Saw this ages ago but just got reminded of it…  cool timeline way of viewing online activity…

dipity / bethgranter

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A piece of my art is in an auction tomorrow (Sunday 16th November) in Bergen, Norway, for street paper charity Megafon.  Check it out if you’re about that way… not sure how many people who read my blog will be able to go! Details here, but in Norwegian!

Street art for street papers

Last night I went to my first London Girl Geek Dinner. The first talk by Dr Elisabeth Kelan involved lots of statistics from her research about gender and working in teams, with the main point being that a 50:50 split works best. She was criticised by someone in the audience that her statistics didn’t show anything new and that there was little difference in her results whatever the gender balance anyway. She rebutted this very intelligently, by explaining that each set of results showed a *slight* benefit when having a 50:50 split for each factor tested, and therefore the sum of each would show a significant benefit. Also she pointed out that just because common sense tells us something is true, lots of people still disagree and therefore it needs to be proven by research – and this was the first research to prove that a mixed gender team works best in a professional context. Dr Kelan went on to attempt to dispel some stereotypes, using her statistics. One example was that 98% of men in the top positions have children, whilst only ~50% of women in top positions have children, therefore (she believed), this was evidence that women are NOT more likely to request flexi-time than men. My only criticism with her talk was with this ‘fact’. To me, that statistic does not prove that men might desire flexi-time more than women. To me, it just proves that the top men with children are able to have their children looked after by their lower paid female partners at home, so having children is not an obstruction to them gaining top positions, whilst women are much more likely to gain top positions if they have not had children, because (I presume) if they do have children, they are expected to take on most of the responsibility of childcare and flexi-time is not an option.

After dinner, Julie Lerman gave a talk which began with her explaining how in the 80s she had felt the need to dress down in a professional context, because her previous feminine look had attracted the wrong kind of attention from male peers. She explained how more recently, she has been pleased to see young women at male-dominated geek events are able to dress ‘cute’ without (as much) damage to their reputation. Then she showed a picture of a conference speaker’s avatar/conference picture (which she had removed the head of to protect the woman’s identity) which was taken at a typical ‘MySpace angle’ and showed some cleavage. The woman clearly had no bra on and you could see some nipple points through her unbuttoned grey t-shirt. To me, it was an inspiring image. I thought, “Yeah, go on girl! You are proving that women can be hot and intelligent at the same time! You are breaking down that stereotype of an ugly butch geek girl by shoving your cleavage in everyone’s face.” However, Julie said that she found the image saddening and was upset that the reaction to her conference talks was often revolving around a discussion of her boobs rather than what she was talking about. Julie went on to show pictures of herself being herself and to say how important it was to present your ‘true self’. Julie said she wanted the session to be interactive, and for us to shout out when we liked… so I did.

I briefly said that to me, showing her true self might be exactly what the Cleavage Girl was doing. Julie responded saying that that might be true, and that as it is a complicated issue, that’s why she hadn’t said anything in person to this woman – Julie thought maybe it was a generational issue. Quickly, everyone had something to say. There were two very outspoken women – one who thought the same as me, and said that if women had shown their breasts in a context like that years ago we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. Basically, that Cleavage Girl is liberating us all instead of continuing to pretend that Geek Girls don’t have breasts.

The other woman appeared very upset, shouting out “No, no! You’ve got it all wrong! She is objectifying herself by using this highly sexualised image! You can be feminine without being sexual!”. This woman went on to explain that research by Stonewall had shown that when someone is allowed to express themselves how they choose, they are more effective in the workplace. To me, this was far to close to the anti-sex, anti-porn feminists of the 1970s. Why do we think that a woman’s sexuality is separate from her ‘true’ self – like a dirty secret she should keep in the closet? Insisting that a woman portray her professional, intelligent self in a desexualised manner means that we are positioning sexy women as unprofessional and unintelligent.

The general feel in the room was that there was a line between making yourself attractive in a professional context (e.g. putting on makeup) and being provocative – and apparently this woman had crossed it. But who are we to set this line for others? Maybe this woman thought that she had not crossed the line, for her, crossing the line might be going completely topless online. In other cultures, showing your hair is crossing the line, and many feel that those cultures are behind ours in terms of women’s liberation. How is this different?

Additionally, an Online Community Moderator said that it was in women’s best personal safety interests to not put pictures like this online. She had experienced people being stalked online as a result of posting personal pictures of this kind. I do get her point, but to me, this is too close to saying that women should not wear sexy clothes out at night because they are more likely to get raped. The fault is with the rapist, not with the woman for what she wore. Similarly, we should be protesting about the reaction Cleavage Girl got – we should be shunning those bloggers who sniggered and discredited her speaking online. It is the reaction that is the problem and should be stopped. Cleavage Girl in my opinion, is certainly not at fault.

I am tempted to create a Girl Geeks for Cleavage fanclub.

I just had a major revelation.  The CMYK value for pure black ink, 0.0.0.100, 100% black, K, is NOT, I repeat, NOT the same as the hexadecimal pure black value of #000000 !  I can’t believe I didn’t know this before.  But thinking about it – it makes sense.  Pure K, Key, Black, is real-life ink, and because of this it cannot truely absorb all real light to create true black.  When printed on to any surface, the surface will have some texture which will reflect some proportion of light, making the colour of the surface off-black.  So, the digital representation of 100% K is… drumroll please… #231F20 in hexadecimal values, and 35.31.32 in RGB.  In reverse, #000000 (RGB 0.0.0) has a CMYK value of 75.68.67.90 (because using all the inks together in these values creates a ‘blacker black’ as the ink is more dense (I reckon).

I realise this is probably irrelevant and boring to a lot of people, but it is honestly fascinating to me!

In other news, the boyfriend’s band (This City) is playing at the Astoria in London tonight supporting Taking Back Sunday and I am going!  Amazing!  Did I mention that I feature in a slightly raunchy scene in their zombie music video for their new single We Move?  And I’m also the one in the wolf mask, with a half-second feature of my zombie t-shirt design.  And you can check me out in my pants and a wolf mask when their new artwork is released (on their single) next month.  Rawk.