On Risking My 4.0 GPA to Fight Sexism in Class(medium.com) |
On Risking My 4.0 GPA to Fight Sexism in Class(medium.com) |
I guess it’s different for those of us who voiced our issue with the offending academic privately first.
The article says she spent many years working in a very similar role: “[She] took a job working as a Kodak model. She became one of the company’s ‘Shirleys’—beautiful women whose images were used to calibrate color film. (The moniker comes from the first woman to hold the position, Shirley Page.)”.
“When I asked her if she had heard anything about the recent controversy around her image, she seemed alarmed at the thought that she could have a part in hurting or discouraging young women. I sent her some articles about the Lenna and later gave her a call to see what she made of them.”
“Lena doesn’t harbor any resentment toward Sawchuk and his imitators for how they appropriated her image; the only note of regret she expressed was that she wasn’t better compensated. In her view, the photograph is an immense accomplishment that just happened to take on a life of its own. ‘I’m really proud of that picture,’ she said.”
Disclaimer: I understand why this image has become a symbol that brings out strong emotions in some people, but I have little emotional comprehension of the actual issue because I rarely interact with anyone that would have cause to feel upset by it. I have met one playgirl in her sixties, at a thanksgiving, and she seemed very happy with her past from the little it came up. I do think how the rest of society is affected by images matters too, not just how the model feels.
She is also a consenting adult that posed for Playboy, so what? Power to her.
Am I problematic?
To be fair, there are better test images to use and it’s never really been appropriate to use a playboy centerfold image, however cropped it may be, for these purposes. There’s no technical reason this image is better than other test images.
Ignoring any modern 4th wave feminist argument, it was already crass, rude, and unprofessional.
'This scan became one of the most used images in computer history.[5] In a 1999 issue of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing "Lena" was used in three separate articles,[6] and the picture continued to appear in scientific journals throughout the beginning of the 21st century.[4] Lenna is so widely accepted in the image processing community that Forsén was a guest at the 50th annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) in 1997.[7] The use of the photo in electronic imaging has been described as "clearly one of the most important events in [its] history".[8] In 2015, Lena Forsén was also guest of honor at the banquet of IEEE ICIP 2015.[9] After delivering a speech, she chaired the best paper award ceremony.
To explain Lenna's popularity, David C. Munson, editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, noted that it was a good test image because of its detail, flat regions, shading, and texture. However, he also noted that its popularity was largely because an image of an attractive woman appealed to the males in a male-dominated field.[10]'
Yes, men chose the image because Lena was attractive, but that does not mean they "objectified" her.
Would a crop of a well-known topless photo be appropriate for hanging in, for example, a workplace restroom, break room, office, or cubicle?