Danica McKellar (the actress who played Winnie in that show The Wonder Years that many of you might remember) has been working to try to encourage young girls to go more for “Cute and Smart”, as opposed to “Cute and Dumb”. Bottom line: Less Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton, and more…. well, Danica. (I’m sure there are other Tinseltown examples here… can I have some help?).
Danica sets an excellent example of why the two (being considered attractive on the one hand, and smart on the other) are not mutually exclusive, while not suffering from the “geek” or “nerd” label that is attached by the entertainment industry to certain groups of people who enjoy using their brains a lot. She trained as a mathematician, in fact, doing her undergraduate work at UCLA so well that she did rather good published research work (NPR piece here Update: It is actually more of a theoretical physics problem, it appears.). This is from someone who struggled with the subject in sixth grade. Why is she in the news? She’s written a new book “Math Doesn’t Suck”, the aim being to encourage girls to avoid the (social) barriers to getting into mathematics. Excellent title. (I wonder if they’ll change it to “Maths Doesn’t Suck” if they publish it in Britain? “Suck” British kids have adopted from the USA cultural juggernaut, but “Math”? Not yet.)
Actually, looking at her website, I see that the full title appears to be “Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail”, which is more of a mouthful, a bit less zippy, but oh well. It’s all very Clueless, in a good way. Here’s a link to the book’s site, and it is due out tomorrow.
There’s an article1 on her recent Newsweek quote at CNN, from which I grabbed this:
“When girls see the antics of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, they think that being fun and glamorous also means being dumb and irresponsible,” the 32-year-old McKellar told Newsweek for editions to hit newsstands Monday.
“But I want to show them that being smart is cool,” she said. “Being good at math is cool. And not only that, it can help them get what they want out of life.”
but you should go and read the whole thing, by clicking here. [Update: Better article here by Corey Binns in Good Magazine. Extract:
"The book hones in on middle school’s trickiest points-––like fractions, ratios, and percentages—and presents them in a style that’s appropriate for the cool kids’ lunch table. Figure out your “type†in boys and you’ll understand greatest common factors. All of those iced lattes celebrities drink make multiplying fractions tasty. Plus, savvy shopping requires killer decimal skills."
]
Go Danica!
In other news, I learned2 that particle physicist Lisa Randall (author of the popular book with the curious title “Warped Passages”) appears in Vogue this month. Lisa Randall is also a member of the Aspen Center for Physics, by the way. She’s given a number of well received public lectures on particle physics here in Aspen in recent years, as well as coming just to do physics research. In fact, I saw her here the other day, but there was no time to chat – perhaps she was off to sign copies of the magazine or something.
Well, this will give me an excuse to go into a magazine shop and look through Vogue to see what the article says (I can find nothing online). The last time I had a good excuse to do this was last year3 when -bizarrely- the Brompton (and a rather fetching (and expensive) travelling trunk for it by French chic luggage maker Pinel & Pinel4) was featured in a short piece on hip must-have items. Go figure. As proof, I’ll put a picture I took of it at the time to the right (no disrespect to Lisa, of course) and you can even read the article if you click on it for a closeup. (The German case I recently got for my Brompton is not as as chic as the French Pinel & Pinel design, but is still aesthetically pleasing to me, and I bet it’ll last longer.)
-cvj
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- Spotted at Diary of a Black Mathematician. [return]
- Spotted at Life as a Physicist. [return]
- Thanks Jean Chuman! [return]
- Oh!! I love the front page of their website!! [return]
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Some Related Asymptotia Posts (not exhaustive):
Thanks John.
I’m actually not in any need to see or own the article for myself. After all, I know pretty well who Lisa is and what she does for a living already. I just wanted to point people who were not in the field to it in case they wanted to see it.
Yes, a lot of physicists like rock-climbing. Lisa is actually said to be be a very good and adventurous climber. The boyfriend and his also climbing is irrelevant to this part…. she’s been rock-climbing at a serious level for many years. You’ll have to ask her (or other climbers) for more information about their personal take on why they like it, since I have no first hand experience.
Cheers!
-cvj
Clifford, I wonder if you are aware of what you and I would undoubtedly consider to be the high point of Danica McKellar’s acting career:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0517716
Cheers,
M
Hi Mark,
Thanks! No I did not know about that! Excellent find. That is indeed the high point, at least so far.
Cheers!
-cvj
Well 50 – John Branch really rubbed me the wrong way!
>Three, I was pleased with some of the things I learned about Randall in
>that article. For instance, that she has a boyfriend who’s a rock
>climber.
What about _her_? Sheesh…
A couple of decades ago my highschool sweetheart was a rockclimber, and I was always hanging around (photography, actually). Is that odd too?
>(If anyone can point me to further reports on that intersection, i.e.,
>of physics and challenging hobbies, I’d be thankful.)
There seems to be an established link between musicians and scientists, but there are plenty of cases of scientists who have challenging hobbies, and some are women too.
Some time ago there was a British female mathematician (physicist?) interviewed by BBC (Vega Trust?) who engaged in fencing ? (or another medieval sport).. I can’t remember, nor find in my old messages, but the info came via cosmicvariance (perhaps Clifford will remember). She impressed the hell out of me, and that video got wide airplay.
Amara
P.S. I like visiting volcanoes (hopefully when they are erupting).
I apologize. That was knee-jerk reaction, probably based on seeing too many instances of a woman’s worth being measured by the value of her partner/boyfriend/spouse. Even if you were just making a query as to Lisa Randall’s hobbies, John, it might be better not to anchor your query to her boyfriend. The article was about her, after all.
In the future, I would like to see, has scientists excelling in more than one thing, and in this future, such an event would not be considered remarkable, just normal. In this future I would like to see are equal numbers of women excelling in more than one thing, and that would be considered normal too.
The British program that I was trying to remember is documentary by Vega Trust about Emma King, a mathematician-cosmologist. I was impressed by her because she is not only a gifted mathematician, she is dyslexic, and in her hobbies: she plays harp, performs in theatre productions and engages in live role-playing including Kung Fu and Sword fighting.