As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them.
Science is often thought of as the antithesis to a language-based art like comedy. But I think there’s a rich overlap between the two, which is why I’ve spent a lot of the last year learning to do improvisational comedy: first by taking some classes, for the experience and the immediacy, and eventually forming a troupe to do shows. But I’m constantly seeing the tension between those two ways of thinking. I was at a standup gig recently where the MC for the night, as part of his opening patter, asked who wasn’t from Ireland. I was singled out for being American, and defensively adding that I do live in Dublin, and when the MC had nothing to say about my admittedly obscure home state of New Mexico, he turned to my job: physicist. I’ll admit that I bantered back, which made me a target for the rest of the night. The MC kept coming back to it, trying to think of science jokes to use on me. Because scientists are the butt of jokes, not the ones making them, right?
I was dreading the moment my fellow improvisers would find out that I’m a scientist. I still remember the look on my creative writing professor’s face when he learned I was going to grad school for physics and not literary criticism: either confusion or maybe relief. But scientists are people too. They can write bad poetry or mangle beautiful music or pretend to be actors just like everybody else. So when I was sitting on the tram with some of the improv people after a class, early on when we were still getting to know each other, and the only person who knew me from before outed me as a scientist, I was immediately on edge, scanning everyone for their reactions.
When my profession comes up at parties or talking to strangers, the most common reaction is, “Which one from The Big Bang Theory are you?” To which, “Leonard, but that whole show is a nightmare of racism, sexism, and rape apologia,” seems to open up a whole other can of worms. Other contenders include, “That sounds hard,” usually delivered with a wince, a wistful “You must be so smart,” and the classic, “Let me tell you about the teacher who ruined all of science for me.” Fortunately the people from my class were intrigued. They asked questions about what I do, and they’re curious about the sciences as creative problem-solving and as an exploration of the world around us. So once the people in my improv class knew that I’m a scientist, I expected them to shy away from playing scientists in improv scenes, and maybe to just avoid me in scenes altogether.
The thing about improv, though, is that generating ideas and supporting other people’s ideas requires a lot of honesty and openness. There’s no time to filter the way you might normally, and you end up bypassing rules about class or hierarchy or propriety in order to tell interesting stories. It’s a very vulnerable thing to do, but then again the other improvisers are all doing it too, and the good audiences are the ones that buy in to that vulnerability. An improv scene is a liminal space, on the edges of the places we feel safe and secure. So it’s hard to talk around an uncomfortable truth, hard to hide what you really think, and hard to fake anything for the sake of politeness.
Of course, lacking real world experience with scientists, most people start with tropes from movies or other media. Which is understandable; personally, my idea of what politicians do is entirely based on things like House of Cards or Battlestar Galactica. So I’ve watched improv scenes with mad scientists, technical advisors, and of course evil geniuses whose creations betray them. But that’s just background, because really the heart of any improv scene is the relationship between the characters. Establishing that a character is a scientist is often used to bring rationality and disconnection into that relationship, which can contrast with more emotional, intuitive characters to provide dramatic tension.
But what about the relationships between two scientists, when no one else is looking? Improv loves the harried research assistants, of course, struggling to collect tedious data or rushing to the scene of a lab accident. But any profession has its overworked underclass. One of the scenes which still stands out in my mind was between two scientists, a professor and a ‘lowly doctor’. It began as a power struggle between the two characters, with the doctor looking for acknowledgement of good work he had done, and the professor condescendingly putting it down. Things escalated, and the professor started trashing the lab and demanding that the doctor clean things up, on his knees of course. The scene was a lot of fun to watch, because status is a very rich comedic vein to tap, but it also tapped into the basic tension between collaborative and competitive science. I’m a firm believer in doing science collaboratively, taking advantage of people’s disparate backgrounds and sharing the load to do complex and creative research. However, I have to admit that I’ve witnessed that same power struggle between scientists: trading on status and seniority and trying to come out on top. And while there are lots of cutthroat workplaces, science is framed as a search for The Truth. If you are an established scientist, doesn’t that make you the guardian of the most complete form of The Truth? And if so, don’t you deserve a little respect?
The scene with the professor and the doctor was part of a game called Freeze Frame, where at any point an improviser not in the scene can shout “Freeze!” and then take the place of one of the improvisers in the scene to initiate something new. Watching the fight for dominance unfold, I was tempted to tag in to the scene as a nicer sort of scientist, to show that other dynamics are possible in science. But then the two characters agreed to bury their differences by “going to a park to make fun of stupid people”, and even as the identity part of my brain thought, “no, scientists don’t do that!”, the improv part of my brain thought, “this just begs for someone to tag in only to be made fun of.” So I came in as an ice cream vendor who struggled to remember the names of flavors and add up prices, which elevated the condescension exuded by the professor from the previous scene. As his character became more and more disdainful of mine, he started going on about “the chemical composition of ice cream” to show off. I’ll admit it was a struggle to stay looking clueless while thinking, “but that’s not the chemical composition of ice cream! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT COLLOIDAL SUSPENSIONS.”
Which, of course, is me wanting to assert my own status as a Person Who Knows The Truth. Even as a creative and collaborative person in the sciences, I’ve become indoctrinated, and I instinctively cover my own insecurity by being exactly the kind of insufferable know-it-all that everyone thinks of when they think of scientists. Isn’t that exactly what I didn’t want to be, especially in a creative space like improv?
But the thing about science is that it’s often presented as objective, with scientists as the arbiters and gatekeepers of a truly external frame of reference. In some ways that’s accurate, as science represents an attempt to understand the physical world, and that world works the way it does no matter what we think we understand about it. But science is done by people, it is one way of looking at the world among many, and that means that science is inherently connected to the rest of society and culture. Both science and improv are flexible, and require a lot of willingness to adapt and experiment on the fly to make things work. And in both cases, it’s creativity and thinking outside the box that leads to the best results, whether it’s the best scene or the most groundbreaking research. But measuring a thing changes it, which is as true of scientists as it is of the things we study. And in both science and improv, it’s the relationships between phenomena and people, the messy things that happen at the interface, that are truly revealing of the world around and within us.
Next week: Ginny Perkey on the intersection between mansplaining and physics in popular culture.
Tags: comedy, gal science, improv, jessamyn fairfield, physics, science
To be honest, “insufferable know-it-all” probably describes 90% of scientists when they were children. It’s ingrained in us, we have to suppress it as adults in order to have friends and lovers.
PLEASE TELL US ABOUT COLLOIDAL SUSPENSIONS I just got an ice cream maker and am fascinated by the process.
Also everyone knows politicians learn how to be politicians by watching The West Wing.
Hell yes. I’m thinking of going into politics because I’m in the middle for watching The West Wing for the first time, and I KNOW I have the chops to walk briskly down hallways while talking quickly and wittily.
A colloidal suspension is a substance where small particles of one thing are throughout another substance, so in the case of ice cream it’s fat molecules and air bubbles suspended in a matrix of ice and sugar. Mayonnaise is also a colloidal suspension of oil in egg yolks. In both those cases, emulsifiers are often added which are just substances that improve the stability of the suspension.
And, milk is a colloidal suspension too, of proteins and fat molecules in liquids. What’s cool about milk as a colloidal suspension is that the size of the suspended proteins is very close to the size of the wavelength of visible light, and that’s why light scatters in milk, and that’s why milk is opaque to visible light!
AND THAT IS THE STORY OF EDIBLE COLLOIDAL SUSPENSIONS.
As one of those nerdy kids who was also terrible at science, I will never be able to say stuff like “what’s cool about milk” because I don’t know a damn thing about milk OR being cool. 🙁
Oh cool! Thanks! So it’s a type of emulsion? (I only know food science in Alton Brown terms.)
Yes, it’s an emulsion! So is body lotion, incidentally!
Less tasty on pie, though.
Ooh, I just froze some milk and it changed color from white to yellow. Does this have something to do with protein size or is it unrelated? And is it related to the coloring of butter?
This is not relevant, but I make a carrot cake ice cream in my ice cream maker that silences all naysayers. It’s basically this recipe, but with half and half instead of whole milk: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/CA…
Well that looks amazing. Has been added to the list of Ice Creams To Make.
Yay for Gal Science! I didn’t really expect to enjoy this because I don’t know much about science really, but this was not that – no prior knowledge required – and I really enjoyed it.
“but it also tapped into the basic tension between collaborative and competitive science.”
This is the best way I’ve heard this framed. I work with people in both fields, and people who have one foot in each field, and it can honestly be such a struggle to maintain both faces. The clashing personalities can be very difficult to manage, despite (one would think) the ultimate same goals that they have (betterment of society, learning, etc etc).
I am super-excited about this series.
Yay! To get cheesy on you, getting hundreds of emails from amazing, funny female scientists with great/hilarious/sad/challenging pitches has been one of the best things about running this site, and I pretty much love everything about running this site already.
Oh my gad, I love this piece! And yes, Big Bang Theory is indeed a nightmare of racism, sexism, and rape apologia THANK YOU.
I oscillate between finding Big Bang Theory to be Problematic with a capital P, being bemused that the most popular sitcom on TV is about physics postdocs, and being transfixed by the whiteboards in the background. Details from both my own and my husband’s experiments have shown up there! They made a snarky joke about the DAMA dark matter experiment once! I feel so conflicted!!
I am usually too ashamed to admit this on the internet, where it’s described as the source of All That Is Foul In Our Society, but I actually enjoy a lot of the Big Bang Theory. It IS problematic as all hell, and I occasionally fly into a rage at the racist (mostly from Howard) and sexist (hey, also mostly from Howard!) jokes, but I think they’ve done a good job with character development, and moved past some of that. (Especially now that Howard is married.) Sheldon and Penny scenes are always a joy for me, though.
However, a lot of the criticism toward the show comes from an aesthetic snobbery against traditional multi-cam sitcoms, and I will be having none of that.
*Whispers* I used to watch it during dinner in grad school and I laughed on numerous occasions!
This was a really interesting read. Thanks!
I know a bunch of people in various science fields, and they’re all pretty funny, and they all dislike “Big Bang Theory.”
“Getting outed as a scientist” Haha last weekend I was at a book party in Bushwick and someone asked me what I did.
-Oh, I’m a scientist.
-Oh, cool, in what?
-Cancer biology.
-Wow.
*looong silence*
-UH ALSO I SOMETIMES WRITE THINGS FOR THE INTERNET!
*conversation resumes*
To be fair, there’s not much to be said in response to “cancer biology.” Or is there? What is the proper response to finding out someone is a superintense science gal?
Oh, I wasn’t trying to make fun of their response, just my Rainman comeback. “BUT I HAS A TUMBLR?”
😀
People usually ask me to explain what I work on. They’re usually very nice! (though I don’t exactly scream “superintense”, so maybe that’s why. That or british politeness.)
The correct reply for “cancer biology” (you can file this away for future reference) is “man, p53, what a clusterfuck eh?”
“What do you do work on?”
“Uh. Experimental high energy physics.”
“Oh.”
“Uh, I also play videogames.”
“Oh.”
“Uh, I’m also really into feminist and liberal politics?”
“Oh.”
“Uuuuuuh, BAKING. BAKING IS GREAT.”
“YES!”
BADASS BADASS BADASS BADASS
SWOON.
Yes exactly! “Hi, I’m a feminist scientist raider, and WAIT COME BACK!”
When she was a young’un, my distinguished lady astronomer college advisor used to tell people at bars that she was majoring in Art History. ART HISTORY LADIES: YOU HAVE IT EASY IN THIS VERY SPECIFIC WAY!
My husband is a theoretical condensed-matter physicist, and whenever he does something klutzy, I say “if only you’d been an APPLIED condensed-matter physicist.”
Aw man. I can’t like this hard enough.
That is one of the best things I have ever heard.
HEY-OOOOOOOO!!!!
I know a legit rocket scientist who gets that reaction A LOT. Usually after they start laughing, then realize he’s serious.
Future ways to optimize the awkward silence:
I was going to go into Microbiology but realized I misread the job description when it said “multiple organisms.”
Yeah…a more respectable way to wear latex and get paid for it.
What did the male bacterium say to the female?
-“Who needs microbiology when we have chemistry?”
Staph aureus and E. coli were on two petri dishes.
S.aureus says “Hey! I’m purple” E.coli replies “Are you sure?” S.aureus says “Yep! I’m Gram-positive.”
…..or less technical:
Hey do you have a DNA polymerase? Because I’d like to unzip your genes.
And lastly…drum roll… cell division via text
o -> 0 -> 8 -> oo
Regards, your fellow hematology/oncology Brooklynite.
I had a biostatistics professor who told us that if we wanted to keep getting invited to cocktail parties, we should tell people that we “help researchers deal with uncertainty.”
Which ultimately leads to conversations like this:
-So, what do you do?
-I help researchers deal with uncertainty!
-So, uh… you’re a therapist?
-Oh. Uh, no, I’m a statistician.
-Like in baseball?
Oh, I do love Big Bang Theory, although I know it has it’s demons.
THAT SAID, I liked this piece! I’m not a science-y type of nerd, and science stuff tends to fly over my head a lot, but this was great. 🙂
For some reason I grew up feeling like science/math were oppositional to literature/history/arts, like I had to pick a side, and like the sides fundamentally couldn’t understand each other (not helped by peer editing essays from a biology major who argued that all novels would be better with the feelings taken out). I think probably somewhere along the way I got massively intimidated by science because I had to work really hard to get even the basics. Science, and scientists of all kinds (such small words for such a wildly heterogenous group of disciplines and people!), were bafflingly opaque.
I’m not sure when that changed for me, but it did. Probably grad school, when I saw people on grad school message boards being so damn mean about quantitative vs. qualitative analysis and arguing over which disciplines were “real” PhDs and which ones weren’t. At first it was a little terrifying and then unsettling, and then I realized that some people are just jerks and that people studying science and the humanities and political science and religion and whatnot are all (mostly) respectfully pursuing different ways of knowing things about the world. I mean, I still don’t have any great depth of science knowledge, but I’m much more curious and open–nay, enthusiastic!–about it than I was as a kid. Also, since I started baking seven or eight years ago I have begun to harbor a fantasy about going back to school to study food chemistry. I think this is the only reason I would ever go back to school. Well, that or to avoid paying back my student loans.
All of which to say: I think this series is awesome, and I can relate to both sides of this perception of the science-arts relationship, and now I would like for us all to have a big group hug.
Yes!! I thought the same thing as a language major. Now I’m studying engineering and it’s allll the saaaame!
I am an Irish scientist! Or, well, studying to be an Irish scientist. I get very excited when I see mentions of Ireland on the toast, sorry, I’ll be over here.
Also, this was really cool and I’m verrrry excited for the rest of the series!
Ireland is a pretty great place to be a scientist! There is so much funding for nanoscience and materials science here, and a lot of academic and industry jobs… I find this impressive given that, in the US, science funding is cut at the slightest hint of economic trouble.
OMG YAAAAAAY THIS PIECE WAS SO GOOD
This was really interesting! I am thinking back to high school drama class and remembering–the teacher always emphasized building on what the other person gave you, rather than tearing it down. The way you describe the first skit here, it seems like it would be more difficult to sustain? I wonder how the power dynamics influenced the way that particular technique/view was realized.
Well, you do want to build on what they gave you but that doesn’t necessarily mean being agreeable in the scene. If the other person sets you at odds with them, then being agreeable blocks their offer, whereas buying into the contentious dynamic is actually supportive!
TWO weeks from now, we have “Parasite Stories For Every Occasion.”
I WILL ITCH FOREVER D:
ON THE CALENDAR
To be honest, “insufferable know-it-all” probably describes 90% of scientists when they were children. It’s ingrained in us, we have to suppress it as adults in order to have friends and lovers.
I never want to talk about Big Bang Theory or answer “how come you people haven’t cured cancer yet?” so when asked “what do you do?” I say I work at the university. “You’re a professor?” “No, I just work there”. And then then most people let it go.
Aaaah I so want to submit a pitch for this, but it seems like you’ve already got tons of pitches to choose from :/. But it is SO COOL that you’re running this — there’s not a lot of science writing in the ladyblog world! <3 <3 <3
MORE PITCHES. I will never be satisfied!
Dear creatively writing, humorously improvising, badass gal science: I really enjoyed your piece, and you inspired me to dig up a couple of poems by a Czech immunologist and stick them up for y’all to see. http://scribaltattoo.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/wor…
Oh I love these!
As one of those nerdy kids who was also terrible at science, I will never be able to say stuff like "what's cool about milk" because I don't know a damn thing about milk OR being cool. 🙁
Science and improv! Two of my favorite things. A fellow improviser in one of my troupes is on the PhD track in Something Science-y and I think it’s the coolest thing ever.
Yes, it's an emulsion! So is body lotion, incidentally!
aka "the elevator speech"
“Which, of course, is me wanting to assert my own status as a Person Who Knows The Truth.”–I literally nodded emphatically when I read this! N(odded)OL! I’m a programmer and I see those of us in STEM often really clinging to its esotericism–which is also a huge concept in the occult. There’s real power in being one of the initiates and I think a lot of the resistance to women entering those fields comes from an instinctual desire for that power. Basically I guess I’m saying being science/tech/math people makes us masons–or even better WITCHES!
Well, this was pretty much spectacular. Even scientists have a SOUL!