Stop calling me "doll"

Description

Journaling reads:
I like wearing pretty, colorful clothes to brighten my mood and to accessorize with flowers, bows and sparkling jewelry. This might make me look very girly, which I don’t consider to be a negative thing, but it can have negative consequences.

As an industrial engineer I often find myself in a mostly male environment and as a (girly) female there are always many prejudices. It started when I was graduating from the technical university. When I handed in my first interim report to my graduation mentor he admitted that he was pleasantly surprised by the quality of my work since he had low expectations of a girl that looked like a little doll. Further on in the graduation project he was concerned that I would have it too easy because he thought that I would get people to cooperate (or help me as he put it) without any effort just because of the way I looked. Of course this was definitely not the case and I went to great lengths and gave my all to deliver the best work that I could. But these comments did make me look differently at myself and I started to wear more black and less flashy clothes to make myself stand out less and to be taken more seriously. I thought I mastered this new appearance at the end of my graduation project, but right before I wanted to start my final presentation my mentor told me I looked adorably cute. Definitely not the look I was going for and it made me very insecure throughout my presentation.

When my university days were behind me it was time to find a job. And with my educational background I of course applied to jobs that had again a mostly male environment. One time I applied at a position at an ICT department and I thought my interview went great, but the feedback I received was very disappointing. He told me literally that I looked too much like a little princess and he was afraid that I would distract all the men who were already working there. I was quite shocked by this and in hindsight I wish I had made a clever remark, because they promote on their website that they don’t judge people by their looks, while that was the only reason why I wouldn’t fit well in the company.

Maybe those experiences motivated me partly to start my own design agency, so I would become my own boss. And I’m really happy I did! Since a few years I’m also working part-time as a teacher at the industrial design engineering faculty of the technical university. There I teach students the more technical courses and I am not only the youngest teacher, but also the only female. This gives me the feeling that I have to constantly prove myself to the more experienced male teachers, because I often have the feeling that they don’t take me seriously. This was especially the case when I first started working there. By now I think most colleagues are aware of my capabilities, but that aching feeling always remains. What does always gives me great joy however is that the female students consider me to be somewhat of a role model and that I can provide them with confidence that they too can thrive in a technical world currently ruled by men.

For this layout I used a lot of different products of the January 2018 BYOC and the Makers Gonna Make collab from the Lilypad. The art doll is comprised out of Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Doll Templates and I "painted" the doll's face on it myself.