Thus Spake Zuska

What is it with the techie women pin-up calendar business?

First, we had the loathesome Geek Gorgeous calendar.

Then came the misbegotten IT Screen Goddess calendar.

Now Skookumchick brings us news of young women engineers at the University of Illinois who have posed, scantily clad and nearly naked in some cases, for a pinup calendar.

Here's what I had to say in the past about such calendars:

The participants think they are saying to the world, "Look, I'm smart AND sexy!"

But what they are actually saying to the world is, "Look! No matter how smart I ever am, you can count on me not to threaten the stereotypical understanding of the female role in society, which is to be constantly available sexually to any male who wants me, to be constantly concerned with my appearance and whether or not I am attractive to males, in the way that society defines as attractive, according to current standards of beauty on display by anorexic models and Hollywood actresses whose airbrushed images are plastered all over the media. You may now jerk off while gazing at my hot body. Feel free to disregard my intellectual accomplishments, except insofar as it makes you feel superior and powerful to imagine yourself sexually dominating someone like me and seeing me reduced to what I really am, a cunt, no matter what I say about my fancy education and career. This should help you in treating other women the same way, no matter who they are or what they've accomplished as well. Happy jerk-off!"

And here is what I had to say in response to one young woman who was very disturbed by my critique of these calendars, and declared that she would be completely comfortable posing for such a calendar:

I know you that you would feel comfortable being photographed for the Screen Goddess IT calendar; perhaps you would even feel proud to be chosen for it, and that makes me really sad. If you were my daughter, I would not feel happy thinking of your picture on a pin-up calendar, being ogled by adolescent boys and pervy men who felt they could discount your intellect and accomplishments because all that really mattered about you was your tits and ass. The problem with such calendars, Ellen, is that you can't impose your meaning on them for the rest of society. The rest of society is going to see you as a fancy whore, maybe a fancy whore with some IT credentials, but still a fancy whore. Go back to my example of Hedy Lamarr; how many people remember her for her intellect?

This, indeed, is the problem with such calendars. You can proclaim from now till queendom come that the calendar is all about showing that women can be smart and sexy. (And how pathetic is it that in 2007 we are still talking about this issue, that so many people still assume the two are mutually exclusive, that so many men don't see intelligence as a sexy attribute in a partner?) You can make all the assertions you want, but you can't control what the culture makes of you and your nekkid body in the pinup calendar photo. What the culture makes of you, is that you are an object that exists for the gratification of men's desires. Everything else is irrelevant, or ancillary at best. She has great tits! And she's an engineer. Yeah, but look at those tits! Who cares what she does, if she's got tits like that?

That young women so willingly participate in their own stereotyping and objectification in projects like this is unspeakably depressing.