It is fall so I am watching Thursday night football. Everyone is wearing pink, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Mouth guards, towels, even that stuff for light glare under the players' eyes. While I love the increased awareness around a disease that has touch many friends and family members, I am not a fan of the constant pinkification of all things girl/female. The blogosphere is going nuts over the pink Princess Pepperidge Farms Goldfish and I tend to agree with their commentary. I think the same phenomenon can be seen in the Lego Friends line of toys for girls. I hope they can extend lego products for girls beyond the beach house and shopping mall sets, especially given that I am a mother of an 8-year-old girl. But, I guess we will leave it to the market to decide what little girls want to play with (said with more than a little sadness).
But back to football. Exxon Mobil aired this commercial during the Colts - Texans game this evening. Imagine six diverse high school students, attractive and from all walks of life. Half girls. Half boys. Each saying one line of this script: "Who's going to do it? Whose going to make it happen? Discover a new energy source? Turn ocean waves into power? Design cars that capture their emissions? Build bridges that fix themselves? Give more clean water to everyone? Who's going to take the leap? Who's going to write the code? Who's going to do it? Engineers, that's who. That's what I want to do. Be an engineer." Bravo! While Exxon Mobil's stance on climate change may be wishy-washy, it is encouraging the next generation to embrace engineering as the way to make a difference. How many high school teens (especially teenage girls) are watching the end of a Thursday night football game? Not many. But, maybe Exxon will air the commercial during another more popular time slot.
Lastly, the football game was held in NRG Park. I will close this random download of my thoughts on all things STEM and energy with a statement from David Crane's (CEO of NRG) most recent letter to stakeholders. "Somehow, some way, the next generation of Americans became 'all in' in their commitment to sustainability, in every sense of the word, including clean energy. With them, it is built into their DNA, not just learned behavior as it is for us." He finished this letter with this statement: "So let's make it happen." Learn by doing, that's my motto.
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