Isis Casalduc, a Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2002 turned indie hacker
getmakerlog.com
getmakerlog.com
PR? I mean San Francisco evokes the thought of people's image of Silicon Valley (perhaps more so than the vast homeless situation and the vast economic divide that actually afflicts it) way more than if you say Mountain View, or Palo Alto for most people not in tech or in California for that matter. And quite frankly that's who this story appeals to: non-tech people.
I've seen plenty of very attractive woman (of all races) who joined SCCA sanctioned racing events via their school's Engineering program with a bunch of nerdy t-shirts. I heard one yell 'Leeroooooooooy Jenkins' in the pits at an autocross/drifting event back in 2005!
I also used to go to the 24-hour marathon Hackathons at CU Boulder and saw the same thing. Lots of them were from out state and country teams, too.
After 2013 or so the Bitcoin 'Blockchain' Industry got inundated by finance and bank brain-drains and it wasn't uncommon to see very attractive woman from the banking Industry get in the space.
How much they actually knew of the underlying tech, rather than some tired line about 'disrupting the financial products Industry' is another matter, but to be fair that's the case with most males, too. And these weren't just booth babes handing out schwag, but were actual employees. I still remember turning down the lone programmer at her booth handing me a 21 shirt because she couldn't/wouldn't tell me what tech they were working on at the Bitcoin Job Faire in Sunnyvale in 2015. I saw her later after Blaji's 'BUIDL' talk after the hackathon and we had a laugh about it.
But this really a fluff non-story, but welcomed given the depressing amount of news this year so far, and while I'm not saying tech is a 50/50 equal ratio of male-female. I'm not really buying the narrative of this being some unicorn either. I guess the notable thing being she still spent most of her Life, and likely lots of her family's money, in that pageant circuit and can now try and make it back programming?
It's 2020. There are now lots of attractive women who are geeky and nerdy. Just look at the cosplay industry. Or, ahem, Twitch.
It's not the 90s or early 2000s anymore. There's nothing exceptional or noteworthy about a beauty queen or lingerie model or whoever who likes anime, or board games, or manga, or programming, or gaming on a desktop.
People (of both genders) used to be looked down on for liking these things, but that hasn't been the case for over a decade. They're cool now.
Norms and culture are certainly shifting but there still exists a lot of prejudice against nerd culture AND gatekeeping within nerd culture.
Anecdotally I know a few women who have switched into tech in the last few years. They all talk about how they never even knew it was a viable path for someone like them. (And "someone like them" means "normal" young woman.)
Speaking as a woman who most would consider conventionally-attractive, I really think most of that is less about prejudice against nerd culture and more about what happens when more women become more visible and vocal in tech. It’s not as if suddenly, “beauty queens” started to study computer science or get interested in engineering, there have always been beautiful women who work in tech. It’s that when there is more visibility — and this is true for people of color too — that can five individuals who don’t fit the stereotype the confidence to join in.
We are not on the same page here. You think "nerd culture" is still distinct from "normal culture". I disagree with you. It is no longer distinct. It has been normalized and absorbed. This is a good thing.
>gatekeeping within nerd culture
See above.
It’s especially abused to describe pretty girls, since many guys figured out that calling a girl nerdy or geeky increases their chances of getting in her pants.
At this point I'm not even sure if it's an American thing (ugly nerds vs popular cheerleaders) or just plain sexist (a woman can't be both attractive and smart).