I'm buying this for my kitty soon.

Nancy came back from Spain!!

Follow up story to my earlier post about the Girls of Engineering calendar:

There was an article in the DI about this a while ago and here are some lovely excerpts. Please read and laugh:

"They're going to be attractive photos," said calendar producer Jen Wood, who is also a University alumna. "I want a lot of sex appeal in the calendar."
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Ramaded Hukkeri, the technical director of the project and University graduate said sex appeal is necessary to ensure marketability.
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"A lot of what we're looking for is personality," said company partner Syed Karim. "The thing that really sets us apart is that we are really focusing on intelligence."

The young entrepreneurs hope to make a community contribution by promoting the idea of intellectual women. One of the main goals of the calendar is to promote engineering to younger girls.

"I hope it is a great role model for girls who are still in high school and trying to decide what they want to do," Wood said.
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Community contribution? Role models? I think not.

I know my blog is pretty much made up of photographs and fun. But when I find something that stirs anger deep inside me, I want to speak my mind.

So recently I was invited to a group called "Girls of Engineering" on facebook, which states that "We're a 12 month full color wall calendar featuring U of I's hottest engineers...Smart can be sexy!"

I went to the website. I saw some of the production stills and it just pissed me off. This calendar just bugs me so much. It's not promoting anything positive in my opinion. It's just justifying all of the stereotypes that women have. For example, women who are smart usually aren't sexy. Okay, so they're trying to say "No, smart can be sexy." Which states that sexy has to mean being physically attractive and posing in skimpy lingerie [see production stills here and here]. Posing in a bikini on a motorcycle? How stereotypically "sexy" can you get. Doing a calendar like this only perpetrates a stereotype of smart women not being attractive. It's as if the only woman deemed worthy enough to be placed on a picture above my August month is one who is attractive and showing off her body.
There's even a sample calendar. What the hell is that? It's a poorly designed calendar with a girl topless [?] and showing off her butt. I just don't understand why these girls would degrate themselves and disrespect the other girls in the U of I Engineering programs for something this stupid. It's obvious the company doing this isn't interested in providing anything positive for the university and its engineering program. It's just trying to make some money off of stupid buyers by doing that whole "smart IS sexy. For instance, look at this young college girl's ass and tits."