Rory Gilmore portrayed by Alexis Bledel in Gilmore Girls (2000-2007).
Major Gilmore Girl spoilers below:
Yes, the Rory Gilmore, one of the main characters in the much-loved television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). Rory was the girl that many book-loving Millennial girls aspired to be. In an era saturated by Girls Gone Wild and vapid teen sitcoms, Rory Gilmore was the anti-party girl; intelligent, feminist, ambitious, with a very cute but fairly modest style. Yet these handsome guys still chased her! I watched a few episodes of the series as it originally aired, but mainly I saw the reruns while in high school and college. I certainly related to Rory Gilmore on some level. I love reading, am introverted, a high academic achiever, and struggle to navigate highly competitive and elite academic spaces.
Recently, Rory Gilmore had received negative scrutiny. She has been characterized as privileged, immature, and ultimately a Millennial burnout. However, I find her to be a complex, flawed character, who struggles with high expectations, anxiety, and perfectionism. I recently DVRed some episodes and have been specifically looking at the academic-focused episodes. When the series begins, Rory is 15 going on 16 and just obtained admittance to an elite high school, which she hopes will give her an edge in college admissions to Harvard University. She is quick-witted, articulate, and hopes to be the next Christiane Amanpour. Rory is raised by a single-mother, Lorelei Gilmore, who comes from a very wealthy family, who foots Rory’s tuition.
Rory immediately struggles with Chilton’s high academic expectations, bullying (from teachers and students), and constant scrutiny of her social behavior (she gets in trouble for eating lunch alone). Despite all this, she graduates valedictorian and goes to Yale. At Yale, she again struggles with high academic expectations, socializing, and the competitive nature of a journalism internship, at one point taking a semester off, which causes a severe rift with her mother. She rallies, graduates, and obtains a journalism job following the Obama campaign. Through all this drama, and likely long nights of sleep-deprivation from studying, her hair, and clothing are nothing short of well-styled and coordinated.
In college, I was watching a rerun of an episode from Rory’s Yale years, with a friend. During the show, my friends kept remarking on how cute Rory’s style is and finally asks me “why don’t you dress like Rory Gilmore?”
In a sense, this question could be flattering, being compared to such an intelligent high achieving woman. But I also was offended and self-conscious. I was also unwilling to point out that “Rory Gilmore” is actually an actress with a professional makeup team, hair stylist, and wardrobe designer. Instead, I thought, did I really look this terrible? Why don’t I care that much about dressing up cute? Why do I stick to nondescript masculine khakis, corduroy, leggings, plain shirts, hair tied back?
It’s a loaded answer.
What Women in STEM Wear
I took followed Rory’s path of taking on a very challenging academic load in high school and attending a competitive university. I majored in engineering, which meant that I had many nights with little sleep, had to run around a campus in all types of weather, and had a lot of exams and late-night labs. Unlike Rory, I put very little effort into selecting outfits, most of my brainpower going to studying. Working STEM labs, though, my dress code was a bit different:
I worked (and still do) in laboratories with dangerous chemicals and heavy machinery. There were pretty strict rules about what you can and cannot wear. That are no-open toed shoes, limbs uncovered, or loose hair. Members have to wear personal protective equipment like goggles, gloves, labcoats. Makeup and fake eyelashes are hard to navigate wearing thick goggles. When visiting food factories and processing environments (which I often do), makeup is a no-no, so is nail polish, and jewelry. I wear steel-toed boots and hairnets too.
Navigating a college campus means a lot of walking on a daily basis. Which means that I need thick, sturdy shoes, and layers of clothing. Hair styling or makeup could be messed up by wind and weather, anyway.
Tired and sleep deprived, I did not want to spend extra time styling my hair and makeup. I still have little inclination to spend time doing makeup or styling my hair.
Collared shirts, khakis, corduroys which I usually wear could be dubbed “business casual” so they can go between classes, meetings, and lab work pretty easily.
Plus, I had (and still have) minimal surplus income to get my hair or nails professionally done. I cannot afford fancy skin treatments.
Navigating a male space as an engineering student, I tried to be non-descript to appear to be a serious student
But I take great care of myself. I exercise every day. Use retinol and moisturizers daily; use organic shampoos. Get my teeth cleaned every 6 months. Had painful orthodontic work done. Take a multivitamin. Purchase stylish glasses. My clothes are carefully laundered to retain their color and integrity. I wear clothes that fit my body and are not ripped or torn or ratty. All this takes time and money every day. Just to appear “okay”, or “casual” or even worse still unattractive?
There is not a lot of guidance on women in STEM ‘fashion’ especially those who work in laboratory positions that require personal protective equipment. I remember the female Dean of the college I attended staring at her photo projected onto the screen and exclaiming, “oh I’m glad I’m in a different shirt than that photo on screen!” A remark on how difficult it is to balance beauty standards and science.
Jean Pierce, secretary at Ohio State 1940s. Female secretaries were held to high beauty standards.
Science is a male-dominated, space historically. The most blatant evidence of this is the lack of women’s restrooms in older science buildings. Women in science were often secretaries and held to high standards of personal appearance.
A quick search shows that little of the fashion industry is actually targeted at Women in STEM. One company called “Shenova” has a ‘clothing line’ of science themed clothes with patterns that resemble things in science like DNA.
A dress that resembles the patterns of retinas from Shenova? Yikes $200 dollars!
There are relatively few ‘fashion’ pieces about what Women in STEM are wearing. Her Campus ran an article in 2023 called “What Girls In STEM Are Wearing This Season” and one response indicates very casual clothing:
“Cargos and a hoodie and a very warm coat”
“Baggy t-shirts”
“Chunky knit grandad jumper, baggy low waist jeans and platform docs is my go-to comfy lab outfit right now”
“Any wide length or flared trousers or jeans with a warm big knit”
“My go to outfit would probably be jeans and a jumper of some kind with converse, or if I’m feeling VERY lazy it’ll be gym leggings and a cosy hoodie”
Technology is coded as “masculine”—marketed, developed, and primarily associated with male users, which negatively informs women’s relationships with technological use] (Landström 2013). Thus, STEM fields are tacitly coded as a white, heterosexual, masculine space (Camacho and Lord 2011; Miller 2002). The tech industry presumes heterosexual feminine-identifying women, and as Pawley has notes, engineering students often need to adopt the culture of the “ideal” version of a white, masculine engineering student to thrive in the field (Pawley 2019). This can refer to manner of dress, such as women wearing more masculine clothes, or adjusting one’s speech and language to hide one’s sexual identity. Such efforts can re-enforce gender roles and heteronormativity in STEM.
Searching “clothes for women in stem” in TikTok yielded several videos in this vein:
Most of these outfits depicted fairly casual dress.
TikTok results from searching “clothes for women in STEM”, with some being related to lab-wear, office wear, or going to class. They are fairly casual and show mainly covered limbs, and sensible shoes.
“Heels Make You Sexy” and Fake Science
A more sinister application of science is to study how women’s clothing makes them “sexier” (i.e. gaining more male attention). A 2014 study apparently ‘concluded’ that women who wear heels receive more attention. Of course, Glamour ran the article “Science Has Spoken: High Heels Are the Sexiest Thing Women Could Wear”. However, in 2019, the high heel study was retracted:
The authors didn’t comment.
According to Google Scholar, this erroneous study has been cited at least 72 times. And there have more papers about the so called biological ‘benefits’ of women wearing high heels. Typing “do high heels make women sexy” into Google Scholar yielded the following results, which often referred to biological terms like ‘mating strategy’, ‘evolutionary fitness’ and ‘perceived attractiveness’. They appear to equate biological phenomena to clothing styles and not psychology or social conditioning. Of course there is minimal attention paid to body shapes, or skin color.
All I can say is BLEH!!
An emphasis on “femininity” can not only reinforce women’s subordination but can be an effective tool for white supremacy (Myers 2004). Lovette Jallow recently wrote very movingly about the disturbing implications of mainstream beauty culture:
For decades (and even now), these toxic ideals of beauty have been backed by scientific institutions including Home Economics instruction and fields like cosmetic chemistry. The cosmetic, hair, and clothing advice advanced by these institutions effectively excluded women of color.
The woman who wears lab coats and goggles is eschewing these toxic ideals of beauty. The woman in a lab coat and goggles is unclassifiable among the pseudo-ranks of desirability and is thus a threat.
Conclusion
A lack of interest in styling STEM women by the beauty industry is unsurprising, given how few women scientists they actually hire. Disturbingly, “science” has been weaponized to ‘justify’ beauty standards, falsely equating them to biological “advantages”. This can further fuel toxic ideals of beauty. Indeed, popular culture and media are the incubator for such unachievable ideals. Shows like Gilmore Girls depict the ambitious and high-achieving heroine as thin, white, with straight hair, and well-styled. While Gilmore Girls perhaps was an improvement over much of the toxic beauty culture, it was not immune into falling into ‘cool girl’ tropes depicting heroines who appeared to be effortlessly thin.
If you work in a factory environment or research lab, please adhere to safety rules and protocols, and dress appropriately!
Camacho, Michelle Madsen, and Susan M Lord. 2011. “‘Microaggressions’ in Engineering Education : Climate for Asian, Latina and White Women.” In 41st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S3H-1, Rapid City, SD.
Landström, Catharina. 2013. “Queering Feminist Technology Studies.” In Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, eds. M. Wyer et al. New York: Taylor & Francis Group., 385–99.
Miller, Gloria. 2002. “The Frontier , Entrepreneurialism , and Engineers : Women Coping with a Web of Masculinities in an Organizational Culture The Frontier , Entrepreneurialism , and Engineers : Women Coping with a Web of Masculinities in an Organizational Culture.” Culture and Organization 8(2): 145–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759550212836.
Myers, Kristen. 2004. “Ladies First: Race, Class, and the Contradictions of a Powerful Femininity.” Sociological Spectrum 24(1): 11–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/02732170490254374.
Pawley, Alice L. 2019. “Learning from Small Numbers: Studying Ruling Relations That Gender and Race the Structure of U.S. Engineering Education.” Journal of Engineering Education 108: 13–31.
I genuinely think that not giving that much of a shit about what you look like is a hugely empowering move for women. Because of everything you write. Men have since forever been granted access to random approaches to personal grooming that women are absolutely not ‘allowed’.
Being blessed with neurodivergence, I have spent my whole life being told by people that I ‘should’ do this or that to my appearance - lose weight, cut my hair, grow out my hair, wear this or that, use makeup, pluck my eyebrows- and it has all been bouncing off like ping pong balls, largely. Just like you I do think I take care of myself, just not the way others seem to think ‘a girl should’.
I still think they’re the ones who don’t get it 😅
I’m so glad I saw this post! Like you said, extremely rare to see *any* advice on STEM fashion for women. I’ve worked in STEM (mostly lab based) for 10 years now, and really struggled at first to find my “work style.” I’ve had multiple new women hires tell me they were so glad they could look to me for dress code/fashion reference.
My main advice: natural fabrics, comfort is king but doesn’t have to be ugly, and I like to lean more artist than scientist for outfit inspo (they work with their hands too!)