Flutterby™! : Feminist in Training

Mark Hershberger passed along the story of these Feminist in Training stickers, with the expectation that I'd comment a bit.

It's the tale of a couple of women at MIT who noticed a laptop that had a yellow sticker on it. The text read "Babe crossing next 5km", and the associated icon was three women in a line, you can tell that the stick figures are women because of the breasts and ponytails, on hands and knees.

They talked with the owner, told him what they found offensive about the sticker (and I wish the article gave a little more detail there), and worked with the owner to come up with a solution, which was a circle with a slash to go over the existing sticker, with the label "feminist in training" across the slash.

So, what to comment on? I understand why the women in question found the initial sticker in poor taste, I did, and it reminded me of the cover to the "Snoop Doggy Dogg Doggystyle" album, but I'm not sure that the "solution", the big negative slashed circle, speaks to me either.

A young woman across the street has a bumper sticker that I think is kind of cool, it's done in the style of the chrome buxom woman on the iconic mud flaps, except she's holding a book. We know that librarians are hawt, but I like that sticker because it takes the trashy image and says "no, you want really sexy, make her smart".

The slashed circle, on the other hand, isn't opening a dialog, isn't asking why that imagery happened to appeal to the laptop's owner, it's saying "no! bad dog! get down!". Which, I suppose, is why I'd like to hear his side of the story as well.