Editing 1202: Girls and Boys

{{comic
| number    = 1202
| date      = April 22, 2013
| title     = Girls and Boys
| image     = girls and boys.png
| titletext = To get more knowledge
}}

==Explanation==
This comic and [[2771: College Knowledge]] are plays on the popular [https://onsizzle.com/i/girls-go-to-college-to-get-more-knowledge-boys-go-1121310 school-yard taunt], "Girls go to college, to get more knowledge; boys go to Jupiter, to get more stupider," also commonly heard as "Boys go to Mars, to get more candy bars; girls go to Jupiter, to get more stupider." The words "boys" and "girls" may be interchanged, depending on the gender of the person chanting (or how intelligent they are, for that matter). The schoolyard taunt embodies the competitiveness and separation commonly seen between young boys and girls, and ideas about the superiority of one's gender. 

It should be noted that, historically, most higher education was preferentially or exclusively reserved for men, but that changed rapidly over the course of the 20th century. By the late 1970s more women than men were enrolling in college, and that trend has only increased, to the point where women make up nearly 60% of undergraduate students in American colleges and universities. This is an issue of substantial concern, because it reflects national trends in men failing to achieve academically. This comic may be pointing out that this gendered competition, which is often inculcated from an early age, is counter-productive, because it focuses on one gender succeeding at the expense of the other. In truth, human achievement is maximized when both men and women are given opportunities to gain skills and succeed.

The comic subverts the original rhyme by having both girls ([[Megan]]) and boys ([[Cueball]]) go to college to gain knowledge, and then using that knowledge to go to {{w|Jupiter}} as part of a {{w|space program}}, working in cooperation with other men (another Cueball-like guy) and women ([[Ponytail]]).

Going "to Jupiter, to get more stupider" is ironic considering that human beings have not yet even gone to Mars, so to go to Jupiter would take a huge amount of knowledge, investment, and further development of current technology. Likewise, people in space programs going to Jupiter would have advanced degrees, a great deal of knowledge, and a motivation to seek out more knowledge. Space programs and going to Jupiter would require the cooperation of many different people, men and women included, and probably even different countries, rather than the divisive atmosphere of the schoolyard.

The title text points out that by going to Jupiter you would ''get more knowledge'', which is generally the purpose of any space program; that is, the purpose is to advance science, and it wouldn't actually be dumb at all. Therefore, the task of going to Jupiter is absolutely dependent on going to college, cooperation, and getting more knowledge; entirely the opposite of what the schoolyard taunt suggests.

The phallic connotation of a rocket take-off picture, associated with the "boys and girl" picture introduction, also hints at "go to Jupiter" suggesting in that case a metaphor for sexual intercourse (to rise to seventh heaven). "To gain more knoledge" means to learn to overpass this competitiveness and separation, the tendency for competitiveness and separatioon between boys and girls ceases when one ''learn'' to touch or associate properly with someone of the other gender.

==Transcript==
:[Megan facing left is sitting on a stool at a table while studying. She is bent over her paper writing on it, while her laptop is standing open on top of two books lying in front of her. In front of her, just inside the panel to the left is the back and neck of another student sitting on a chair visible, with only the rear leg and back of the chair shown. Behind her just inside the panel to the right is the front end of another table, one leg visible, and here lies a pile of paper, as tall as the two books. Two frames above Megan narrates the poem:]
:Girls go to college
:To get more knowledge

:[Cueball facing right, is sitting on a chair at a table also studying. He is holding a piece of paper up in one hand head turned toward it. His other hand holds a page, with text shown as thin lines, in the open book lying in front of him. His laptop is standing open behind the book. In front of him, just inside the panel to the right is the back and arms of another student sitting on a chair visible, with only the rear leg and back of the chair shown. Behind him just inside the panel to the left is the front end of another table, one leg visible, and here lies a pile of four books. Two frames above Cueball narrates the poem:]
:Boys go to college
:To get more knowledge

:[Space launch control room with Megan and Cueball standing in the middle of the room working together. Megan sitting behind a table with a rectangular item on top, holds a model of the capsule that goes on the top of a space craft in her hand pointing to it with the other hand while Cueball standing to the right gestures at the model as well. To the left sits Ponytail in an office chair, she is wearing a head-set and sits in front of screen, just inside the panel, she seems to be controlling something, but no keyboard is visitable. Above her is another screen attached to the wall (off-panel). On the right there sits a Cueball-like guy on a chair, who is also working on some screen, which is mainly off-panel as is the front of his head. On the wall behind there hangs two pictures. The first shows the curve of a white planet against black space, two continents or clouds visible. There is an insert in the top left corner with a small drawing, and some text or number (unreadable) in the top right corner. The other picture seems to show a space craft with two large solar panels, white on the black black background of space. Has some similarities to the international space station. There are four white lines representing text labels pointing to different parts. One frame at the top narrates the poem:]
:Girls and boys

:[A large gray rocket with two lifter rockets, one on each side, launch into the black night, rising up with white fire out the end on top of a huge pile of gray exhaust smoke, that billows out filling the entire width at the ground level, where gray lines stars out on the black ground. A white rectangle right above the tip of the rocket narrates the poem (which first ends in the title text):]
:Go to Jupiter

==Trivia==

Going to Jupiter was most famously explored in the film {{w|2001: A Space Odyssey (film)|2001}} and its sequel {{w|2010: Odyssey Two|2010}}, where a space ship lands on the moon {{w|Europa (moon)|Europa}}. The film {{w|Outland (film)|Outland}} is set on a mining operation on Jupiter's moon {{w|Io (moon)|Io}}.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Space]]