A couple of weeks ago, Tim Hunt, a British biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, made comments at a conference that were so ridiculous, you’d think we were lying. In front of a crowd full of scientists, he was noted saying, in regards to women, that “three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.” While we’re not going to get into the details of his resignation, he did step down from his position at University College London after only a few days of criticism, and that little nugget of irony is so sweet we will savor it as one of our favorite moments in the History of Men ever. It is the epitome of fragile masculinity.
This is not to say that masculinity is fragile for all men, just that the concept of it is pretty dangerous (and really, the reason comments like this were made in the first place). Masculinity feeds off the shaming of femininity, and often times, their idea of femininity is marred with stereotypes and exaggerations. In this case, he implied that women are only good for one thing, and that is looking good (because in our society so weighed down by double standards, you can’t have beauty and brains. And you certainly can never have brawn.) This horrible misconception lead to something beautiful, however, and #distractinglysexy was born. Super cheeky ladies of all professions (though a majority of scientists) took to Twitter to post their pictures in their “NSFW” attire (so lab coats, bulky suits, sweat and dirt, y’know, that kind of erotic stuff) that has us feeling all sorts of proud of these women. It is a classy but eye-opening response to some very immature comments, and we couldn’t help but share it. You can check out some of the tweets here, and feel free to partake in the movement yourself! #Distractinglysexy women everywhere…#ownyourawesome!