doing anything that might signify her intelligence. She’s not doing anything at all except posing in a stereotyped fashion. (The fact that she and the equipment are not to scale simply reinforces the implication that she has nothing to do with actually using it.)
Beautiful cover.
Kasper (67) — because this is yet another example of gender being *conflated* with sex. The ad is sexual not only because of the pose but because of the wording, the subtle implications (which other commenters have elaborated on better than I could), the gender of the model — in other words, a gender is being used to signify sex. Femininity is inherently sexual and inherently not scientific, logical, intellectual, whatever you want, in the type of worldview that is generally portrayed in marketing materials and across media. In general, the sexuality of advertisements is not nearly as damaging as the inherent bias in such advertisements, which equates the *possession* of female secondary sex characteristics with the *use* of them. The debate about “sexy” ads is sort of out of the range of what I’m trying to get across. It’s not prudery about sex that is getting people fed up. It’s the way that one gender is consistently being reduced to nothing but sexual potential.
So what you’re saying in #67, but I would change the emphasis: It is disturbing that a female is being *used* to sell optics. Because “a” female is not being used — a stereotype of “female-ness” is. Remember that ads like this don’t happen in a vacuum. The folks at Edmund didn’t wake up one morning and realize that focusing on their best & brightest would be a great direction in which to take the campaign. Every single such image that is produced within the marketing world is produced in the *language* of marketing — and that pose is all about that language. Peter just described this very well. The pose and the wording in the ad are *designed* to be interpreted the way that we are all interpreting them. That’s why it’s a total straw man argument to claim that we would be fine with it if it were a male model. Why on Earth would it ever be a male model? That’s not part of the language. And it certainly won’t be unless and until major changes are made for women in science.
Jason is right on: this ad perpetuates the idea that women do not belong in astronomy, they belong in a reclining position.