Geek goddesses/calendar girls

July 10, 2006 1:18 AM

Geek goddesses or calendar girls? Female IT professionals have posed for a provocative calendar to try and shake off their industry's geeky image and encourage young women to consider a computing career. Yup, that'll work...
posted by Tokil (93 comments total)

I think I just downloaded.
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:20 AM on July 10, 2006

*sigh* The jpeg compression is turned up so high in those images that it really fucks up the girl's faces. Unless they really are that ugly, the girl on the bed of roses looks like she has bell's palsy or is really pissed off.
posted by delmoi at 1:27 AM on July 10, 2006

Here's the actual calendar. Heh. Some of these women are really not that good looking, more due to bad makeup, lighting and photography then anything. Strictly amateur hour.

And plus the pictures are just so clichéd. I mean I realize that that's the point but, ugh.
posted by delmoi at 1:31 AM on July 10, 2006

You can make relatively average women look really good if you know what you're doing. Or you could at least come up with intresting compositions. here's another example [this one's not safe for work]
posted by delmoi at 1:35 AM on July 10, 2006

I bet if you asked women in IT what the worst part of their work environment is they'd say that their female-ness makes them stick out like a sore thumb, and makes them the objects of way too much un-asked-for attention.

I'm guessing that a calendar with sexy pictures of women in IT would be the opposite of what would help get more women interested in CS / IT.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:44 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

I dunno, delmoi, I think they're both above-average girls. Especially the second girl. Back up one photo for another good shot.*

(* Totally not a comment about her chest, which is lovely.)
posted by Mikey-San at 1:44 AM on July 10, 2006

provocative? they're film poster remakes.
posted by beno at 1:46 AM on July 10, 2006

The only hot one is the blonde in the white bikini. 1/20 women in IT are hot? Yeah, that sounds like about the right ratio, in my experience.

Show me the calendar of HR women, now THAT is something I'd buy! :)
posted by antifuse at 1:53 AM on July 10, 2006

Considering Esquire came up with that bed of roses image I'm kinda surprised they don't lay come claim to it more vocally since it gets mentioned so often.
Somewhere in the Esquire Cover Gallery there is the original image of naked chick + rose petals
posted by public at 2:13 AM on July 10, 2006

Yeah, the blonde in the white bikini was the hotness. Other than that, myeh. Normally I wouldn't comment like this, but you put yourself out there as a "screen goddess", well, there you go.
posted by Justinian at 2:27 AM on July 10, 2006

...."and encourage young women to consider a computing career."
They can't be serious.
posted by dabitch at 2:32 AM on July 10, 2006

Dressing up in Leia's gold bikini somehow makes a woman less of a nerd? I mean, incredibly sexy, yes, but less nerdy?
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:34 AM on July 10, 2006

So the question is - "why don't girls enter IT?" and the answer seems to be - "IT makes you ugly." I'm uncertain as to whether the calendar proves or disproves the point.

So, why don't girls enter IT? (And does it matter?)

/is female
/is entering IT.
therefore...
posted by b33j at 2:42 AM on July 10, 2006

It's funny, but what I thought I wanted from an IT professional is capability in IT and the ability to communicate that to me. Now of course I see that all I really needed were some more women desperate to present themselves as little more than meat for male fantasy/approval. Apparently this also brings me into line with what so many chaps here had already concluded about the value of women.
posted by biffa at 2:52 AM on July 10, 2006

Why don't girls enter IT? Maybe because they have to pull stunts like this for anybody to take any notice. It conforms to the worst stereotypes for both women and men: women won't have an interest in IT unless it's less geeky, and that men will only think about women in IT if a calendar like this is produced.

This calendar helps nobody.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 2:52 AM on July 10, 2006

Wow, IT really does make women un-pretty (note I didn't say ugly) 5% of the time. This calendar is indeed a sad proof of it. That, or it speaks volumes in favor of make-up, lighting, professional photography... or beer.

really, you have to the teh hotness to copycat Ursula Andress

Nevertheless, props to them all for having the guts to go all the ways with this project, and be targets of the IntarWeb mostly-men communities. Hats off.
posted by XiBe at 2:59 AM on July 10, 2006

damn, i meant to say 95% of the time, tee-hee...
posted by XiBe at 3:33 AM on July 10, 2006

Some of these women are really not that good looking

True fact.

Perhaps they're seeking careers as 'hand models'.

(I'm never quite sure whether that's a euphemism or whether such a specialism actually does exist?)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:42 AM on July 10, 2006

Mostly pretty eh, but the Jabba the Hutt made out of a pile of spare parts is kind of neat.
posted by EarBucket at 3:52 AM on July 10, 2006

Greek gods or calendar boys? Male nursing professionals have posed for a village-people-like poster to try and shake off their industry's feminine image and encourage young men to consider a nursing career. Yup, that'll work...
posted by klarck at 4:06 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

b33j, I think since you are going into IT the better question is why don't women stay in IT.

Most women don't go into IT because it's sexy, we do it for the same reasons guys do (we're geeky, we like the technology, career stabilt....um well forget that last one).

If you are a woman in IT, you get treated like a girl, not a colleague, all the time. You have to learn how to deal with that real fast, or it will kill you.

Find good mentors, find the guys who are truly technical and who aren't assholes, and learn how to ignore things while still being aggressive enough to advance your career.

and never pose for a calendar like this!
posted by gminks at 4:16 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Th point about IT women being hot is that you can be sexy sitting on a stack of V7 manuals; you don't need the tawdry mainstream, which this is.
posted by bonaldi at 4:16 AM on July 10, 2006

The calendar itself is not meant to encourage girls to enter IT. If I were writing an FPP about this, it would probably refer to the stated aims of the group as given on their webpage, and not just make something up. It's a publicity stunt designed to get a bit of discussion going around the issue of 'lack of females in IT' and also raise some money for the programs that are actually hoping to encourage girls into the field.

/is also a girl going into IT
posted by jacalata at 4:22 AM on July 10, 2006

PeterMcDermott: Yep, they do. Ashly, a friend of mine, is a hand model. She wears gloves most of the time when she's not at a shoot, protecting her assets.

The only other thing I had to say is that a .info address is pretty nerdy for a group that's trying to shed its nerdy image.
posted by emelenjr at 4:28 AM on July 10, 2006

The somewhat good looking one are managers. Just saying.
posted by NewBornHippy at 4:35 AM on July 10, 2006

When I was a teenager, girls always told me I had nice hands. I thought about being a hand model. However, I imagine 6 years working stock has shattered those dreams. Alas...
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 4:43 AM on July 10, 2006

Sorry, I just don't see the sexiness. Perhaps if the women were dressed in normal attire, it might be more arousing.

For example, this is sexy:


(Pic of Google HQ and Google QT).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:48 AM on July 10, 2006

Thanks for that, emelenjr. Of course, I've seen the Seinfeld episode, but again, I just couldn't tell whether it was a flight of the imagination.

And your friend Ashly *does* have beautiful hands. No plain geek girls on *that* website. :)

Do hand fetishists exist? Because Ashly's website definitely has the potential to turn me into one. That pomegranite shot is just fabulous -- albeit a trifle scary.

Presumably that's the whole point? Be sure to protect your pomegranites, boys!
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:03 AM on July 10, 2006

Heh, I hear you there Uther. I got told when I was a teenager I had the hands of a pianist. Now several years into stocking and I see three visibly red cuts on my hands, which is kind of low actually. Ah well. Not to mention all of the calluses.

Back on topic: Right now I'm in a programming class, and the ratio of women to men is really... not what I was expecting frankly. There's two men and seven women. The ratio at the beginning of the semester was more even, somewhere like 8 women to 6 men. Not sure what happened there, but I wonder if this will continue through the rest of the classes.
posted by Talanvor at 5:11 AM on July 10, 2006

How is this encouraging young women to go into IT careers? IT is not supposed to be sexy, and neither is accounting or any other office job. The purpose of getting any job is to make money, and if it makes you happy then that is gravy.

I don't think any woman is going to choose a career because of her sexy colleagues and furthermore this calendar does nothing to address the real problems that keep women out of IT. Those problems being (in my opinion) the perceived self-confidence of women with technology and big boy's club that one has to deal with in that field. In fact, this calendar probably hurts the latter, by making smart, capable women into playmates. It is easy to feel isolated in a heavily male workplace, but posing in a calendar doesn't make someone part of a team, it just separates them further.

I'm all for sexy calendars, but don't do it to attract young women to your field. That is just icky.
posted by Alison at 5:24 AM on July 10, 2006

I was having dinner with an old friend the other week. She's got a degree in some abstruse field of mathematics, and is two-thirds of the way through a PhD in astrophysics and going strong.

She spent some time complaining she was sick and tired of being appreciated for her intelligence and hard work, and really wished that just occasionally her male co-workers would openly and unashamedly admire her tits.

Her words. I am not in any way making this up.
posted by Ritchie at 5:26 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Sharon, left, general manager products and service for Personal Broadband Australia and Sonja, an IT&T service centre manager

Not geeks, never, ever. It's people cowgirls.
posted by elpapacito at 5:27 AM on July 10, 2006

Heh, Ritchie, maybe if she put some complex proof across her chest.
posted by Talanvor at 5:35 AM on July 10, 2006

Female IT professionals have posed for a provocative calendar to try and shake off their industry's geeky image attention whore.
posted by HTuttle at 5:40 AM on July 10, 2006

In the spirit of this, maybe?:

Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.

posted by Ritchie at 5:40 AM on July 10, 2006

Ritchie writes "really wished that just occasionally her male co-workers would openly and unashamedly admire her tits"

Baloney ! "Hey nice cans, can you squeeze a beer can with that ? That's HUUUUGE" ..she wouldn't like

Report her this one ritchie " I studied integrals, I studies derivatives and all of this was fine and good, but nothing would appease one man more then studying the curves of yours" and lemme know if she likes :D !
posted by elpapacito at 5:42 AM on July 10, 2006

I don't think any woman is going to choose a career because of her sexy colleagues

Unless of course she chooses a career in pornography.

really wished that just occasionally her male co-workers would openly and unashamedly admire her tits.

Well, who dosen't like getting treated like a piece of meat every once in a while? It always makes my day.
posted by jonmc at 6:31 AM on July 10, 2006

Lisa Lionheart surrenders... :(
posted by cardoso at 6:32 AM on July 10, 2006

Lisa Lionheart had some nice cans.
posted by jonmc at 6:34 AM on July 10, 2006

Ok, guys, lets quit it with the philosophizing and look at the facts.

Women don't enter the IT industry because they're not interested in IT.

Once upon a time, nearly all fields were dominated by men. However, women have made significant headway into most industries. IT and engineering, sadly, are still male-dominated.

You could spend all day trying to answer the question, "Why don't women go into IT?" I think a better question would be, "Who does go into IT?"
posted by Afroblanco at 6:55 AM on July 10, 2006

Dude that google pic is awesome.
I want to sit on a ball at work.
Also, to have monitors like that.
posted by ryran at 7:09 AM on July 10, 2006

I want to sit on a ball at work.

I imagine that would hurt, but as long as it's one of your own...
posted by jonmc at 7:12 AM on July 10, 2006

It's not exactly clear why women would want to go into IT. It's not an interesting field. Working with computers is generally a lonely, tedious, and largely unrewarding affair. I'd say sticking with the legal/education/medical trifecta is the way to go. Leave IT to the people who think staring at a screen for 8 hours a day means something.
posted by nixerman at 7:15 AM on July 10, 2006

Working with computers is generally a lonely, tedious, and largely unrewarding affair.

Yes, but you can also play video games and look at porn.
posted by jonmc at 7:19 AM on July 10, 2006

These women need to get out of IT and into Photoshop.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 7:21 AM on July 10, 2006

My ex-boss was one hell of a cutie and an ubernerd - but she was married, so I wasn't going to go there. She did laugh genuinely at my nerd jokes, which was nice.

She did complain - rightly - about having to repeatedly prove herself to male coworkers or clients just because she was female, and a nice looking one at that. Despite being a published expert in her fields. Her tactic was to hit 'em hard with the tech skills early and often.

My reply to her the first time that she confided in me about it was that she had me convinced of her abilities and skills in the first 30 seconds or so, and I'm not easily impressed.
posted by loquacious at 7:31 AM on July 10, 2006

I think a better question would be, "Who does go into IT?"

If my own experience is any help: English majors.
posted by Cyrano at 7:31 AM on July 10, 2006

I wish IT/IS types would quit calling themselves "geeks". A geek is a funny-looking eccentric one might see biting the head off a chicken because God told him to and/or for money at the State Fair (being unemployable otherwise). Y'all ain't geeks, you're dilberts! And don't get me started on your appalling misuse of the appellation "troll".
posted by davy at 7:38 AM on July 10, 2006

If my office is any indication, IT is usually the province of beefy guys in comical t-shirts and inscrutable Russians.
posted by jonmc at 7:44 AM on July 10, 2006

Maybe the way to get women into IT is to go find hot looking geek dudes and put them on a calendar. I mean - there has to be at least twelve attractive, fit, well-groomed men in IT. Right?
posted by borkus at 7:46 AM on July 10, 2006

Should I ask what these beefy guys are doing in inscrutable Russians?
posted by horsewithnoname at 7:49 AM on July 10, 2006

If my own experience is any help: English majors.

Yes, yes.
posted by everichon at 7:49 AM on July 10, 2006

Yeah, both women in the images there are managers. Personally, I am getting a little tired of hearing people whose careers vaguely intersect with tech-related concepts calling themselves "geeks".
This goes for the technogasm crowd too, I'm looking at you boing-boing.
posted by nightchrome at 7:57 AM on July 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Honestly this calendar seems like a weird idea the way it worked out. All these women -- many of whom are farily normal looking, some of whom are attractive -- are set up to be dressed and posed like movie stars. It's an interesting idea, but the first thing you wind up seeing is "That chick looks nothing like Sandra Bullock" or "That lady is heftier than Sharon Stone" I think this would have been a much better calendar if the gals were spiffed up some and then posed around some really hot GEAR.

I worked in IT for a while and besides the absolutely lousy pay combined with the sitting-all-day-getting-bitched-out atmosphere was the fact that the few really hot chicks that worked there tended not to know shit in terms of tech stuff and yet they were so good for morale no one seemed to question this much.
posted by jessamyn at 7:58 AM on July 10, 2006

Should I ask what these beefy guys are doing in inscrutable Russians?

Hunting for borscht.
posted by jonmc at 7:59 AM on July 10, 2006

I don't know about IT, but IM isn't geeky (it's business), and there is a demand to hire more women.

Seems to me there is confusion amongst the laity (and not so laity) about IM vs. IT. The money seem to be mostly in the IM arena, these days.

I won't comment on the calendar girls. I'm colorblind in that spectrum. (but the male nurses? 4 of 9 show potential. I was a nursing student in the 70's, and damn, those women did not like men entering nursing!)

As far as gender and job issues go: Women are as bad, or worse, than men, when it comes to giving grief to men in 'their' working fields.
posted by Goofyy at 8:01 AM on July 10, 2006

This is like asking "Why don't more women become auto mechanics?" when you should be asking "Why don't more women become automotive engineers?". Encourage young women to be computer scientists, not the guys (err... gals?) who just do tedious maintenance of stuff other people wrote.
posted by phrontist at 8:02 AM on July 10, 2006

Like ryran, it's those monitors I'm lusting after in the Google picture. Damn!
posted by small_ruminant at 8:23 AM on July 10, 2006

You mean I can be valued for my body in ANY industry I chose? WAHOO!
posted by nuclear_soup at 8:31 AM on July 10, 2006

I think this would have been a much better calendar if the gals were spiffed up some and then posed around some really hot GEAR.

Unf. UNF! Err, I mean, why yes, that's a splendid idea. *hunts around for that old UNIXpron site, fails*

I wish IT/IS types would quit calling themselves "geeks". A geek is a funny-looking eccentric one might see biting the head off a chicken because God told him to and/or for money at the State Fair (being unemployable otherwise). Y'all ain't geeks, you're dilberts!

Look, it might not be that way now, but have you ever actually seen a real IT geek in their natural, non-work environs?

We're not just talking about dorks with two of everything from the ThinkGeek catalog. We're not just talking piles of 20 sided dice and replica broadswords, or Buffy posters. Think more about the weird realms where Zippy the Pinhead meets The Residents meets The Grateful Dead meets your local leather/fetish club meets the offroad unicyclists club, while body-juggling crystal skulls and quoting Ed Wood movies and knitting an angora twinset.

A real geek is more RE/search and Taschen books and less Wired, or God forbid FHM or Stuff magazines. More Mondo 2000 and less Wired/Tired. More Deoxy.org and less BoingBoing.net. A real geek is less shortsleeved stuffy engineer and more, well, just freakishly naked mad scientist. A real geek is just as likely to be building a OpenBSD smoothwall out of a computer found in a dumpster as they are baking magic space cookies or sewing up a ninja costume, or making a rocket powered bike. Real geeks bleed and have burn marks and scars, not the permanently furrowed brow of a manager.

Weird, strange, sick, twisted, Godless, evil stuff! And I want in.

*glances around small windowless weird cave-hovel of a room strewn with miles of wiring, a half dozen monitors, four computers of wildly varying ages and operating sytems, art supplies, craft supplies, piles of assorted tools and test equipment and an assortment of contraband paraphenelia*

Err, not that I would know anything about that. Ok, I guess I'm making your arguments for you at this point. Hey, poindexters? You're not geeks. But you could be... *evil grin* here, have a cookie!
posted by loquacious at 8:37 AM on July 10, 2006 [2 favorites]

You could spend all day trying to answer the question, "Why don't women go into IT?" I think a better question would be, "Who does go into IT?"

Or, "why is anyone foolish enough to go into IT in the first place anymore?" IT is about the worse line of work you can get in post-dot-bomb, and besides, it's all headed for India China. Better learn Mandrin so you can train your replacement!
posted by nlindstrom at 8:38 AM on July 10, 2006

I'll third that English majors thing. I'm guessing it's because we've been told all of our academic lives that we'll never get a "real job", and yes that seems true, until the one day we decide to answer that ad for a "technical support assistant"...
posted by markemorse at 8:38 AM on July 10, 2006

Maybe the way to get women into IT is to go find hot looking geek dudes and put them on a calendar. I mean - there has to be at least twelve attractive, fit, well-groomed men in IT. Right?

Yeah, but I'm booked.

I've met more than a few girl nerds, and were a billion times more attracted to them than I am to anyone in this calendar. Civil_Disobedient is right.

Also, stated goals or no, this is just plain pathetic.
posted by hoborg at 8:41 AM on July 10, 2006

In case anyone else was wondering which Esquire cover was the original naked-with-flowers, and doesn't feel like hunting, it was Demi Moore in May, 1993.

I have to say, the blood-red rose petals version of the concept is a lot better than the original, I think.
posted by rusty at 8:54 AM on July 10, 2006

I think a better question would be, "Who does go into IT?"

I like fixing stuff. Really, I do. I like fixing stuff, I like the clockwork of digital systems, I even like the moments of sheer terror and panic when the excrement hits the air conditioning. It's like working in an ER, but with less blood and smelly people. I don't like cars or getting dirty or wrestling with heavy machinery - unless it's heavy machinery that's going to be purposefully exploded or set on fire shortly. But IT support satisfies the MacGuyver in me something fierce. Approaching a critical problem armed with little more than a paper clip and a wad of chewing gum, followed by audible gasps and stuff like "What the fuck? What kind of freak are you? OMG you're a genius!" is often more rewarding to me than a paycheck. That's the simple answer.

The more complex answer is that I've been working with computers and electronics since I was a wee little tyke, and I can't really find much other work. I'm allergic to managing and I don't like spreadsheets. While I do have experience in design, I hate marketing and advertising. So I do IT. Plus it pays better than flipping burgers, so, whatever.

And a lot of the good IT work is rapidly coming back from India. Middle America just doesn't want to talk to someone on another continent when it comes to fixing their computers. In fact, there's been an Indian hosting company advertising on my local craigslist for a month, now. They're outsourcing here, which is a real melon-scratcher when I think about it.
posted by loquacious at 8:58 AM on July 10, 2006

It's like working in an ER, but with less blood and smelly people

Blood, sure, but I've met plenty of smelly IT people.

*taps mike*

Is this thing on??
posted by jonmc at 9:01 AM on July 10, 2006

PeterMcDermott writes "Perhaps they're seeking careers as 'hand models'.

"(I'm never quite sure whether that's a euphemism or whether such a specialism actually does exist?)"

Yep, and foot models and stomach models and probably most other body parts.

ryran writes "Dude that google pic is awesome.
"I want to sit on a ball at work."

They are cheap, $30-$80. My wife loves hers. Make sure you get one that is the right size for your height.
posted by Mitheral at 9:18 AM on July 10, 2006

Report her this one ritchie " I studied integrals, I studies derivatives and all of this was fine and good, but nothing would appease one man more then studying the curves of yours" and lemme lemma know if she likes :D

Fixed.

(P.S. "Geek girl" calendars are stupid and the people who buy them or appear in them are stupid.)
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:22 AM on July 10, 2006

Blood, sure, but I've met plenty of smelly IT people.

Ouch. No, I wasn't really thinking of that generic sort of rancid IT worker smell, but more of the "Dear god, are those maggots in your head!?" urban outdoorsman smell. That and carbuncles.
posted by loquacious at 9:26 AM on July 10, 2006

To add to what loquacious said, for me it is also about helping people. I like to help people to learn and to solve their problems. In a sufficiently large and diverse environment you are always facing something new and of course MS keeps us busy with new features.

It's not just engineering and IT that has trouble recuiting women. Trades are desperate to recruit women and the money poured into recruitment is fairly unsuccessful at increasing numbers.
posted by Mitheral at 9:39 AM on July 10, 2006

and really wished that just occasionally her male co-workers would openly and unashamedly admire her tits

WIth difficulty, I suppressed the knee-jerk urge to call BS on that because you invoked TINS, but since it's assumed true, this woman's mighty naive for a doctoral candidate.

I could be wrong about how things work in the groves of academe, but out here in the alleged real world of commercial employment, that's a huuuuuuge no-no. Open, unashamed admiration of secondary sex characteristics is a great way to get frogmarched out the door and maybe sued for sexual harassment to boot.

must...resist...urge....to ask for...doctoral... candidate's...phone...number....
posted by pax digita at 9:45 AM on July 10, 2006

What!?! Women in the workplace!?! Bring our boys home, already!

Seriously, though, make an actual calendar of nerd girls doing nerd jobs and I'll buy it in a heartbeat.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:04 AM on July 10, 2006

Nerd Girl
posted by Tenuki at 11:27 AM on July 10, 2006

She spent some time complaining she was sick and tired of being appreciated for her intelligence and hard work, and really wished that just occasionally her male co-workers would openly and unashamedly admire her tits.

Well I hope you took the opportunity to complement her breasts. She almost certanly was intrested in you admiring her breasts, not people in general.
posted by delmoi at 1:15 PM on July 10, 2006

In a perfect world IT chicks would look like Lisa Loeb. As for these calendar girls, put me in the "they don't impress me much" camp.
posted by Devils Slide at 1:47 PM on July 10, 2006

I'm never quite sure whether that's a euphemism or whether such a specialism actually does exist?

My father's hands were in a couple commercials. Didn't turn into a career, though, but maybe Michigan just isn't the place for it...
posted by dagnyscott at 2:08 PM on July 10, 2006

posted by jessamyn at 2:09 PM on July 10, 2006

omg nerdboobies! *faints*
posted by loquacious at 2:29 PM on July 10, 2006

Ooh more on the topic.

The Australian Computer Society (probably male-dominated) has refused to sponsor the calendar on the basis that it exploits women.
posted by b33j at 3:10 PM on July 10, 2006

Great pic Tenuki.

It would be nice for more women in IT to be seen as role models, but like many of you I'd like to see young women admiring them for their accomplishments first and foremost, and consider their good looks only as reassurance that attractiveness is not incompatible with an IT career.

Three examples I thought of right away. Security researcher (rootkit expert) Joanna Rutkowska. This C programmer I happened upon when linking to one of those funny Verity Stob articles. Val Henson, Linux contributor.
posted by jam_pony at 3:36 PM on July 10, 2006

No mention of Ceren? BSD dev nerd who consistently outboothbabed the booth babes. Rowr.
posted by cortex at 4:24 PM on July 10, 2006

I know this is likely an unpopular thing to say, but most geek women I've run across aren't physically more attractive than the average mundane. In fact, I suspect that the average physical attractiveness of women in the geek sector is below that of the general average.

What makes geek women more attractive is, of course, their intelligence and creativity. I think a lot of geek males, having serious trouble hooking up with teh hawt b00bies in high school and college probably lower their standards for physical attractiveness in women, perhaps being taught by experience that applying hands to yummy womenflesh wasn't going to happen with the chicks who looked like Playboy models.

As in everything, there are exceptions. And like several of the posters here, I just don't find most of the women in that calendar to be all that and a bag of whatever. But power to them for having the cajones to pose in front of a notably critical audience.
posted by illiad at 5:02 PM on July 10, 2006

I subscribe to ACM technews and the lack of women in comp sci is a constant topic. There's even an ACM Committee on Women and Computing.

Some of the news articles posted in the weekly technews column do sound about as silly as someone trying to get women into IT by doing away with nerd images and emphasizing the coolness of the field.
posted by bleary at 5:13 PM on July 10, 2006

"Well, who dosen't like getting treated like a piece of meat every once in a while?"

Meat tends to be seasoned, sliced, and then cooked. Perhaps you meant:

"Well, who dosen't like getting treated like a piece of art every once in a while?"
posted by Sukiari at 5:37 PM on July 10, 2006

Worth mentioning that these girls probably took their prompt from the Australian women's soccer team, the Matildas, who posed nude for a calendar back in 2000 to raise awareness of their sport. (link a bit NSFW; subtle nip alert)
posted by UbuRoivas at 6:05 PM on July 10, 2006

Women don't enter the IT industry because they're not interested in IT.
I don't think you have that quite right. American women don't enter the IT industry. I was looking around at a women in IT event I attended recently and couldn't help but marvel at the sea of dark hair. Why is it the vast majority of women I work with are not American-born? There is a sizeable immigrant representation among the men I work with, as well. Let's not lie to ourselves and try to pretend, then, that nothing is going on culturally and this is purely a matter of natural preferences. Cultural factors are affecting the attractiveness of computing to both sexes but to American women especially. And it's too damn bad, if you ask me. Women are missing out on a great career path, and companies are missing out on a great source of employees.
(Yes, I do realize this is not an American group making this calendar)
posted by ch1x0r at 6:06 PM on July 10, 2006

illiad: I must dissagree. Without wanting to sound like the schmuck here, I dated the cheerleaders in highschool, and a couple of moderately well-known movie-stars in college. Deserved or not, my love-life has never been lacking in beautiful women, but nerd girls are still the absolute epitome of everything I love about the feminine race. Smart, quirky, cute, generally pixie-ish, and way too cool to come anywhere near my dumb ass.

The problem isn't in the intent, but in the execution. If these women want to hype IT, then they should show themselves at their jobs. If they want to look sexy, then they should spend the money on a photagrapher that can light them best at their desks, instead of blowing all the money on a set director and then hiring a bargain-basement DP who doesn't know how to make them look as sexy and cool as the (most likely) are.

Granted, the idea here wasn't to reach out to the nerd-girl fetishists, but to all the philistines. Nevertheless, in this attempt, they managed to completely circumvent everything that makes people fawn over nerd girls to begin with.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:30 PM on July 10, 2006

Well said, ch1x0r.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:55 PM on July 10, 2006

This brings a new understanding to those shirts that say "Talk Nerdy To Me".
posted by ArunK at 1:04 AM on July 11, 2006

Hey Navelgazer, did you actually, like, read my post? I'm not sure where you disagree, or why. I used lots of qualifiers like "most" and "a lot of" and "there are exceptions."

You did a great job of chest-beating though. Woot woot woot I guess.
posted by illiad at 8:06 AM on July 11, 2006

IT women in my department all seem to have fallen into the field as opposed to the men who studied CS, library science, etc. One woman has a fine arts degree, I studied anthropology, the third is a linguistics major, and the last is currently studying fine arts. (Two out of four of us women are also "of color" though we were American born.) So it seems like IT and tech fields need to be drummed up in public schools in order to get more girls in the field. I remember in high school being very geeky, but the computer labs were a fortress of impenetrable nerdom populated by creepy teenage boys. Not very welcoming.
posted by lychee at 11:24 AM on July 11, 2006

*eye roll* It's an absurd premise with the worst possible execution.
posted by dejah420 at 11:33 AM on July 11, 2006

A list of THE geek goddesses.
posted by tellurian at 9:12 PM on July 11, 2006