

Actual words people say to a blonde woman studying engineering at MIT - jdmitch
http://qz.com/322045/im-a-blonde-woman-engineering-student-at-mit-heres-what-people-say-to-me/

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b6
Like the author, I hope people will get better at treating each new person
according to their particular situation. But lately I'm seeing people use
stories like this as evidence of the prevalence of sexism, racism, etc.

And it may very well be, I don't know for sure. But I think it could also be
explained just by noting that if you're way out of the ordinary, you're
probably going to have a lot of awkward interactions.

I lived in China for two years. Many times, locals made wrong assumptions
about me. I guess I could have been offended about it, but it seems to be a
fundamental part of our mental event loops to aggressively pattern match and
categorize as quickly as possible, so I couldn't really get mad at people for
doing it. I was/am way out of pattern, so I think some awkwardness is to be
expected. (Now, I fully concede that what the author describes -- people
initially not believing her explanations -- is one step worse. That really
sucks.)

Have you ever approached a stranger and asked them something without somehow
verifying beforehand that they would actually be able to hear you? Wouldn't it
have felt a bit awkward if they'd been deaf? Would the incident really mean
much?

I can imagine a hundred articles like this, e.g., "Actual words people say to
a 162cm professional basketball player", and the main thing we could take from
them is that people are on autopilot and you're in for trouble if there's
something significantly different about you from what people were expecting.

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dTal
Why does she assume that her hair color is at all relevant? It doesn't come up
in any of the dialogues. Take a look at what people actually say about her
appearance:

"So you’re like genius? But you seem so down to earth!" "After you complete
your degree, are you going into modeling?" "You don’t look like you go to
MIT." "You look good!" and "But you’re wearing a dress!?"

The most specific comment refers to her clothing. It's not really a large
enough sample to be sure, but it sounds more like people are responding to the
care she puts into her appearance. Google image search tells me that this is
indeed unusual for an MIT student.

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jdmitch
This is a follow-up post by the author:
[https://medium.com/@alicezielinski/afterword-mit-blonde-
engi...](https://medium.com/@alicezielinski/afterword-mit-blonde-engineer-
response-67dbd7d5fc2)

