Like everyone else, I got a million links to the article at The Chive and even started a serious post about it before it was revealed as a fake, which I noted here.
In the serious story I was writing, I refused to use the word ‘girl’, as a I think a young professional person of the female gender should be referred to as a ‘woman’. I was dismayed about the treatment of her by a boss who treated her in a sexist and demeaning fashion, which struck a personal nerve with me as I have a 22 year old niece who has just started her professional career and had told us that even as she tried to work in volunteer groups through college she constantly dealt with being treated like a HPOA.
So the next day the story is a hoax, everyone has a nice chuckle, the site enjoys the uptick in traffic and flow of hit-based cash and will likely see a nice overall increase in viewership for some time to come. Most blogs and web forums had some comments about the article and then moved on.
But is it REALLY over? Just this morning at a video game web forum I visit daily I checked the ‘unread threads’ and the ‘Girl Quits Job’ thread had popped back up to the top. The reason? A debate amongst some folks about whether or not she really is ‘hot’. Oh boy, welcome to the internet!
So I browsed the pages of the thread, and then looked on a couple of other sites, and found that a common thread – a seeming large number of anonymous, likely young and male, commentators were discussing her various physical attributes, rating her on a numerical scale, and so on.
Here is a sample:
– I’d tap that. But don’t tell her that.
– I’d pay her legal fees for her office sexual harassment lawsuit. If you know what I mean.
– She’s still hawt though.
– where I live she isnt even a 6… but that’s also why I live where I live.
– I put on my old reading glasses and all of a sudden I got a woody! She’s actually really f’n hot!
– Is she SURE he was talking about her? If she’s a hot piece of ass his standards are pretty ****ing low. She’s not ugly or anything, but if are a broker of, well, anything, and have a decent enough job to have an assistant, I’m pretty sure you can do WAY better than that without much effort.
– Absolutely nothing ironic about using the word “girl” to describe a woman who quits a job due to sexism.
– And I bet that hot tomato makes a mean stack of flapjacks!!!
– She’s a hot looking broad though, I wish I had a dame like that.
… and so on. That is across five different sites with a variety of interests across gaming, technology, and other general interests.
And he thing that saddened me the most – nearly ALL of them were from BEFORE this was known to be a hoax! Yes, that’s right – when confronted with a mildly amusing but supposedly pointed tale of someone who was treated badly and regarded as a piece of meat, the enlightened young men who dominate these discussion forums headed straight for the most important subject: ‘d’ya think she’s hawt’?
Every time I think we have made progress as a society, like moving to a supposed ‘post racial world’ (whatever THAT means) I am beaten over the head by small minded remarks by folks like the ones above who remind me that in many ways we haven’t come a long way baby!
So what did you think when you saw the article the first time? Did the use of ‘girl’ bother you as it did me? Did you also notice the many ‘she is hawt’ comments on the sites that linked to the article?