I won't even go into what else has been happening in the past week, but two notable things occurred in the world of science.
Firstly a Cern physicist, Alessandro Strumia – who really looks young enough to know better – was suspended for making the deliberately provocative claim that "physics was
invented and built by men”, that "men prefer working with things and women
prefer working with people" and that there is "a difference even in
children before any social influence" can take place.
The lofty heights of physics, he implies, are not for women.
Secondly, in one of those serendipitous coincidences,
the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to a woman for the first time in 55 years. Canadian physicist Donna Strickland is only the third woman winner of the
award, along with Marie Curie, who won in 1903 and of whom presumably even
Professor Strumia may have heard – and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, a theoretical physicist who was awarded
the prize in 1963 for proposing the
nuclear shell model of the
atomic nucleus.
Let me
show you something.
I’ve been
saving this horror up for some time. It’s an educational ‘Wonder Book’ for children,
published in the USA in 1959 with the laudable intention of reducing the childhood terror of going
to the dentist. It’s full of cosy, colourful pictures and there is a total lack
of any drama. As a nine-year old kid who once leaped out of a car to avoid a visit to the
dentist, hid from my parents in bushes in a park and subsequently caught the
bus home on my own, I can appreciate this aim… but let us follow Kathy and
Clifford on their adventure.
On page
one, Clifford – who looks about six – loses a front tooth. ‘Everyone, including
Clifford, laughed.’ This is only a baby tooth, but it prompts Daddy to tell
Clifford he should put the tooth under his pillow, ‘and maybe there will be a
present there in the morning’. (There will be a shiny new dime, though no
mention of anything frivolous like tooth fairies). And Mommy remembers, ‘It’s
time we saw Dr Moyers to have Clifford’s teeth checked. It would be a good idea
to have Kathy’s teeth checked too.’ Notice how Kathy is an afterthought and everyone is looking at Clifford. Everyone looks at Clifford on the cover illustration too. And below, Kathy looks on as Clifford discovers his dime...
A week
later, the children and Mommy arrive at the dentist’s. “Who is this pretty
little girl?’ asks dental assistant Miss Turner. “This is my daughter Kathy,”
says Mommy. “She is three years old and Dr Moyers is going to examine her teeth
too.” Even though Kathy is for once the subject, in the picture Clifford is still the focus of attention. His hand is out, and since he is speaking to Miss Turner, it appears very much as though she is looking at him while Kathy stares up, dumb.
Miss Turner wears no glasses to greet
the children, but she has to put them on for work, no matter whether close-up or distant –
because wearing glasses makes a woman look serious. Here she is in one of only three pictures in the book in which Kathy is the focus. Even then it's not entirely clear whether she's looking at Kathy, or her notes.
Clifford
is the first to go in. He sees ‘a bright sparkling room with all kinds of
wonderful machines.’ American hero Dr Moyers smiles and shakes hands with
Clifford in a man-to-man fashion. ‘Sit down in the chair,’ he says, ‘and I’ll
give you a ride.’ Clifford climbs into the chair with a giggle, ‘pretending
that he was about to blast off in a space ship.’
In the
next few pages, Dr Moyers carefully explains to Clifford everything he is
doing. He finds a small cavity. Then he
asks Miss Turner to take an X-ray or six, finds a second cavity and decides
to remove two more baby teeth to allow Clifford’s adult teeth to grow straight.
He gives Clifford advice on dental hygiene. Miss Turner mixes the dental
cement. In the left-hand picture, below, the 'space' references are clear. The X-ray pictures look like an antenna while Clifford is the astronaut in his chair.
Pretty soon Clifford has two more teeth in his chubby little hand. He looks
thrilled. Two more shiny dimes!
Now it’s
Kathy’s turn. Although she’s only three, Dr Moyers still takes X-rays of her
teeth, but they are perfect (at three years old you’d hope so), so all he needs
to do is polish them.
Kathy doesn’t fantasise about space ships or notice shiny
machinery, but she does wish she had a ‘toothbrush with a motor’ at home. Dr
Moyers provides more good advice on daily dental hygiene (‘Brush your teeth in
the morning, then right after meals and before you go to sleep’) and the
children trot off, happy to have been given new toothbrushes and medals ‘for
being good patients.’ Notice how the artist makes Clifford look straight at the reader with a cheerful gappy grin. Kathy admires her good conduct badge with sweet expression and lowered eyes.
Though
this book does a good job of carefully explaining dental procedures to children,
it is very much of its time. The thing that really gets me, though - and the reason I feel this book is pernicious - comes on the last page
where we see the children snuggled up in bed after their adventurous day, Clifford in the foreground, of course. “That
night,” the story continues:
That night, Kathy dreamed she was
a dental assistant. She helped with the X-rays and developed the pictures. She
mixed cement and silver for the fillings. She got the instruments ready for the
Doctor.
"She got the instruments ready for the Doctor." This is a
book in which the little boy is older, the little girl younger. The boy sees
exciting shiny machinery and imagines himself a spaceman. The little girl imagines herself a dental assistant. The boy has to be brave, have teeth drilled and extracted, is rewarded with dimes. The little girl
follows in her brother’s footsteps and nothing particular interesting happens to her. The insidious, subliminal message would have sunk into the perceptions of children of both sexes, manipulating, and in the case of girls limiting, their expectations.
The book is nearly sixty years old. I feel sure
the people who put it together felt fine about suggesting ‘dental
assistant’ instead of ‘dentist’ as a possible career for a girl, even though women had been getting medical degrees in the States for 110 years already, ever since Elizabeth Blackwell's in 1849. They didn't see that. It wasn't relevant. Even on the cover, the male Doctor is in the
foreground, his attractive female assistant remains in the background, smiling and supportive. This
was the kind of myopic cultural fog in which most women over the age of fifty
grew up and its effects are quite clearly still with us. The events of this week along with many another - just yesterday I heard a Conservative Party donor, Lord Ashcroft, speak unthinkingly of 'the voter and his family' - show how far we still have to travel. For it's certain that Lord Ashcroft is not alone in thinking of a voter as a man. A man and his vote, a man and his family.
