"Girly" Isn't A Derogatory Word

After reading this blog post at xkdc, sent to me by Jeff--which talks a little bit about perceived gender behavior verses actual gender behavior, as relates to naming colors--I realized that I did a thing at work today that would, along with differentiating between regular and hot pink, be deemed "girly" by some.

That was a darn long sentence, by the way. Run-on? Possibly.  "Science writer" or no, history teachers used to blast me on those.  But I digress.

Actually, I have one more comment to make about that blog post.

Quote:

Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women:

1. Dusty Teal
2. Blush Pink
3. Dusty Lavender
4. Butter Yellow
5. Dusky Rose

Okay, pretty flowery, certainly.  Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe.  Well, let’s take a look at the other list.
Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men:

1. Penis
2. Gay
3. WTF
4. Dunno
5. Baige

 After working with middle schoolers in several venues, I can personally attest that the difference between boys and girls in eigth grade is the tendency of girls to give things flowery names and descriptions, and the tendency of boys is to call things "gay" as if they'd said something incredibly profound.

So, without that in mind, but reminded of it when I'd finished, I made a diagram for work today. I boxed in my page title and section titles in a neat sort of way, and drew decorative borders around some concept and solid borders around others, to differentiate them, and then I went back and colored in the whole thing to make it especially...pretty.

 

When I do physics, I can't use lined paper.  Can't, the lines are way too restrictive.  When I do physics, I re-write things a few times as I learn to make things neater, I often diagram concepts and work problems in obsessively neat and visible steps, and I regularly label and box things.  And yeah, sometimes I use different borders, to signify varying levels of sub-relation in a completed and highly visual scheme that makes sense to me but mostly just makes me feel like the whole thing is more complete.

I wouldn't call that "girly" per say, so much as creative thought organizing. The physicists, male and female, that I know, tend to fall into two categories:  OCD with a capital O about neatness, or else a complete organizational train-wreck.  Both methods highlight equally important aspects of getting the work done:  keeping track to avoid careless mistakes and to see everything linked and caregorized, and yet also focusing simply on the thing at hand without being destracting by anything else, until you get where you need to be.  So organization is no stranger to the male physics world.

But even the OCD organized ones don't do the boxes and the colors and the sort of visual tie-together that I do.  Although, interstingly, actually putting color on the page doesn't matter that much, because my brain sees color there, certain colors associated with certain things, even when there is none.  And what I do helps me.  There was a time when I thought anything remotely girly was an anathema to rid myself of, there was a time when I associated "feminine" with "inferior."

It's great that I outgrew that.  Now I recognize my potentially "girly" methods as involving my right brain in an otherwise rather left-brained process, something that may be more easy and desirable for women who supposedly have more connections between right brain and left brain than men.  If you believe that stuff.  Gender, biology, nature, nurture, all that stuff, is really complicated, and I'm just talking about borders on a quantum mechanics diagram.