I Like Pink. I Like Princesses. I'm an Astrophysicist.

Deal with it.

This video has been getting lots of shares around Facebook, which is not surprising, given that I know a lot of ladies in science:

While I don't have problems with the product, I've been getting more and more prickly about the presentation. See, every time people try to talk up how awesome science is, they have a tendency to put down things like "pink" and "princesses." It makes things that are traditionally "feminine" into something that's bad, like there's something wrong with it. That the ideal state is "masculine." And that's pretty bad, too. And as someone who likes those things, it makes me feel like I'm not a "real" scientist.

I've always been traditionally "girly" and "prissy." As a baby, my mom would try to get me to play in the dirt. I didn't want to get dirty. When I had the ability to pick out my own clothing, it was strictly pink and skirts and dresses until 2nd grade, when I occasionally started to wear stirrup pants and bike shorts under giant, baggy t-shirts(it was the early 1990s; please don't mock my sartorial choices). I refused to wear jeans until I was 12 or 13. When people asked me my favorite color, I would say "Pink, blue is for boys." (I eventually grew out of that, and I wasn't getting that attitude at home, so clearly, there was some socialization going on.)

When it came to toys, maybe choices were less gendered than they are now, but when I was very young (pre-school age) all of the toys my parents had for me were gender-neutral. Legos, train sets, giant colored blocks, this set that you made towers with and then dropped marbles down the track (my mom LOOOOVED the noise that made!). I concede that it is entirely possible that my parents actively avoided the gendered toys, but I have to believe these items still exist for children. There were also toys like Lincoln logs and tesselation blocks, which I wanted so badly but never got. I really liked these toys, but I also really liked playing dress-up in my sparkliest, most princess-y outfits. My mom wouldn't buy me Barbie dolls, although family members did, so they weren't verboten. As I got older, I tended towards these more feminine toys. I had a lot of barbies and barbie accessories (including Disney princesses!), American Girl dolls, and one of my favorite games was Pretty Pretty Princesess.

Despite all these gendered toys that I preferred as I got older, I still managed to do science. We had elementary school science fairs, and my projects in 5th and 6th grade were pretty kick-ass. Ask me about my 6th grade project on the fat content in ice cream. I was doing extremely sophisticated sampling for a 6th grader. Even though I didn't play with "science" toys, my parents still encouraged me to keep up my interest in the subject, while simultaneously not keeping me from the more "girly" things that I enjoyed. I think that's what's missing from the discussion. Rather than discouraging girls from liking pink and princesses, we should let them know that it's ok to simultaneously like math and science. This requires parental guidance, but I'm guessing that the people who are buying their kids educational toys and who are interested in these issues are able to put that kind of effort in their parenting. There's really no need to put one thing down to build something else up. Just keep an open conversation with your kids about these issues, and they'll turn out fine. And if it turns out they like princesses AND science (or even just princesses), they'll know that there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Twitter

I do not understand twitter. Why is it so popular all of a sudden? Why do I care what you're doing every second of the day? This is kind of hypocritical, since I update my facebook status with semi-regularity.

Irritating Things in My Life

Julianne Hough (dancer on Dancing with the Stars, aspiring country singer) is 20 years old. She has joined the ranks of celebrities that date people that are way too old for them. Her boyfriend is 29. That's a big difference when you're that young. Also, following the rules of "Half+7," the oldest she could go with out it being sketchy is 26, and that's pushing it. Perhaps I'm a big prude when it comes to these things, but that's like a grad student dating an undergrad. Ew.

I spent an hour trying to figure out my prescription drug coverage today. First, I went to the United Healthcare website. They made me create an account. Then I tried to see what drugs were listed under which tier (there's a three tier system of co-pays). I was directed to the Medco website (mail-in pharmacy), which made me create another account. To sign up, they requested a nine-digit member number, which was supposedly on my card somewhere or it was my SSN. There was no nine-digit number on the card, so I tried my SSN. That didn't work, so I tried every number on the card, none of which worked. Then I called customer service, which was closed for the day. That was fine, since it was 9:30 PM. I used the self-service menu, which gave me a phone number for the drug company, which I called. It was a different number from the first one, but somehow ended up directing me to the exact same menu I had just listened to telling me to call that number. I found another number to call in the information packet, and at that point I got to talk to a real, live person. He was very nice and set up an account for me. However, he kept calling me Mrs. Mahler. While I get that he was trying to be polite, he really shouldn't assume I'm a)married, or b)if I were married I would take my husband's name. He also called me Mrs. Paterno once, which was ridiculous. After all this, I found that every single long-term prescription that I have taken (nose spray, etc.) falls under the $30 co-pay and not the $10 one. I also found out that I should order my drugs online through the mail-in pharmacy, because it's cheaper.

After the whole ordeal, I still never got the information I was looking for. I'm trying to figure out if IUDs are covered by insurance, and nowhere could I find this information. Sigh...

The Horror!

Sarah Jessica Parker wore a dress to the Sex and the City premiere that had been worn before. The horror! Now, I understand that it's kind of annoying, but no one was wearing the dress that night. Her response: But what they did was so short-sighted. It's just unethical and disappointing that they would allow the dress to be worn again. Unethical? Really? No. Annoying, yes. Unethical, not so much. Apparently she had asked if it had been worn before and the designer didn't explicitly say yes, but still. In the grand scheme of things, much worse has happened.

An Open Letter

Dear Adrian Grenier,
You are SO FUCKING HOT! I think you are hotter than William Tell, Hottie McHottHott. So please, for the love of God, SHAVE YOUR FUCKING BEARD! It's fugly as hell. Go back to being the hottie you are and have always been.
kthxbye.
PS-Drive Me Crazy is kind of fabulous.

In case you were wondering, Bring it On: All or Nothing is not a good movie. I watched it the other night, and it was horrible. That's one of the problems with Netflix. I'll put anything in my queue, just because I can. Currently I have Hypercube. Coming is She's the Man. Quality films, I know.

Right now I'm listening to my Jimmy Eat World collection. I'll go to sleep before I finish it (I have a total of 3.7 hours on my computer), but I haven't done that in a while. I love them. Some of it is just so sexy. There's angst, anger, sex, happiness. Ok. Emo (although the new stuff is less emo). I also listened to all of my Something Corporate earlier. I was wallowing. I always have iTunes on shuffle, so that I don't have to listen to albums in order. I think that makes it better.

Last night my room was so cold so tonight I'm wearing flannel. And now to bed.