Just because you wear lipstick doesn't mean you don't wear brains

So NEWSWEEK decided to publish another analysis of women in technology.  Like its cousin, THE NEW YORK TIMES, the editors saw fit to print the article in the culture section and, surprise, give it a sexual slant.  Of course these days, maybe they don't even recognize a sexual slant when they write one.

Some say we should be happy that they're writing anything at all.  Not me.

Here's the deal.  It's time to pursue some new themes with this women in technology thing.

We are all Bill's and Sergei's and Steve's children.  We come in all shapes, sizes, colors and styles.*  Some of us are engineers, some scientists, some anthropologists, some business types.  If you really are searching for new material, all you have to do is read some blogs by tech women.  If you know how to use a search engine, you can find them.  Do your jobs, journalists.  Believe it or not, some of us go to work and it's not about uncovering the sexual side of a pixel.

And journalists, a good number of men in technology are often the worst enemy of greeting and welcoming anyone new -- not just women -- to the table.  You are not required to follow their lead.  I mean, some are suspicious of anyone in tech who wears clean clothes and combs their hair.

So imagine what happens when these guys encounter someone -- most likely a woman -- who might go beyond hygiene, which is enough, in my book, to express herself via color, fashion or cosmetics.

Not only are some of these guys threatened by someone they didn't anoint for membership to their club, they are afraid of the combination of beautification and brains.  Because it proves it can be done.

Then there are those uber narcissist tech males who believe that any woman who is interested in color, fashion and cosmetics must be a hussy who has her eyes on them.  Because the only way they can compute women is to defeminize them or sexualize them on their terms.

BULLETIN TO TECH MALES:  It's not all about you.  Your hormones.  Your drives, hard or otherwise. 

Well, someone had to say it.  NEWSWEEK sure isn't. 

And for you young women journalists, including the ones who wrote this article, remember that there was much more to the sexual revolution than the ability to assign a sexual component to everything.

*I forgot smells.