*sigh* and it's such an irony. As a (female) kid I found math to be easy but writing and reading were my hardest subjects (mostly due to ear problems that lead to later speech development). Everyone is different and having two or one X chromosome(s) doesn't make you better/worse at math or any other subject for that matter.

It might be interesting to know that in Israel there have been statistics of men and women performing equally on math. The difference? There had been lots of emphasis on the importence of math for PEOPLE, not only for male people.

It's not that I'm too ugly to love math, but I know I can never live up to the beauty of the Mandelbrot set.

I have always loved math but never really noticed barriers for female engineers and the like until recently, when I started going to college fairs and such. The guy at some college in New England spent maybe 10-20 minutes talking to a guy about the admissions process and when I asked about what sort of opportunities there were for freshman in engineering he told me about sororities, got distracted and told a different guy about their robotics club. I imediately lost interest in that school.

Interestingly, there is a Facebook page titled "I'm too pretty to do math" that has more than 15,000 likes: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Im-too-Pretty-to-do-Math/248967079302

This is unfortunate. I'd like to know who buys this crap.

On women and math - Someone was telling me that one of the main reasons women tend to drift away from math is that elementary school teachers are mostly women and they are uncomfortable teaching math since they lack confidence in the subject. Young girls pick up on their discomfort and then pass that on to the next generation. For some reason young boys tend either not to pick up on their teachers' discomfort, or do not associate it with gender and math in the way that girls do.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any empirical studies to verify this theory. It's particularly nice though, in that it suggests that the solution to the problem is improved teacher education, which should be easier to accomplish than to try to change longstanding social biases.

The vendor's complaint page is here:

http://www.forever21.com/customerservice/customerservice.asp?content=contact_merchandise

It looks like the t-shirt is still around, too.

http://www.zazzle.com/im_too_pretty_to_do_math_tshirt-235554306148292984

George, there have in fact been some recent studies on the topic. See http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/05/18/31math_ep.h30.html for one report on the studies.

The Facebook page infuriates me at least as much as the sale of the magnet (which infuriates me pretty thoroughly). I actually just left a message on Danica McKellar's Facebook fan page, in hopes of attracting her attention to this particular situation.

So very very frustrating.

I'm in an incredibly basic entry level statistics class at a state university (that is, we aren't terribly competitive and I here rumors about open enrollment next year). It's a summer class, and most people in my class identify as seniors who "forgot they had a math requirement." I think I'm fairly good at math (I hate repetition, so even though I grasp concepts pretty quickly I loathe practicing them :P lazy, lazy), and so far all we've talked about are definitions.

I'm posting this because I've been feeling sorry for math teachers lately for exactly the reason Gwen concluded with: many of the students in the class came in assuming it would be incredibly difficult, and even though we've hardly done anything very "mathy" there are a handful who spend most of their time looking bewildered. I can only think this is because they come in too afraid that it will be awful to realize how infantilizingly easy the subject matter is. One woman even just dropped the course. /rant. Sorry if this wasn't as on topic as possible.

I'll make a t-shirt for my daughter: "I'm pretty AND I know math. Suck that.".

"math is inherently, and almost uniquely, difficult to learn — a cultural trope"

- And on a completely different note, same students are programmed to assume their gen ed art classes will require no critical thought or work, with similarly problematic (though non-sexist, as far as I can tell) results.

I wasn't a very perceptive kid. By the time I got the message that girls couldn't do maths, I had already been told I was good at it enough to believe that. Instead, I thought this meant I wasn't a 'proper girl', whatever that might be. Cue years of low self-esteem from feeling like the weird kid who didn't fit in. Thanks so much, all the liars who keep insisting maths ability is gendered. Thanks from every girl I now teach whose confidence I have to build up off the floor before I can even get started. Thanks from every boy I teach who struggles with maths and feels less masculine for that, and so is reluctant to seek the help that's needed. Great work. Really.

When I got stumped in high school pre-calculus, the first person I went to for help was the prettiest girl in class. I felt sort of emasculated when I did, but she always explained it really well without being patronizing and I eventually passed the class thanks to her.

Hi all - The original designers, I believe, are David and Goliath, who have the tee shirt on sale here:

http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=math&send=

They can be contacted here:

http://www.davidandgoliathtees.com/multimail

Unless you think they're peddling refrigerator magnets to little girls, Forever 21 is not telling children that "doing math is for ugly girls," as you obnoxiously extrapolate (to garner page-views, no doubt). This is a lighthearted knick-knack for adults. I would accuse you of nauseating political correctness, but there is no real social consciousness involved here; this just another soulless no-news post by another pointless blogger.

This is part of a much larger objectification of girls - same company also sells pseudo bras and thongs to pre-pubescent girls - basically early sexualisation. Ignorance is not an excuse and the cumulative social effects are neither innocent nor harmless.

Because I was really good at math in high school, I was was pushed to do physics or engineering at uni from Gr.9 on. Then I went into music. I remember feeling a sort of reverse pressure, which was partly of my own making, that because I was good at math and female, I should go a math route. Like it was my duty or something. Instead, I opted for what I thought would make me happy. Eventually, I ended up with a PhD in the humanities in a different field altogether.

In any case, I think that in deciding majors coming out of HS I was coming up against the cultural trope that math and engineering are hard (and therefore more worthy?) and the humanities are easy... And, therefore, as a young woman, I should represent and do math, rather than join all the other women in humanities. Was I letting myself/other people/women/the world down because I wasn't shoring up the ranks of women in math? Was I taking the easy, feminine route? Bull. I chose a humanities degree because of the challenges it presented to me and the interesting things to learn and research about people and history and art, the theories and ideas to comprehend, the languages to learn; not because I was discouraged from math or engineering, quite the opposite, and not because I couldn't do them, and not because I hated them or thought them uninteresting (I still miss calculus). It was a personal choice that I had thanks to feminism -both the encouragement in math and science and the fact of choice. (A shout must go out to my math teachers, male and female, who recognized talent, not gender!)

Myself, I resent the implication that the liberal arts are for second-rate brains.

The analogue to this, of course, is "I'm too cool/sporty/masculine for English Literature." This is something that really does exist with students (and sometimes their parents, unfortunately). I have male students in my classes who will admit they're "pretty good at vocabulary" but will not cop to understanding, liking, or being able to interpret and make connections with literature, even though they can and do.

I just received an email from Forever 21. "We have removed the magnet from our website, and we shall forward your message to the appropriate department for review and consideration."

I emailed to complain. Here is the content of my email message: The purpose of this letter is to request that you cease selling the "too pretty to do math" magnet, as currently featured on your website. This product suggests that (a) only some people are capable of doing math, (b) only unattractive people do math, and (c) given that your company markets to women, the product suggests that (pretty) women cannot or should not do mathematics. I believe that this message is inappropriate, particularly because your company markets to younger women who may be at a time in their lives when they are making important decisions about their identities and future career paths. A particular danger of this message is all (or most) women receive cultural messages that they should become (more) beautiful; thus, the magnet indirectly suggests that all (or most) women should not want to do mathematics. However, women are capable of doing mathematics, many women find mathematics to be beautiful and enjoyable, and we do not want to be told that we have to choose to be either pretty or someone who does mathematics. I hope that you consider ceasing to sell this project due to its inappropriate message.

I have this shirt my mom bought it for me in high school!
At the time I failed geometry,so it was kind of to cheer
me up. But I realize how offensive this was, as girls
we're socialized into hating math, I hated math and
science until I got to college. I just finished a statistics
class which i obtained an 98 percent in as a final grade. I learned how useful calculations can be especially in my chosen field of psychology also....I learned that I really can understand math just as well if not better than my peers!
It took a lot of gender, sociology courses to realize how these little action perpetuate gender constructs....
If only I had learned that earlier when i failed alegbra, then geometry(took it over got an A), then pre-calculus in high school.
I wish I'd been told the truth....you have to be able to do math well enought to prove others wrong if your considered "too" pretty!

What if the user is too pretty to do everything, and simply math is being highlighted at this time?

..but your article implies that "English literature" is not a difficult academic field. Why do you need to insult others to make your point?

If you go to my Alma Mater, you can see beautiful girls everywhere... studing math. And some female teachers are just... gorgeous (there are also some beautiful russian teachers).

I know many people who would consider reading English literature... or reading anything... to be a difficult task. Slightly stupid of you to assume that math is so much harder than language, linguistics, and reading, don't you think?

What nonsense! Mathematics is a very useful knowledge that is definitely worth getting at school, because, despite all the jokes and excuses, it is impossible to live without mathematics, I think. In general, I was convinced that there is nothing better than classes with tutors. Now there are many online schools to find kid math teachers who can choose a really suitable program, while making the learning process interesting, fun, but effective. I think that this approach will make even mathematics interesting to study