
Isis Casalduc, a Miss Universe Puerto Rico 2002 turned indie hacker - sergiomattei
https://getmakerlog.com/stories/from-miss-universe-to-indie-hacker-with-isis-casalduc
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fizwhiz
This is great! Though I'm not entirely sure why she's loitering around on the
Google MTV campus in those pictures captioned San Francisco :/

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Melting_Harps
> This is great! Though I'm not entirely sure why she's loitering around on
> the Google MTV campus in those pictures captioned San Francisco :/

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?

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cczizou
I love stories about people who got into tech along an uncommon path.

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xenihn
>I also happen to be quite geeky and nerdy. Which is probably something most
people don’t expect when they think of a beauty queen.

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.

~~~
skciva
I'd say its still exceptional and noteworthy. When you think "beauty queen" is
a word you associate with them "anime" or "programming?"

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.)

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cadence-
There aren’t that many beauty queens out there. So anything they do outside of
being a beauty queen will seem exceptional.

~~~
filmgirlcw
Exactly this. The number of exceptionally beautiful people (using whatever
standard of beauty your culture defines) is limited in nearly every field
except for acting. It’s just not common, regardless of industry.

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cadence-
I think words like “geeky” and “nerdy” lost their true meaning in the last
decade. It’s now more about image and fashion. Anybody who writes a simple
website is now called geeky or nerdy.

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.

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rurban
She was never Miss Universe. She won the national Puerto Rico Miss Universe
contest, and in the international Miss Universe competition she won two minor
prices. (most photogenic and best dress) She's also not that exceptionally
looking, guess her geekness shows.

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dvfjsdhgfv
> She's also not that exceptionally looking, guess her geekness shows.

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).

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rurban
Of course people can be both very attractive and very smart, but statistics.
Both are uncorrelated, and thereby having both properties is very rare.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
I agree, that's fair. But "her geekness shows" means something completely
different.

