Treats should not only be unhealthy food

[sray]

"Grab yourself a cupcake and go to the next chapter :)"
"Works like a charm? We're proud! Treat yourself something sweet, you have earned it :)"

Puts a pretty cliche picture on women, don't you think? What about changing these two lines and pictures to:

"Well done so far! Celebrate by doing something good for you - taking a short walk, go have a little chat with someone, watch your favorite youtube video or do anything else you would like to do right now."

"Works like a charm? We're proud! Treat yourself with something special, you have earned it :)"

[keikoro]

👍 from me!

[zanderle]

👍

[olasitarska]

+1. Anyone eager to make a PR for that?:)

[keikoro]

If you don't need it right away (; I wouldn't mind but might not have time until the end of the week! :stress:

[MarysiaLowas]

@Saheba, your argument is a double edge sword. Why women need to do only what is good for them and healthy? why? and a short walk - is it because otherwise they will be fat? There is a danger of cliche thinking about women in that as well. Not to mention that terror of being slim and pretty, of being on a constant diet...

Another thing, in Berlin, cupcakes where just there, on a table. So the idea was, go and get a cupcake. It's much better and nicer than saying - go and do whatever, don't you think?

But now, when the tutorial is used in many places, and there might be different treats at hand than cupcakes, it might be good to be less specific. 'Something special' is great but, please, keep 'good for you' and 'healthy' out of it.

[keikoro]

@MarysiaLowas I understood the "short walk" bit to mean to take a break from working on the computer. Sitting at a desk and staring at a screen for hours simply is not healthy for anyone, so I don't see any problem with suggesting to counteract that with physical activity. It's by no means "gendered" and walking around for a bit requires minimal physical effort, so it's not something that could be read as a fat shaming "measure" or anything like that. It's actually something that everyone working on computers a lot should do every now and then. (:

I also don't see @Saheba suggesting to put "healthy" in there, I believe they just meant to say the "sweet treat" thing is a bit of cliche, which is true, unfortunately. Substitute chocolate for cupcakes and maybe it gets more obvious? I was curious about the cupcakes in Berlin, especially about the neon green one ;P but 'm usually not a fan of either chocolate or cupcakes and I totally get saheba's point. I find it extremely annoying when people - most often it's men - suggest I must love/crave chocolate, when they expect me to be happy/thankful when offered chocolate, or when they are disappointed or confused or think me "weird" or "untypical" for a woman when I refuse chocolate offered to me. (!!) All of this has, in fact, happened to me before, so I'm glad when cliches like that aren't reinforced further (and in this context, cupcakes could be regarded as a "hip", modern equivalent of chocolate).

[MarysiaLowas]

@kerstin "unhealthy" is in the title of this thread, so I assumed that @Saheba meant that treats should be healthy or otherwise good for you. Also, I have no problems with subtituting chocolate for cupcakes. I understand that point but I'm just saying - don't go over the top.

You've just seen what was my first association with things mentioned by @Saheba - why everyone tells us to do just the things that are good for us? Also, we simply have very different experience. I've been never mocked in any way for refusing chocolate but many times I've heard "jokes" like - 'You shouldn't really be eating that', 'Think about your waistline'. As the matter of fact, I quite like chocolate and see nothing wrong with that - no matter whether it is a cliche or not. And quite often I do use sweets as a treat for doing something challenging. And that was something that I really liked about the tutorial.

As we obviously see things differently, maybe it's a good idea to change 'sweets' for something more neutral - go and grab a snack / take a short break - but going for anything like 'healthy' or 'excercise' is just a slippery slope. That's how I see it.

[keikoro]

Regarding "very different experiences": Just because I didn't bring them up doesn't mean I haven't heard the same things you mentioned - ad nauseam. I don't know any fat person who hasn't, tbh. (In ways that thin people can't even begin to imagine.)

And it's really great for you (and I mean that in all seriousness!) that you don't care if something you like or do is, coincidentally, also a stereotype, but fighting stereotypes is done for the benefit of those who do have a problem with it, those who do not want to be pigeonholed, and not for those who are somehow "above" those stereotypes anyway. I, for example, don't mind that I'm fulfilling not one, but even two clichés by owing a pink sewing machine (for realz!), I actually find it pretty funny, yet I understand that it'd be highly problematic to use said pink sewing machine as the main example to illustrate "a woman's hobbies" somewhere (regardless of how many other women I know who sew and who'd like to own a pink sewing machine like mine).

Rereading @Saheba's original suggestions again, I see no indication of adding "healthy", "excercise" or anything in that (opposite) direction at all, they simply seemed to want to de-cliché those two phrases and I believe they succeeded in doing that while actually remaining very neutral. (They put both "taking a walk" ("healthy") and "watching a youtube video" ("couch potato-y") in their suggestion - which doesn't seem health-cliché-freaky to me?)

[keikoro]

@MarysiaLowas I reread the original post again, and I think I understand your point better now - how the post could be read differently (keeping in mind the subject line in particular).

I still think the actual suggestions made are very neutral. What you took offence at ("treats shouldn't be unhealthy") seems to be @Saheba's personal opinion, which - while debatable of course - did not make it past that (subjective) subject line. (:

[MarysiaLowas]

@kerstin I'm glad you've got my point. There's quite a lot I would like to say to answer your previous post, but this is not really a place for a discussion like that. And fighting stereotypes is a delicate thing...

As for @Saheba suggestions, I'm not really happy with "Celebrate by doing something good for you". This "good for you" still sounds suspicious, sorry. Why not "Celabrate with a short break" or "Celebrate by doing something fun."

[oinopion]

Sometimes it's OK to use things associated with cliches, most importantly it's OK to do that when everyone feels comfortable and included. IMHO people feel most included when they are accepted as they are, without anyone else telling them what to do and what to be. We have to, however, assume that they want to be told what to do regrading content of the tutorial: programming in Python & Django. Streching this to telling them what to do with break time could be too much, especially when taken out of context of friendly, in-person workshop.

The way I see it, we could change the language in online tutorial to something like:

"We're proud of you"
"We're happy that you got here so fast"
"How about you take a hard earned break now?"

And then reserve all other stuff for the actuall in-person workshop, were the meaing of fun is decided by people having it.

[olasitarska]

BIG 👍 to @oinopion.

[sray]

+1 for @oinopion 's suggestion :)