MY ATOMS DO NOT SLEEP AROUND
this morning i was looking around the web on technorati, and i found this post by gia, commenting on my presence at LIFT.
it made me really sad to see a fellow woman, ripping another woman down, and a beautiful one at that. i commented on her blog like this (i hope it is ok and that i dont sound like i am attacking her. she never met me, doesnt know me, and maybe that's why thinks i am just a pr marketing doll). i also always wonder (thank gosh i went to blog her and took the flaming class) if one should just quietly not respond, and pretend it's not there, or if one should respond? i responded like this:
i guess the first thing i would like to offer to the conversation is that, it's pretty typical reaction among women, and it's sad to see women ripping other women down and using words like WHORE and more. i think those words could be cleansed from the world. they do women no justice. because i am a model, people seem to think i am just a pretty face and non technical or a product of marketing. what can i do? until you meet me in person, you may never know who i am.
second, i think what fascinates people about me is that i am a model, therefore i have the steriotype of being the most unintelligent in the world--and the fact that i learned to make my own webpage, wrote the html myself, then moved to javascript, and then embraced actionscript in flash which has lead me now to create applications in flash lite, is what fascinates people. i learned it by myself and was motivated to learn it and now want to show other women how to do it--because it's not rocket science. that's my whole gig: if i can do it, anyone can do it!
when robert cringly interviewed me on nerdtv it is because of the innovation i have created on the mobile internet. when i started working on the mobile internet it was still called wap, and nokia corporation had never seen anyone do the type of things i had been doing. i needed to work with a large scale coropration because there were things i could never understand in the white papers (like that there is a bug in the 6600 browser that doesnt display the first image of a xhtml page). i have just been named forum nokia champion (out of 2 million people, and they never saw a picture of me first)
someone once told me that a geek was someone with a currious mind, who took things apart and put them back together in innovative ways. i do that with almost everything, but mostly now i concentrate on my phone because i believe that it is the bridge between women and technology. the new market channel offers the possibility for women to compete in the coming market and be heard. i hope that we can emerge out of this typical sex object image that STUFF magazine, and the fashion industry portray women as.
i guess the last thing that fascinates people about me IS that i am a model and that i decieded to speak out and to use my voice, my image, and my visibility to try to encourage other women to embrace technology--on whatever small level i embrace it. my hope is that when girls see my photo in a magazine or on a billboard it will mean something beyond just what my hair looks like--maybe some girls will think, hey tech IS cool. anina made her own website, she has a blog, she creates in flash lite...maybe i can to!
in my 360fashion project i searched out other strong women icons such as iris brosch, diane pernet, and viviane blassel, who were totally non technical, and i taught them how to maintain their blog, work with the full functionality of the phone, in hopes that they too would influence women around them to break the typical steriotype saying that women over 18 cant do technology.
i guess when you say, where are the women who do tech? well, they are obviously not standing up, submitting themselves to conferences, using the press, contacts and their notoriety to speak out, and not pursuing any type of media coverage.
and by the way, there were two other women next to me on the podium. why did you not tear them down too? they were both very beautiful physically.
are you going to blogher conference?
the other thing is that in my industry there are a lot of women who are ceo of their own company, who use technical programs to create their designs, maintain their business, etc, and do not consider themselves technical. i think we have to break these steriotypes down and help all women everywhere feel empowered and good about what they are doing, even if what they are doing is small compared to what you do technically. it's about supporting women in what they do, not tearing them down. i talked about that at LIFT.
every woman stand up everywhere and show yourselves for the beauty that you are. because true beauty is more than skin deep. you can meet very beautiful girls who have anger, fear, jealousy, and hatred in their heart (generally because somewhere they have been hurt) and these things make them appear ugly. every word you speak or finger you point points 3 back at yourself.
i was hoping to break those steriotypes that say models are only beautiful and not intelligent. i know a lot of young girls who are thrown into the jungle of modeling and have to navigate so much business at a very young age (manage agents, not get ripped off in accounting, manage clients, pr people, photographers, etc). many of them are my heros, but they probably would not live up to your standards.
i am sorry that you do not feel my visibilty and influence as a thumbs up for women.
what languages do your children program in? will your girls be following in your footsteps and coding?
