Quickies

Skepchick Quickies, 12.6

Jen

Jen is a writer and web designer/developer in Columbus, Ohio. She spends too much time on Twitter at @antiheroine.

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21 Comments

  1. The weird thing is that I first learned that story about Hedy Lamarr discovering frequency hopping during Robert Wuhl’s ‘Assume the Position’ special on HBO where he points out the vast amount of humor in American History to some college students.

  2. I love this comment over on the post about smart women:
    “I haven’t read the Times article yet, but let me guess – its filled with advice for men about how they can and should change their thinking to adjust to new economic and social realities.

    Just kidding.”

  3. Maybe the smart women just get snatched up quickly, so the ones on dating sites tend to have something un-date-able about them.

  4. @Jen

    Wow, first big picture nudity, first onscreen orgasm, and cell technology! That’s my kind of woman.

    Oh, and she helped win that bit of bother in the ’40s too. Norman Borlaug has some compitition for most awesomest person ever…

  5. I’m not calling shenanigans yet but the story about successful women finding it hard to find a date is sort of undermined by two of your other stories.

    Hedy Lamarr and Kari Byron would have no problems finding dates if they weren’t dead and married respecively.

    Hmmm… It helps that they are both gorgeous, okay bad examples. Carry on.

  6. @mrmisconception

    That doesn’t seem to be the story on the link Jen provided. Either way, I assure you that the only reason I watched the clip was to acquaint myself with what all the fuss was about. It was torture from start to finish. ;-)

  7. @mikespeir: Not to get all nit-picky, but from the article:

    Hedwig Kiesler was born in 1914…. One particular opportunity, the 1933 Austrian film Ecstasy, shocked the world with an early nude scene.

    Though Wikipedia lists her birth year as 1913. Either way, definitely of age for beautiful nude frolicking.

  8. I get you Marlowe, but here’s what the caption of the clip says: “15-year old Hedy Kiesler (later Lamarr) is Eva, Arbert Mog is Adam, and even the horses get randy as she runs naked through the woods in the infamous Czechoslovak proto-porn Ecstasy, 1933.” That, apparently, is wrong.

  9. Re: smart women:

    So while I think they hyperbolized a little bit, I do get what they’re saying. I don’t like to talk about myself, so it took a little while for various ex-bf’s to discover that I am science-geek-girl smart. And that I wasn’t pining away for a man to give me a house with a white picket fence and a dog and a few kids – I had long term career goals that frequently outstripped theirs. The less secure of them tried to make me feel like shit about it, and were dropped like hot potatoes.

    My husband and I even had some rough patches early on. Because he had a flaw in his logic: he wanted to marry someone with brains and drive and independence…but he also expected me to turn around and be June Cleaver as far as the domestic shit went once we started sharing space. He was fully expecting to be taken care of by me. Which was weird because his Mom worked – not a STEM or anything, but she worked. I never gave him any indication that I would enjoy taking on all the domestic duties (I determinedly did NOT do his domestics when we were dating – I had my own), so this was a huge surprise for me.

    I think it’s about popular culture not catching up with modern fiscal and workplace realities. TV couples have artistically messy houses, if at all, when the wife/mother works. Smart women in the movies are frequently repressed hot-librarian types and need a man to make them take off the glasses, shake down the hair, put on makeup and the sexy clothes. If they are already sexy or not repressed, then they are domineering, backstabbing bitches, as a foil to the underdog ingenue.

    Until popular culture catches up to the fact that a successful intelligent woman is not a domineering frigid bitch with misandry tendencies, you’ll continue to see this shit published in places like the NYT.

  10. @Chasmosaur Until popular culture catches up to the fact that a successful intelligent woman is not a domineering frigid bitch with misandry tendencies, you’ll continue to see this shit published in places like the NYT.

    It’s a deal. While we’re at it can we get rid of the “no man can ever do any thing right thing unless told to by a woman thing”? It’s about as worn out as the the one you pointed out.

  11. My SO definitely thinks he’s smarter than me, but I think we’re pretty even. We’re similarly educated, and have similar strong suits.

    I’m not sure he would stay in the relationship if he actually thought I was smarter than him.

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