What do you think?

[MikeOxardAndWellard]

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=555212714499744&set=a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf

What do you make of this? Picture of a woman and a caption 'intelligence is sexy, don't play stupid'.

It makes me want to inform the well meaning poster that not everything is about his penis. Also, I'd quite like to punch him the face, just to emphasize the point.

The poster is a woman.

I wonder who is defining sexy & who is defining intelligent.

And I would have taken it far too seriously when I was 19 and more worried about whether I was attractive.

Any more comments, MikeOxardAndWellard?

From here, it looks like you have a teeny bit of prejudice.

Yes it does, I think maybe I am just bitter oversensitive from unfortunate experience. I must remember that some things are just stupid and crap, without being aimed at insulting women!

As ecclesvet says, the poster is a woman. I think she's just trying to support women in science to be confident in showing their intelligence. I agree you have a point that it plays totally into the women are here to be sexy meme, but I imagine she was just tired of hearing things about women playing down their intelligence in order to feel attractive to men and was trying to counter that.

If it makes you feel better she also posts stuff like this:
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=552953484725667

So apparently it's not about any naughty parts and nobody needs to be punched in the face.

intelligence is sexy -prof Brian Cox Mmmmm

but that's not a reason to be intelligent.

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=552953484725667

Nice try but the pic is factually incorrect. The woman in the pic did not discover what the sun was made of, Henry Norris Russell did.

I always find the lovely Brian a bit shiny, I worry that I might be able to see my reflection in his face and that would be off-putting.

According to Wikipedia, When Payne's dissertation was reviewed, astronomer Henry Norris Russell dissuaded her from concluding that the composition of the Sun is different from that of the Earth, contradicting the accepted wisdom at the time. However, he changed his mind four years later after deriving the same result by different means. After Payne was proven correct, Russell was often given the credit, although he himself acknowledged her work in his paper

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin#Doctorate

I'd stop posting if I were you, Join-you keep proving the points that you are arguing against.

I do see what you mean, although I think the picture is well intentioned. It's the constant linking of intelligence to sexiness. Sexiness should really come into it, intelligence is a worthy attribute in its own right.

Russell disuaded Payne from including her findings in her disertation, because they were at odds with widely held beliefs. When he later discovered the same through different means he published and acknowledged Paynes prior work in his paper.

Sorry that last post is a bit out of context! It's in response to JoinLogin.

x-post CoalDust

Thanks EG and CDW, very interesting.