women's history month

I am sitting here in office hours and before this I was staring at my reflection in the mirror and I was struck by how I don't look like a professor. I mean, when I think of a professor, I think of someone wearing a tweed suit with suede elbow patches in an imposing leather chair. But I'm wearing jeans, sneakers and a lularoe shirt. Partly because I live in California, and I don't think tweed is something that gets worn here ever due to the weather being so nice. But partly because the dress code here at CSUN isn't a thing. Some people dress like they just rolled out of a dumpster. Which is fine by me. 

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Pinterest thinks my fashion style is Dark Academia, which I didn't even know was a thing. But it is kind of how I picture a professor dressing.

When I worked at Claremont, I did wear clothing that could be classified as Dark Academia, but it was certainly more colorful than this. I don't wear muted colors very often.

I'm thinking about Women's History Month and the contributions of women to academia and STEM fields. I'm thinking about why more women don't want to enter academia or if they do, sometimes how they get pushed out. I'm thinking about my own biases and concepts of what a professor should look like and how it causes me to feel some cognitive dissonance when I AM a professor but my reflection in the mirror doesn't look like what I think a professor SHOULD look like. It's a mind trip!

I'm thinking of classism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and wage gaps. I'm thinking of how teachers are expected to make teaching their vocation, excluding any possibility of having a life outside of work. How we are expected to work all the time, making it difficult to balance raising a family and maintaining friendships.

https://www.cta.org/about-us/history

Expectations of society: You may not dress in bright colors, dye your hair, or wear short skirts. You must clean the schoolhouse. You can't leave town. You can't go on dates or go downtown. You have to go to bed early. You can not have a spouse. Yeah. I've read that teachers were once highly paid, but then someone got the great idea to let women do it, and the reason was that women would do more work for less pay than men.

I'm not even sure what the point of this blog post is, but I know I watched the movie "Nyad" last night and it was so powerful. She was so determined and didn't accept that she wasn't strong or young enough to do something that had never been done before. And she was willing to fail hugely before succeeding even though society wasn't very supportive of sponsoring someone her age.

I just have to remember that I AM MAKING HISTORY right now. By existing as a woman in STEM. By wearing bright colors as a teacher. By providing an alternative to the pale male and stale professor tropes for the next generation, to possibly see themselves in acadmia. Like Diana Nyad, I'm doing it.