Long hair and career
As a woman professional, I read every book that’s about succeeding in my career, especially the ones tailored to female audiences. One thing I notice is, the books that talk about appearance all tell you to cut your hair short the older you get. The big offender is this otherwise great book, Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office, which suggests that your hair needs to get shorter, and be gradually colored lighter as you get older.
This doesn’t sit well with me. I have always worn my hair long, and all the women who taught in my school would put their hair up in a neat bun, as they got older.
I notice in Corporate America, you never, ever, ever see a woman who has salt and pepper hair, though you see many men who are. One of the principal engineers at a former workplace had platinum blonde hair that was slowly turning all white, but that’s it! Women in creative professions color their hair in bright colors as they get older, and slowly lighten it up from burgundy to ash blonde, before letting it be completely white (by when they are probably retired).
I’ve also noticed that Asian and Indian women with dark hair just keep dyeing their hair when they start to gray, until they make fuck-you money, or retire. Usually retire. This isn’t a great idea, especially since we’re finding more and more evidence that permanent hair dyes and straighteners increase cancer risks, which increase with increased use.
It bothers me immensely, because while I like having brightly colored hair, I do not want to be compelled to do it regularly on penalty of losing my career. It also bothers me because one of the things I like about being a programmer is that my career doesn’t depend as strongly on appearances or traditional presentations of femininity.
I do realize that the bias towards youth in tech pushes people, across all genders, to present themselves as younger, and hair is a big part of that. I don’t like that either, and I wish it dies a bad death.
My Novel
I got the idea to write San Francisco Serial last January. I was rereading Tales Of The City, which is a serial novel about life in San Francisco in the 80s, and I wanted to write one about the Bay Area I live in.
As an immigrant who lives in the peninsula, my perspective is very different, and one that I don’t read about often. No one romanticizes the salt flats of Redwood City, or talks about barhopping in Downtown San Jose, and given the growing population and relevance of this area, I felt I needed to.
I originally intended it to be a serial novel, and I wrote 25,000 words in July. I realized I have compelling characters, but no story, and I focused hard on that, and I am rewriting the story, so I have a compelling enough story, and can share it chapter by chapter on here! I’m at 38,000 words, and I see it going for at least another 10,000.
One thing I decided to do with my novel is to break old stereotypes, and create new ones.
And I knew I really badly wanted to have an old woman with long white hair in it.
Old Woman With Long White Hair
The character I created is called Victoria Irani. She was a child prodigy who finished high school at 14, undergrad at 16, and got her PhD in neuroscience at 21. She’s about 70 now, a Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, and continues to inspire students to get into neuroscience by giving many accessible talks. She’s now focusing on applying machine learning concepts to mental health issues, and is a force to be reckoned with in that domain.
So when she finds an upstart startup claim they are solving mental health issues with an app, she’s suspicious, and confident it won’t work. But her close friend, Dr. Andrew Hauptmann, a behavioral neuroscientist, is less skeptical, going on to work for the startup. When he is found mysteriously dead in the redwood forest, she fears the worst, but doesn’t know who to reach out to with her suspicions and doubts.
The inspirations for this character were three great academics. A professor at grad school was an innovator in quantum computing, and her cool, calm confidence and subject matter expertise was something I was very influenced by. Then there’s Dr. Daphne Koller at Stanford, who had that child prodigy career path my character has. And finally, Dr. Phyllis Gardner at Stanford has had an influential career spanning decades, and was constantly saying Theranos wouldn’t work.
This is the first mention of Dr. Irani:
“Oh my god, he knows Prof. Irani!” Anaida exclaimed.
‘You know this Prof. Irani?”
“She’s this—-” an impressed smile spread over Anaida’s face, “Genius. Prodigy. Superfreak genius professor.”
“Isn’t everyone, at Berkeley?”
“Yeah, she’s that much better than all of them. You know, in our first semester, — we have semesters at Cal, not quarters —- we had to attend this breadth course where all the researchers from different parts of the university would give us a talk about what their lab was working on. She talked about her lab and the opportunities there for students in computer science, and I was swept off my feet.”
“She must be really special, eh? You’re never impressed by anyone.”
“She shows up, this old, old, old lady, with long, long, long white hair. And I’m just there, totally impressed, like ‘I want to be her when I grow up.”
“You want to be an old lady?” Misha asked, confused.
“With long hair!” Anaida said, caressing her long, thick, waist-length hair.
This is how I introduce Dr. Irani:
“Who’s the next speaker?” Anaida asked.
Just then, a tiny woman with sharp cheekbones and long, long, white hair walked on stage.
“Victoria Irani.” Bailey said. “She’s apparently a legend in mental health research.”
And this is how her audience reacts to her
As Victoria Irani moved to her slide titled ‘Questions?’, the entire ballroom broke into applause. Anaida couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t sat fidgeting when she had to listen to an hour long presentation. The first time she had heard Dr. Irani speak, back in grad school, during the sessions for young researchers, the audience had reacted much the same way. Her friends had talked about behavioral neuroscience the whole long walk to lunch. Now, a decade later, she could imagine how this talk, which talked of leveraging ads-targeting mechanisms to identify the genetic origins of mental health issues, would basically be the first, and likely, the only thing people would remember about this conference.
The audience rose to its feet and continued applauding. Anaida got up and applauded as loud as she could. Dr. Irani snappy, no-nonsense manner really hooked anyone with the smallest scientific bone in their body.
“I want to be that impressive when I grow up.” she said.
Bailey and Misha laughed. “She’s very impressive.” Bailey said, “She is so confident in her research. No second-guessing. No weasel words.”
“She reminds me of these turn-of-the-century interdisciplinary scientists.” Misha said, “Such focus on the problem she’s working on, and she’s really sharp in looking for all possibilities in the universe of solutions. I don’t think she’d ever say anything like ‘that’s not my problem’. Or ‘that’s not my area of expertise’.”
Dr. Irani took the applause with a zen-like calm, and beamed and nodded at the audience patiently, waiting for them to finish.
“I’ve heard she sits down with you if you have a paper deadline, and even helps you with the LaTeX. My friends worked in her lab a long time ago.” Bailey said.
“She completed her PhD at 21!” the Asian woman on the other side of Bailey said. “She finished undergrad at 16!”
Then our main characters actually meet her, and she minces no words.
"Dr. Irani!" she exclaimed "I love your work!"
Victoria Irani stopped and smiled at them. "Thank you," she said.
"I've been fascinated with your approach of using data science in mental health since your talk in my first year of gradschool. I went to Cal." she rattled off.
"It's a great speaker series isn't it? I helped put it together. I'm so glad grad students benefit from it."
"In fact, I’m so inspired by your talk today, that I’m considering joining this startup that works on using tech in detecting mental health issues!" Anaida lied excitedly.
“What’s this startup?” Dr. Irani’s face hardened and her eyes narrowed.
Anaida’s eyes shone. She had touched a nerve.
“Oh, it’s this new unicorn. Morrowsys.” she said. “They seem to be making some pretty cool innovations on that front!”
Dr. Irani’s eyes blazed, and she swallowed. “Don’t do that.” she said in a clipped voice. “Academia is probably the best place for that kind of interdisciplinary research.”
“Mmhmm?” Anaida said, her eyes wide.
“What’s your name?” Dr. Irani said, with a stilted smile.
“Anaida.” said Anaida.
“Well, Anaida, these startups don’t really have ethics, people’s lives are at stake with this kind of work. You want to go somewhere with more ethics oversight.”
“Really? I thought—-”
“That is indeed the case. Cashflow is also hard for these startups unless they agree to work on the terms set by investors with interests that might be at odds.”
“But MorrowSys is funded by really important people in Washington DC who—-”
Dr. Irani gave a knowing smile.
“Anaida, I take it you’re Persian?”
“No, Indian, but the name is Persian.”
“Parsee?”
“No, my mother just liked this musician called Anaida. She was Parsee.”
“Your mother?”
“No, the musician.”
“In any case, Anaida, you’re no stranger to stories of people running away in the face of persecution.”
Dr. Irani probably meant the story of the Parsees escaping from Iran in the 7th century and ending up on the west coast of India, but Anaida was familiar with more recent events.
“Yes,” Anaida said as she nodded vigorously.
“There’s two types of people, Anaida.” Dr. Irani said, her face uncomfortably close to Anaida’s. Those that want to eliminate persecution, and those who want a seat at the persecutors’ table.”
Anaida gulped. She didn’t like how much Dr. Irani said her name.
“Pick wisely.” Dr. Irani said, and then smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and walked away, gathering her long, white hair in a ponytail and letting it loose again.
Anaida watched her retreating back, her body still shivering from Dr. Irani’s cutting coldness
She’s going to come back and do more badass things, possibly avenging her friend’s death, but it definitely won’t be in a Molly Weasley-Bellatrix Lestrange style cheesy fight scene.
How do you like Dr. Irani? Tell me at lila.vasudevan@gmail.com (or respond to this email)!