Lena Forsén

[Jamie123]

If you recognize this picture...

...the chances are you're either a researcher in image processing, or else you know someone who is, or else you're a general tech-junkie who's looked through lots of computing books and journals and magazines. My office is is right next door to a computer vision laboratory, so I'm well used to seeing this picture all over the place.

This is Lena Forsén - sometimes called Lena Söderberg. (Her first name is pronounced so as to rhyme with "tenor", not "cleaner".) The picture first appeared in Playboy in 1972 as a full-nude centrefold. This is just a crop of the head and shoulders. (I only recently saw the complete picture for the first time, and I wouldn't dare post it - especially here!) Back in the 1970s when image processing was still in its infancy, a bunch of nerdy postdocs were looking for a picture to test their algorithms on. There happened to be a copy of Playboy lying around in the lab (you know what geeks are like!) and they decided that as well as being rather easy on the eye, this had all the properties they were looking for in a test image. So thanks to Miss Forsén (or Söderberg - whichever you prefer) we now have jpeg!

Since then it's been the test image for the entire computer vision community. Open any journal on image processing, and you can bet you'll see Lena looking seductively back at you:

It used to puzzle me why they always used this same image, but it's obvious when you think about it: it's about comparing "like with like" and minimizing the number of variables. If you want to compare your own algorithm with someone else's, you'll get more more meaningful results if you apply it to the same data set that they used. And by curious chance, poor Lena has become that data set.

But now Lena's days could be numbered. There's a movement afoot called "Losing Lena" to have the image banned, on the grounds that it "objectifies women", "promotes tech-bro culture" and "makes women feel unwelcome in STEM". (Because "the girl" is sitting passively in the picture and that's all girls are good for - its no use asking them to write the code or solve the equations or develop the algorithms). They've even made a film about it which features Lena herself (now 69, with umpteen grandkids) who wants the image "retired".

And this is all very curious, when you consider that the first ever computer programmer was a woman. Whatever would Ada Lovelace have made of it all?

Edited December 7, 2020 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

5 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

If you recognize this picture...

Yes, it looks much like:

Side by side with Lena, it is almost impossible to see the "old woman."

Edited December 7, 2020 by Carborendum

[Jamie123]

1 hour ago, Carborendum said:

Yes, it looks much like:

Side by side with Lena, it is almost impossible to see the "old woman."

I remember when I first saw the young woman/old woman picture. It was at college - the instructor told us to look at the picture and write down how old the woman was. I saw the young woman first, so I put 20. The student next to me said I was crazy, and she must be at least 80. Even when it was explained to him, he refused to accept there was a young woman in the picture. (I think the problem was he had neve seen an Edwardian headdress before.)