![]() ![]() Six years ago, Letitia Fenley made a mistake, and she’s lived with the consequences ever since. One of the ways to reverse that trend is to promote strong role models in the STEMM fields. Multiple studies have found that girls lose interest in science during adolescence. Romances that feature STEMMinist heroines show women in science practicing love and compassion without having to sacrifice their jobs or the respect of the people around them. That’s still a radical concept in a patriarchal society that glorifies greed and uses fear to hold onto power. The romance genre, for all its flaws, is a genre that centers love and compassion. This hearkens back to the myth that a woman cannot be intelligent without sacrificing their femininity and physical appeal. ![]() Although I hope we’re starting to see a shift, we continue to grapple with the harmful and reductive stereotype that women scientists, and women intellectuals more generally, are too smart to be sexy. One of the reasons I decided to write about scientists was my dismay at the attitude towards science in national discourse these past six years. ![]() What happens in a romance novel has a way of spilling out into the world ![]()
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