I've always considered myself a bit of a nerdy girl. I mean that not in the "nerdy girls are the current 'It' thing as sex symbols" way, but in the "I was a socially awkward A student" sort of way. I was good at math and science (especially biology) as well as all my chosen languages. I read a lot, even if a lot of it was fiction. I played D&D with the guys frequently (religiously) in high school. In college, I was a little sister to the "nerd" fraternity (at its inception my freshman year, probably 80% of the brothers majored in the sciences, like engineering or physics). These are my people. I feel happy around nerds. I'm thrilled that pop culture has caught up to us and catered to us (and given Chris Hardwick fortune and fame), but I would be like this and with these people even if we were avoided by all the beautiful people as "weird." As a woman who wants to be part of the crowd with the smart kids, I understand how that wasn't always easy. Truly, it isn't easy now, but it's getting better than it was.
It's with this mindset that I and my insanely-smart BFF took her children (one of whom was her also insanely-smart whiz kid daughter) to see Hidden Figures today, to the very first showing on opening day. This is a story I wish I had known earlier in my life, that so many women worked as calculators for NASA in the early days. Every single image I'd seen before of the control rooms for launches and missions were filled with only men. This goes for photos of the actual missions and movies made about them since. I honestly had no idea so many women were employed by NASA back then. Granted, this movie reveals their earliest roles to be the mathematical equivalent of a typing pool, but still. They broke those molds and proved that they were every bit as good at math and computer programming as men. This story adds the extra complexity of the women who had to break through the color barrier as well as the gender barrier, and all that does is prove what phenomenal badasses they really were. I was so happy to be there with an eleven year old girl who needed this kind of role model. Go, youngling, follow this example, and excel in your STEM classes. Or what is it they call it now? STEAM? (Including arts finally?)
Today is the kind of day that makes me glad I raised strong daughters. I always believed they could do anything they wanted, whether in male or female dominated career fields. Daughter number one is especially aggressive in breaking down those gender barriers. When she was a teenager, she proved she could hold her own with co-ed soccer or playing football with the boys on school lunch breaks. She dared anyone to discriminate against her academically, because she was ready for that fight, and she was determined to win it. As a toddler she bristled against the notion of "being a little lady," and as an adult she will not back down in the face of the good-old-boy network of her chosen field of archaeology. Daughter number two is equally confident in her abilities to overcome gender bias, even if she goes about it less blatantly. (She also brags that she's a man who does manly things, so that no one underestimates her strength and toughness.) These tough, smart chicks are my gift to the future. Best thing I ever did for you. You're welcome.
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