Thus Spake Zuska

I have a friend who is always making up the most wonderful names for his female friends by adding the syllable “stress” to unusual words. My favorite was one he gave me after a nefarious piece of business: underminestress. Believe me, the person deserved it. Anyway, I say all this by way of explaining the word “geekstress” in my post title there. It’s meant proudly and campily, the way my friend uses the modifier.

So: what does a true geekstress look like? We are in the process of finding out!

Kristin just posted this link to a contest on Inkling magazine:

In honor of all girl-geeks everywhere, as gloriously encapsulated by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Ander’s She’s Such a Geek! (SSAG), Inkling’s decided to host a girl-geek photo competition.

I am totally loving the photo of Leah Grasso in her Lt. Uhurah costume.

What a delicious antidote to that awful U of I calendar crap.

Get busy with your digital cameras and take some lovely geeky photos of yourself. I wish I had a circuit-board corset like Ellen Spertus but I am afraid I have none such geeky garb. I might have an old t-shirt lurking around with an NMR spectrum on it. That will have to do. Hey, I could pose with all three of my theses and my five diplomas/graduate certificates! A certified geek! No, that’s lame. Damn, I don’t have access to any sexy lab equipment. All I’ve got here is my ancient laptop and my new Canon printer. I do have a box full of old textbooks in the basement (every survivor of academe has a box like that). But go look at Louisa Poskitt’s self-portrait with book. Who could match that????

Comments

#1 Jane
February 15, 2007

Oh man, I so want to do this, but that would really mess with the anonymity thing….Dang! Looking forward to seeing the rest of the submissions, though.
#2 Brian X
February 16, 2007

I’m all about geek chicks. My only problem with it is that being smart women, they know better than to date geek guys.
#3 MissPrism
February 16, 2007

My best geekwear is my white on black trilobite t-shirt. It’s twelve years old, but I can’t replace it because I was wearing it when I met David Attenborough and he identified its genus. I geek-swooned.
#4 knobody
February 16, 2007

hmmmmm, i’ll have to dig out a pic of me and the girls all wearing our “DNA is Life” t’s in hawaii. we were, of course, there for a conference, but the picture is taken with us worshiping the almighty coffee bean.
#5 Yttrai
February 16, 2007

Nice! Hers is much better constructed than mine. But, i made an entire dress, consisting of separate corset and skirt. It was a Halloween costume: Computer Date. Won me $100
#6 Bill
February 17, 2007

I found the gratuitous upskirt shot rather jarring, myself.
#7 Zuska
February 20, 2007

Gah!!!! that is so depressing. Did she not get the memo on what this contest is all about??????? Perhaps she wandered in from one of those calendar shoots…
#8 Kristin
February 20, 2007

I agree, at first I thought it was just a kind of blah photo of an attractive woman reading a nerdy magazine. Then I noticed the underwear.

The good thing is, that photo isn’t even in the running. There are so many great geekstresses to choose from, and there’s still a week left in the contest!