Bernice's Blog

June 12, 2018 (draft)

Searching for a New Lena

The search is on to replace Lena with a standard test image that doesn't feed gender stereotypes and objectify women. Search for a New Lena

This reminded me of my personal experience with Lena, which I thought you might enjoy.

When I was doing image processing in the early days at IBM, I didn't want to use Lena because I thought the message was unprofessional, and I didn't like Cheryl Tiegs in her see-through bathing suit either.

<insert Lena, Cheryl, and that seductive image used in eye-movement studies>

My colleagues (men) told me that these images weren't interesting because of their sex appeal, but only because of the gradual variations in hue, saturation, and luminance. So I chose an image of a pig, instead, which I secretly called my "male chauvanist pig" : - )

<insert pig image>