I dress well. I enjoy dressing well. I wake up early before I set forth into the world to pick out the perfect outfit and to allow time for that perfect winged eyeliner and a Marilyn lip. I use fashion to express myself as an artist, and as an innovator. My personal voice that shines through in my collection of clothing lets me cling to and preserve the creative side of myself.
Alternatively, I also love science. I love putting together the pieces of the known universe to understand how things work, how humans tick. Science is just one giant puzzle, a puzzle that humankind will probably never finish in our generations on this Earth… and I cannot wait to be a key player in the grand scheme of it.
However, being a woman in science is never easy, and being a “feminine” woman in science can be an incredible nightmare. Somehow in our modern society we still think that femininity does not belong in the scientific world. We impose stereotypes on women, that if she can rock a red lip and heels that she is inherently stupider than others.
I have gone years of my life being misunderstood by colleagues and complete strangers who have labeled me as a dumb blonde. Sometimes the look of shock on their faces when I begin to explain my studies in microbiology and pathology satisfies me, but more often than not I find myself incredibly frustrated that my intelligence is a grand surprise to people. The fact is, you don’t know me and you don’t know women.
Within my first week of classes this semester I was approached by several different men with similar things to say “I didn’t know hot girls like you could be in a medical degree”, “Doesn’t Med school seem a little hard for you?”, and the all-powerful “Do you want to study my anatomy?”
Yes, I am a woman who perfectly shapes her eyebrows before going to class, and I am also the woman getting A’s on all her assignments and killing her presentation on Yersinia Pestis. I am a woman that comfortably walks in four inch heels, and I am also the woman who knows what Yersinia Pestis is. Feeling beautiful is feeling smart.
The true feminist ideal is that a woman can do anything she’s comfortable with, and can also be anything she wants without fear of being the honorary “outcast.”
We are not your mothers, your sisters, or your daughters. We are your physicians, your dentists, your professors, your police officers, your lawyers, your CEO’s, your graphic designers, your authors, your engineers… and we are looking fresh as hell.
