Beauty and Brains

There is a really cool article on the New York Times about Natalie Portman's scientific success: finalist for the Intel Science Talent Search, straight-A student, Harvard degree in neuroscience (she studied the evolution of the brain). Now Ms. Portman boasts an Oscar for Best Actress as well--and I'll admit to being genuinely impressed. There's some mention of some other outrageously sucessful, gorgeous, and intelligent Hollywood women, too, who provide nice role models for young women who aspire to be actresses or scientists.

The articles ends with: "You can be a scientist, but if you want your name in lights, you’d better play one on TV." I hope that one day this changes, and little girls can look forward to the prestige of being a scientist in the same function that Hollywood actresses play today.

Women in Philosophy

This weekend our department welcomed our prospective graduate students, and I hosted one student myself. Last night and this morning we ended up talking a lot about feminism- not surprising, since the director of our program is a brilliant social engineer and probably matched us together because of our similar interests.

I've been thinking lately about how I represent myself as a woman and as a feminist, both personally and professionally. Since coming to grad school, I have been more hesitant to talk about feminism, other than about 5 people who I trust and respect. I don't want to reveal too much here, other than hoping to spur some public or private reflections about how gender dynamics are examined or unexamined in different institutional contexts.

Although I come from a field (biology) that is roughly equally male and female (although there are more male professors), I've been interacting with more philosophers, which is a very male dominated field, but the older generations tend to be pretty reflexive about this disparity (they recognize it, and likely even think of themselves as feminists- consider that many current philosophy professors were in grad school in the 70s).

But I feel that in everyday interactions, gender dynamics often go unnoticed- such as the gender composition of informal and formal groups, the subconscious judgments that get made about me because I am a single woman, and the role gender plays in professional/personal interactions (the line between the two is often blurry in grad school). On one hand, I dearly respect and cherish my professors and colleagues regardless of their gender; on the other hand, I wonder whether how we might be unconsciously perpetuating these disparities, and how actively we are working for equity [please note that by "we," I mean both men and women].

Thoughts from those in philosophy and others?

P.S. If you want to know what partly fueled our evening discussions, it was this and this.

Evelyn Fox Keller

This interview is worth a listen.

Evelyn Fox Keller was trained as a theoretical physicist, wrote her dissertation in molecular biology and made groundbreaking contributions to mathematical biology, and is now one of the preeminent scholars of "gender and science," History & Philosophy of Science, and Science & Technology Studies. Her writings on both gender and the history of molecular biology are also fantastic.


The rest of the interview series, "How to Think About Science," also looks very interesting! Many of those authors are in the field of science studies, like I am.

The UK's Lost Women of Science

Very interesting article in the Guardian today about women scientists' contributions to the Royal Society (the UK's version of the National Academy).

And coincidentally, it's quite connected to the paper I'm writing about Ellen Swallow Richards, the under-appreciated scientist who founded the field of ecology in the early Progressive Era. She also did a billion other things that have led to the modern fields of public health, home economics, and sociology, as well as ardently promoting women's education in science. She helped lead an empirical study of whether, in fact, higher education damages a woman's reproductive capacity (it doesn't... collective sigh of relief). One of her instructors at Vassar College was Maria Mitchell, an astronomer, who is highlighted in the Guardian article.

Just thinking about how difficult it was for women to gain recognition (or even access to higher education) 100 years ago... I feel that we owe a lot to women like Ellen Richards.

hymen shmymen

Since medical school began, I've only managed to read one non-required book in the last two months. It's not a fact I'm proud of but I think I spend my scarce time wisely. I read Hanne Blank's Virgin: The Untouched History, an account of the history and nature of virginity. It's an accessible and entertaining read for my overtaxed brain.

This was one thing I learned:

Despite the lack of any actual studies in the literature regarding whether horseback riding, gymnastics, or riding bicycles might have to do with womens' hymens, virtually every contemporary writing about virginity aimed at teen girls is duly equipped with a disclaimer that says something along the lines of 'many girls tear or otherwise dilate their hymen while participating in sports like bicycling, horseback riding, or gymnastics.'"

Woah. There is no scientific evidence that these activities stretch or tear the hymen! Yet I've heard this countless times in teenage girl magazines or otherwise informative literature on puberty and sexuality. Be sure, this "fact" is not just something from conservative abstinence-only sex education curriculum but widely seem in popular and generally accurate sex ed. It's probably in those puberty books your pediatrician recommended you to read. Understandably this belief was popularized in order to dissociate hymen with virginity. In recent years (decades?), it's become more acceptable for girls to participate in sports and the hymen less a gauge of virginity.

I think it also shows that the empirical evidence or lack thereof don't affect people's beliefs that much, in sexual matters and otherwise. In medical school we grumble all the time about evidence-based medicine. It should dictate medical practice but often it doesn't. Doctors and patients often want and perform procedures that aren't medically better than the other options.

Have you heard this when you were growing up?

The Science of Attraction: Is Beauty Skin Deep?

Many of you will know by now that I am deeply skeptical of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology (see Jessiroo's previous post). These are sciences that claim to "explain" current behavior by evaluating its evolutionary usefulness (for example, men are just "destined" to screw around because they have less parental investment). Aside from being determinist, these studies often implicitly justify or naturalize misogynist behavior or practices.

But today I'm going to talk about the science of attraction! Because clearly, we all want to attract someone of the opposite sex (preferably white), so let's use science to explain it!!! (warning: this is sarcasm.)

These types of articles pop up in the news every once in a while, I suppose because they have pop-science appeal as well as making us feel better or worse about certain biological traits. Last week two articles crossed my radar: in the NYTimes, "For Long Term, Men Favor Face Over Figure" and in National Geographic News, "Women Prefer Men With Yellow, Red Faces."

Which one is better looking?

I am left wondering three things:
1) OMG SO WHAT? Are men going to go off and start powdering their faces with yellow make-up (yes, it exists)???
2) So I can stop working out, I just have to have a pretty face?
3) How are these studies justified or funded? Looking at the previous two questions, perhaps Cover Girl is behind the veil, but a lot of these studies focus on non-physical behaviors.

I don't mean to discredit an entire field of study: in fact there are probably good insights about criminal behavior, ethics of care, etc. that we can discover through these approaches, but these seem utterly frivolous. Take the case of the stripper study, where a bunch of scientists "studied" whether ovulating women act sexier (aka received better tips). For a hilarious critique on this and similar period studies, check out this piece in Slate. And if you want a hard-hitting article about this topic in general (and whether we can blame rape and infidelity on evolutionary biology), be sure to read Sharon Begley's article in Newsweek.

I'd be interested to know how many of these PI's are male vs. female. Do you think that if women had more say in designing research questions and allocating funding, that research priorities might shift to something like the ethics of maternal care, rather than the science of rape and attraction?

Survived another October

I made it through another breast cancer awareness month. I'm so glad October is over because I don't have to see another "pink ribbon" bagel at Sparty's. Yes, it's a cranberry bagel twisted into a ribbon shape.

What began as a an educational and empowering strategy to address a taboo subject has mutated into vulgar, sexualized and demeaning attitudes about women's bodies. T-shirts with vulgar phrases and cheeky innuendo are okay if we claim it's for "breast cancer awareness", right? Wrong. It just show again that women's bodies only matter when they're sexualized, sadly. How insulting to frame a serious illness only in terms sexuality.

It's also morphed into consuming activism. Buying stuff that makes you feel like you did something good. No, it doesn't do anything good because next to nil of the profits will actually be donated to breast cancer research or advocacy or whatever.

Great combination of the two: Kroger was selling breast cancer awareness pink ribbon sliced turkey breast. You know you're not eating the mammary gland of the turkey, right?!

Considering performing breast self-exams, though I don't believe the literature shows it reduces breast cancer mortality. But it's certainly better than declaring where you like to put your purse or have sex, whatever that facebook meme was supposed to mean.

Suggested reading:
Pink Ribbon Blues: How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health
Gayle Sulik