Lady scientist Halloween costumes

In the spirit of the season, here are some awesome how-to's on dressing like a totally bad-ass lady scientist. And purposefully, these are not "sexy scientist" costumes....

Ada Lovelace

Her story (via Take Back Halloween):

Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) was one of the most remarkable visionaries in the history of science. Her friend Charles Babbage invented the Analytical Engine to crunch numbers; it was Ada who realized that it could do much more. She saw that a mechanical device—a computer, if you will—could solve all kinds of analytical problems, as long as they could be treated algorithmically. She was a hundred years ahead of her time. Nowadays she’s recognized as “the world’s first computer programmer,” though we think that actually understates the novelty and breadth of her vision. It makes her sound a little like an early employee at IBM.

Lisa Meitner

Her story (via Take Back Halloween):

You would think that the person who discovered nuclear fission would be one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. You would think she’d be a household name. But unless you’re a geek or a history buff, it’s possible that you’ve never even heard of Lise Meitner (1878-1968). 

Meitner was born in Austria at a time when it was against the law for girls to attend school past the age of 13. Yet she overcame a lifetime of legal and social barriers to become one of the top nuclear physicists in the world. In the 1930s she set up a team in Berlin to explore transuranium elements, recruiting Otto Hahn to do the chemistry experiments. Anti-Semitism intervened in the form of the Nazis, and Meitner, born a Jew, was forced to flee Germany in 1938. From her exile in Sweden she continued to direct the experiments in Berlin, communicating with Hahn by letter and even meeting with him secretly in Copenhagen. The result was one of the great breakthroughs in the history of physics. On Christmas Day 1938, in a huge rush of insight while mulling over the data from Berlin, Meitner suddenly Saw It All: that the atom could be split, that the resulting energy was described by Einstein’s E = mc², that nuclear theory itself had to be fundamentally revised. 

Hahn published the fission results without listing Meitner as co-author, a move that was perhaps understandable given the Nazi situation. But what happened next was not: in 1944 Otto Hahn alone was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering nuclear fission. Meitner got bupkis. The Nobel committee simply ignored her existence. And so it is that Lise Meitner is often called the greatest scientist to never win a Nobel prize.

Can feminists wear make-up? And other musings...

Scale of make-up intensity, representative of what was used in the study. Source.

A recent study about perceptions of women wearing make-up is making the rounds. I'm interested because I think about this- will my colleagues and students take me more or less seriously if I'm dressed up or wearing make-up?

I am somewhat pleased that they didn't just measure perceptions of attractiveness, but also included things like "competence" and "trustworthiness"- in other words- things that actually matter to women in the workplace. It's a weird sort of feminist slant, as highlighted in the NYTimes article about the study (see below). So how do you use this science to your advantage?

“There are times when you want to give a powerful ‘I’m in charge here’ kind of impression, and women shouldn’t be afraid to do that,” by, say, using a deeper lip color that could look shiny, increasing luminosity, said Sarah Vickery, another author of the study and a Procter & Gamble scientist. “Other times you want to give off a more balanced, more collaborative appeal.” (NYTimes)

The article also brings up the idea of make-up as an "extended phenotype." This implies that wearing make-up is a sociobiological trait meant to improve the appearance genetic fitness. For example,

Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the conclusion that makeup makes women look more likable — or more socially cooperative — made sense to him because “we conflate looks and a willingness to take care of yourself with a willingness to take care of people.” (NYTimes)

But hello, beauty is a social construct! Especially when it comes to trends like make-up. Like many sociobiology studies, this one seems to be conflating essentialized gender roles and socialization of our culture to certain beauty standards.

Now watch this.


Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

The kid at 5:05 is my favorite! He has already broken free of the "man box."