First Soft Landing on a Comet Sparks… Outrage About a Shirt?

Emily Newton

On November 12, 2014, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Probe succeeded in dropping a robotic lander on Comet 67P. This was an amazing feat because no mission in history has ever attempted a soft landing on a comet. The mission received worldwide attention. Unfortunately, not all of the attention was positive or even about the comet…

One of the scientists, Matt Taylor, interviewed earlier in the day of the landing wearing a bowling shirt that featured nearly nude women in provocative poses. Some people found his attire to be far from appropriate calling the shirt “sexist” and “ostracizing” and claimed “such casual sexism is what drives women away from STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math)”. The incident resulted in a flood of tweets with hashtags #Shirtstorm and #Shirtgate and even led to news articles quoting “One small step for man, one giant leap backward for women”.

Still, others came to the support of Taylor saying that the criticism is just unnecessary. London Mayor Boris Johnson said that Taylor should not be apologizing and the public should be praising his accomplishments with the Rosetta Project. Daily Caller even published an article titled “#Shirtstorm: When The Brilliant Are Hurt By Casual Marxism”.

A few days later, Taylor appeared on a television briefing and said, “The shirt I wore this week, I made a big mistake, and I’ve offended many people, and I am very sorry about this.”

Who would have thought that a shirt would overshadow a comet landing?