"Intelligence has never been this hunky: Paul Graham, the handsome, hyperrich, nerdy Chief Architect of Hacker News at Y-Combinator (among other things). His Y-Ness was blogging on his website, giving his insightful take on founding a startup, followed by the usual round of HN comments. He's really the boy of the millenium."
The only thing unusual about it is the fact that Mayer is in tech where I think the cultural stereotype would be that there are less sexy people because most jobs don't benefit from it or require it. However I've seen guys like Kevin Rose, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and Dennis Crowley regarded for various degrees of sex appeal.
Or take a negative example of this: Bill Gates for the entirety of his Microsoft career, was frequently regarded as looking nerdy, dressing badly (early days), looking unkempt, not combing his hair, all sorts of negative descriptives have been applied to him from the founding days forward. Do you think that was detrimental to his career? His start-up efforts? Do you think it kept him awake at night? Did it crush his self-esteem? Did it harm him as a professional? You could hardly read an article about him without them first describing him based on his nerd'ish looks. Gates was regarded as a 'boy wonder' for about the first 15 years of his career, thanks to his young appearance (despite being in his 30's).
The reality is, guys don't get upset when they're ogled for being sexy. It's a compliment. There's an intense double standard derived from the notion that women are not given equal opportunity and are treated in a sexist manner across the board.
On average men and women take sexual advances completely differently, and they take compliments about appearance very differently as well. If you compliment Elon Musk for being good looking, he's not going to think that detracts from his abilities, and nobody is going to care. If you do the same thing to Mayer, you'll create a firestorm; suddenly it's sexist and not being fair to her. Thus a double standard.
Take a bar poll some time about how men and women react to having their ass slapped by the opposite sex, see how those numbers roll out, and that'll tell you most of what you need to know about the difference between the sexes on this topic. Point being, men and women generally react very differently to the same input.
That should tell you all you need to know about the rest of his comment. I actually find his comment quite ironic.
I like that Musk will "not ... think that detracts", but Mayer is just figurehead for feminism. It's almost a textbook example of objectification.
Here's the thing: as a feminist, I fully agree that it is okay to "openly drool over" sexy people. It's important to recognize that the overwhelming majority of us are sexual beings and that sexuality is a significant factor in how we look at people.
The problem is when C-style languages are so pervasive that it's practically impossible to get a LISP in the door because all people see are the parentheses and not the actual value that the language adds on its own merits. That's changing these days, and people like Mayer can be acknowledged proudly on their capabilities as human beings. After all, C is just naturally closer to the operating system, and languages built on top of C are obviously faster. That will tell you all you need to know about the difference between the two language paradigms.
It's true that stereotypes can fail to completely prevent someone from succeeding if they're ambitious enough and determined enough. But that doesn't mean that Gates didn't take licks for it. Maybe he really didn't care. Maybe he did. Short of him actually coming out and saying so, it's hard to know. Maybe he lost a deal because he seemed too nerdy and the other person didn't tell him and there was no social infrastructure to help put the possibility under consideration. Maybe he had subordinates who couldn't stand to take orders from a nerd and ended up walking off when he could have used their help.
We can't tell, because there hasn't been enough scrutiny on the subject, and the amount of data available out of one person's career is meaningless. How many entrepreneurs make a pitch to VCs and get laughed out more because they didn't dress up than because their idea was terrible? It's hard to get that exact estimate. And of course it matters whether or not they dressed up. But why does it matter, and is the fact that it matters okay? Maybe that's a social justice fight we'll have to have in fifty years or five hundred years.
Imagine if you were her. You just spent some time preparing this and then spending an hour giving a speech to Stanford students. Meanwhile, all someone states about you is
> Intelligence has never been this adorable: Marissa Mayer, the sexy, hyperactive, geeky Vice-President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. Her Googliness was at Stanford University, giving her insightful take on creativity, followed by the usual Q&A. She's really the girl of the millenium.
The description is whole focused on her appearance and doesn't even go into the subject matter of her speech. Her entire speech that she devoted time into is summarily dismissed and turned into "Intelligence has never been this adorable."
But she describes herself as blind to gender (what is known as gender neutral) and believes in equality between men and women, which is actually the definition of feminism.
"Different strokes" and all that, right?
Oh, who am I kidding? "Political correctness uber alles"! :)