Ironically enough, one of the biggest stories right now is about fashion models being role models for young girls but not because they’re fashion models – it’s because they know how to code.
There has been a lot of talk in media and on social media lately about women and girls in technology. A lot of it has been negative. Pushing aside the “Gamergate” controversy and sexism in the tech industry for just a moment, let us look at the good things happening.
I’m an oddly big fan of fashion – which is weird considering some of the things I’ve written about in the past: what the entire fashion industry represents, and how the female image is depicted on that particular branch of the evergreen media tree.
Karlie Kloss, supermodel-turned-NYU student, launched a scholarship last week called Kode with Karlie for high school girls to go to the Flatiron Pre-College Academy’s introduction to software engineering course over the summer.
I find this to be a super cool situation. The transition from the Victoria’s Secret model she was to the tech role model she’s become has caught everyone’s attention in a good way. She went from a field where females are objectified to a field where they are underrepresented, and now she’s giving back.
The future of any organization lies in the hands of the youth who are interested in it. What better way to turn the focus of young girls to coding than to take a woman who females already want to be (though perhaps only subconsciously) and put her in a different light? And the fact that Kloss is actively making an effort to improve such an underrepresented field shows that she knows how to use her influential powers for good, so to speak.
Kloss is not the only one breaking the barriers between the worlds of tech and fashion.
Lyndsey Scott has a degree in computer science and creates apps. Oh, and she also models for the likes of Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein.
These women are just the start of a big break in stereotypes in a world that has always been so centralized and focused on the female image. They are shifting the focus to say that women can do anything they want, whether it’s being a positive model, a supermodel, or both. They’ve caught the world’s attention, and most importantly, the attention of those who will run our world in the future.
