I point this out from the sidelines in case any thoughtful devs reading this might want to reflect on their behavior. It wasn’t till I married one that I started to reevaluate mine.
Thanks for negating my childhood experiences, much appreciated.
It’s horrible in its own way. But women are judged for the rest of their lives, in exactly the ways this thread illustrates. When have you ever wondered if your body was the reason you did or didn’t get a job?
It’s one thing for image issues to impact your self esteem. It’s quite another for them to be the central focus of your life. The makeup industry is massive precisely because of this double standard.
If that negates a few of our childhood experiences, perhaps we should try to get comfortable with that. The fact that we think we’re special and that we have it just as bad is part of the problem.
I recommend asking some actual women how they feel about it. Feel free to link them to this subthread. But since you’re certain they’re imaginary, I imagine you’ve already done so and found it to be true, right?
This kind of attitude has no place in our industry, and it’ll be lovely when the social tides shift just a little bit more to filter it out. Imagine looking a black engineer straight in the eye and saying that it’s good they learned the lesson that people treat you differently based on your skin color, as if it’s a favor to them that we taught them that.
Excuse me? Men have their own flavor of stereotypical body images foisted upon them: Macho, six-packs, muscular arms, upside-down triangular back, etc.
For what it's worth though, men seem to care significantly less about body image than women do. Food for thought.
That might happen too, but not with the same frequency or casualness. Worse, men tend to refuse to believe it’s a problem, and file it in the nonsense bucket.
One of the primary roadblocks for women getting into tech is that they’re not encouraged to the same way men are. And once they do, they constantly worry if they’re being treated specially just because they’re a woman — and if they don’t, they wonder if they would’ve gotten in if they looked just a little bit prettier.
I’m relaying this from a woman who refuses to participate on HN (for so many reasons). Men seem to like this dynamic we’ve cultivated here. I liked it myself. But those of you who care about equality should take a hard look at our behavior and how we express ourselves.