The New York Times has a couple articles of interest and my reaction to both is surprisingly caustic.

The first is about sexy wedding dresses. My initial thought was to be grumpy at the commenters over at Half Sigma as they suggest that girls that do this sort of thing are the kinds of girls that either nobody wants to marry (which, considering that it’s an article about wedding dresses is kind of inane) and that they’re the kinds of girls that will naturally leave the men high and dry because they’re not human beings with thoughts no less egotistical or self-centered as blog commenters but rather objects to be reviled for daring to think that they’re special and/or for flaunting what they have to offer.

Then, on second thought, I don’t really disagree with their appraisal and think that the urge to hippify and modernify all our traditions is aggravating and often tacky. Mumble grumble.

Then there’s another NYT article with an irritating “Move over boys, the girls are in town!!!” feel about how women are taking over the Internet:

On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet Sodevious.net, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

By “web sites” I assume that they mean the atrociously tacky and unoriginal world of MySpace pages and the self-absorbed world of LiveJournals. Let’s leave aside for a moment the self-centered self absorbed self-expressive nature of this site that makes me an utter hypocrite. The New York Times can cite all of the anecdotes that they want about girls that offer HTML pointers. Take a look at the people that actually code the websites and develop the applications that the girls make their cute little frilly animations and graphics on and then let’s tally by gender.

Pioneers? Please. They’re second and third wave giggly dilettantes that think that filling out a form and selecting a template is creative while what boys do is laugh-worthy.

See? What did I tell you? Grum-py…