Crash Test Girl Read online

That said, I’m a grown woman with a sexual appetite and a wealth of knowledge and experience. I like attention. I love my body and the way it makes me feel. Like most grown human beings, I’ve come a long way in my sexuality. There was a time when I was a confused virgin no one wanted to sit near, let alone have sex with. It’s a bit of a catch-22 to have gone through the trouble of developing and learning the power of my sexuality, only to be objectified for it later on.

  LOSE IT

  I lost my virginity at eighteen, methodically. I had a plan: A good friend’s older brother had a reputation for being promiscuous, and he was a drummer so I knew he was an easy mark. He was in college, and I was a senior in high school. The entire encounter was blessedly brief. It was completely devoid of anything that you could describe as special, passionate, or loving. We had spent the evening at the Sick and Twisted animation festival downing Budweisers from a backpack. (That’s right. Beavis and Butt-Head as foreplay.) We were both drunk, and all I remember about that night was a lot of awkwardness. He had no idea it was my first time. He thought it was a casual hookup. Poor guy.

  He asked me years later, “Why did you let me do that?”

  I told him, “I kind of used you.”

  I wanted to get that task out of the way before college: 1) Fill out college applications, 2) Get a summer job, 3) De-virginate. I certainly could have waited for the fairy tale ideal of having sex for the first time with your one true love, but I was deeply suspicious of fairy tales. (Why would princesses always have to have some sort of injury or near-death experience to get the prince? Makes no sense.) I went for it because true love wasn’t happening for me, and once I was rid of the burden of inexperience, I could relax and find love without the stigma of virginity.

  Problem was, nothing really changed. I was still the same girl. The constant lesson of adolescence, one you need to learn again and again, is that you aren’t defined by others. ASSERTION put me in the driver’s seat of my sexuality, but it didn’t take me anywhere I really wanted to go.

  Honestly, I had no idea about the power of sex. The nonevent of losing my virginity did inspire me to learn more, and, for many years, I was a very active student.

  THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN ABOUT SEXUALITY IS TO SAMPLE, AND SAMPLE WIDELY

  Try on Many Skins

  My college years and early twenties were a wild time of random hookups and walks of shame, not an uncommon story. I was attracted to dangerous-seeming men, the outside-the-box kind of guys with tattoos and punk haircuts who were into nefarious things, like pool hustling and maybe pot dealing. I’ve ridden on the back of many motorcycles to and from skeevy dive bars and made out with “not boyfriend material” bikers. Musicians, artists, actors, and poets were my favorites. If a dude came off like a broke, brooding outsider? He got my attention. If he seemed responsible with excellent career prospects, he’d get nowhere with me. It was my rebellion from my vanilla suburban small town.

  Yuck. So cliché!

  I had an all-too-common pathology: Good girl likes bad boys. What made them so irresistible? I convinced myself that outsider slackers were “honest” and “brave.” Bad boys radiate confidence, and I sought what I didn’t have in them.

  Musicians were the best. I had one of the sexiest times of my life when I hung around with my two best guy friends from that period of time. Both had that heroin chic, starving artist, just-got-out-of-a-recording-session look. Somehow, their consummate passion for music translated into an overt sexuality. It radiated from them like a shock wave. The three of us would lie around in a dark room, candles flickering and Jane’s Addiction on the CD player. I was in my Courtney Love phase in silk black slips with smudged black eyeliner and combat boots. I lounged between them—we were always fully dressed—and they each ran the tips of their fingers up and down my arms and legs and over my body for what seemed like hours. That was it. It never went farther. It was the big tease, the thrill of the chase. We knew the excitement was in the potential, the kinetic energy. If anything actually happened, it would have ruined the friendship. Instead, it was like a powder keg near a fire.

  You can’t judge a lover by his cover. A guy who dresses like a criminal might be a feminist intellectual. I found that the toughest looking were the most tender. From these two undercover good boys in bad boys’ clothing, I learned that the potentiality of sex could be hotter than the actuality. Not even kissing was the hottest sex I ever had.

  I read feminist and erotic authors like Simone de Beauvoir and Anaïs Nin, and they stoked me to experiment further. I made out with a girl. Not so shocking now (thanks, Katy Perry), but it raised some eyebrows in the ’90s. It seemed rebellious, and therefore, I liked it. In hindsight, my desire for this girl wasn’t sexual. I wanted to be her, not make out with her. She was a talented artist who looked like Debbie Harry. We were drinking friends and, one night, we were hanging out with one of those sexy musician boys and it’s possible I kissed her so he would be impressed. But then he left, and I thought, Let’s try that again, just to see if I liked it. Experimentation requires sufficient data. By trying on many skins and attempting to define myself as a sexual person, I learned what I was—and wasn’t—into.

  It’s my opinion that sexuality is on a spectrum and we’re all sliding around on it. We waste a lot of precious time worrying about where we fall. Instead, we should all just be who we want to be. I kissed a lot of different people to learn about myself and what I liked. With a large sample, you get better results. I was very careful to be respectful and let them all know they weren’t part of a long-term study.

  One guy seemed like my perfect match. He checked every box for my ideal boyfriend: good looking, a writer, a good talker, a musician. He drove a rumbling muscle car. On paper, he looked like my ace. He adored me, but something was slightly off. He didn’t have the right scent. It wasn’t offensive, but I just didn’t care for it. It was so confusing. I wasn’t physically attracted to him, but I tried real hard to be, and kept dating him anyway.

  When I met Paul, I realized boxes don’t mean shit. Attraction had been a mystery for so long, and then it was solved with our first kiss. The smell of him, his look, his voice, his eyes, I felt pure animal attraction. Sex with him was powerful and easy. Even more powerful, Paul and I were in sync out of bed as well. During my promiscuous years, being smart and funny took a back seat to seduction. But with Paul, I realized the sexual potency of making someone want to talk to me, not just jump my bones. My wild days were fun but not fulfilling.

  Sexuality without feeling was falsely empowering. Being a rebel in this department didn’t add up to much. I fell in love with Paul, and finally understood what great sex was, because we wanted so much more from each other (and it didn’t hurt that he is totally sexy).

  IF YOU’VE GOT IT, FLAUNT IT

  Sexual Symbolism

  Almost immediately after the first episode of MythBusters (the one featuring my butt) aired, I became an unwitting, unlikely sex symbol. My behind went viral, and my sexuality was no longer in my hands.

  What to expect if you become a lust object of the nerdiverse?

  Fan sites devoted to your T-shirts.

  Fan pages of screenshots of your feet.

  GIFs of you greasing a shaft.

  A porno based on your show, starring someone who is supposed to look like you.

  Facebook pages for your butt.

  I wasn’t trying to be a sexy TV host. I was just being myself. If anything, I was going for asexual in my overalls and ponytails. But to our audience, I was a cute, upbeat, accessible girl on their screens, having fun doing stuff they cared about, and a meme was born.

  The internet is populated by cretins with too much time on their hands and just enough technical know-how to try to humiliate any woman that triggers their rabid misogyny. My attitude is, I didn’t make the GIFs or porn. I’m not responsible for them. They exist, but I have nothing to do with it, and, therefore, I can’t let it get to me. You can’t fight “rule 34.” (Not a nerd? Rule 34: �
�If it exists, there is porn of it.”)

  I don’t take the GIFs seriously, or chafe against the objectification. Other people get incensed on my behalf, however. I heard Jamie’s wife was annoyed with how I was portrayed. (Of course, Jamie is married to a rad feminist. Love her.) Maybe my skin thickened as the years passed, but I’d just shrug and say, “Whatcha gonna do?”

  Don’t get me wrong: Sexual objectification is inherently sexist. But it’s not like I could stop the internet. Getting upset didn’t serve me.

  This kind of thing happens to any female public figure (and many nonpublic figures). When the first female Dr. Who in the show’s fifty-plus-year history was announced, I set my stopwatch to see how long it would take for nude photos of her to appear online. (One day. What took so long?)

  YOU ARE BOTH FULLY IN CONTROL OF YOUR SEXUALITY, AND POWERLESS TO ITS INTERPRETATION FROM OTHERS

  The Fantasy

  About ten years ago, FHM, a men’s magazine, asked to photograph me doing a science experiment in my underwear and high heels. I would have preferred Vogue or Glamour, but they didn’t call. I was in a rebellious period, looking for a kind of performance art piece on sexuality and realness, and so after some consideration, I wanted to say “yes.” But a woman in power at the Discovery Channel heard about it, and called me and asked me not to do it.

  “It’s a huge mistake,” she said. “No one will ever take you seriously again if you do this.”

  I was shaken by her plea and almost reconsidered. But as “rebel” was my default mode, I suddenly wanted to do it even more. I saw this photo shoot as fighting against the fact that a woman couldn’t be a tomboy welder, and smart, and pretty. Saying “I’m serious” and “I’m sexy” should not be mutually exclusive. When the Discovery exec told me that posing in my underwear would diminish me, it felt like another weight the world put on me to hold me down. I know the executive was trying to help me, but she actually convinced me to do it. I defined myself, no one else. That’s what feminism means to me.

  I went to New York and worked with a team of professionals, the photographer and hair and makeup people, in a clean, classy studio. The sophisticated environment of the shoot did not reflect the magazine itself, which could only be described as “super cheeze.”

  It wasn’t a total exploitation. I wore a lab coat over my bra and showed only a little cleavage. I wear less at the beach. Discovery sent along Amy, aka “the Keeper of the Button.” Her sole job at the shoot was to make sure that my lab coat stayed closed. The photographer would ask me to undo the one button, and Amy would jump in and say, “I don’t think so.”

  The fantasy they were going for was something like, “The hair comes down, the glasses come off, and lookie here at the sexy scientist with the Bunsen burner!” I spent most of the shoot trying not to laugh. I enjoyed the day immensely. It was hilarious to pretend to do science in the ridiculous outfit and everyone there was in on the joke.

  I collected a new experience. It’s what I do.

  When I saw the raw pictures, I liked how I looked and felt excellent about their realness. Then, the photographer said they were going to photoshop the image to make me even better. I watched with slack-jawed shock as they ballooned my boobs and thinned my thighs and arms. The proportions suddenly looked absurd. I get why they blew up my chest, but did they have to shrink my guns? It’s sexy to look too weak to pick up a fork? Really?

  At the time, I thought the photoshopping was just a demonstration—one tech artist showing off for another—but they ran the altered images anyway. When the magazine came out, I laughed at how absurd it was. When I showed it to everyone at M5, they reacted the same way. Tory said, “Who is this Ginger Lab Barbie they’re calling Kari Byron? And where did those boobs come from?”

  Fun fact: The day before I left for this shoot I tried one of those “don’t try this at home” magic tricks where you make a fireball with the gas from a lighter and I accidentally burned off all my eyelashes. So the lashes in the photo were fake, too.

  In the end, I learned that objectification is about me, but it’s not me. The sex symbol and the actual woman are not one and the same. How could I feel personally objectified by an image that erased my realness? It might as well have been Jessica Rabbit. Talk about dehumanizing. The magazine was trying to sell an unrealistic “ideal” to readers who might then expect real women to look like that, which is a shame. The raw photos were so much sexier. I was proud of how I looked in them. I would have preferred they appeared in print and represented a real woman with a real body. To feel sexy in your realness, unbutton your figurative lab coat and show yourself to the world.

  Sexuality is a line to walk. You want to feel the power of it. You want to be wanted, but not to be wanted only for that. FHM magazine might have understood its readers, but they didn’t get the fans of MythBusters at all. The vast majority of them liked me for my personality and accessibility, not because I was a fake-boobed bimbo. The audience appreciated me as a full package, a real live woman who talks, chews gum, and fires a rocket at the same time.

  I am the geek girl next door.

  I’m as real as it gets, big arms and all.

  CREATE HUMAN LIFE

  Interestingly, my next big photo shoot was for Pregnancy magazine, and featured five photos of me holding a giant pickle, rocking in a chair, wearing a full-coverage trench coat, looking extremely real—and enormously pregnant. No one at MythBusters told me that I looked hot in those.

  You don’t often see pregnant women on television. Usually, when an actress is pregnant, she stands behind waist-high counters or carries a gigantic tote bag to hide the bump. Only on reality TV will you find women letting their Buddha bellies enter the screen before they do. Throughout my on-air pregnancy, women wrote to me, thanking me for being a visible working mother-to-be. I was grateful for the letters, but the truth is, I didn’t have a choice. We were in the middle of the shooting season when I popped. I guess the timing wasn’t ideal. Paul and I were actively trying, but we didn’t expect it to happen the first month.

  My first thought upon finding out I was knocked up: Yeah, baby! My second thought: Well, that’s the end of my career. How the hell is pregnancy going to work on MythBusters? I was super worried that the cast, execs, and crew would see me as a liability. Other women could wait until the last possible minute to share the news with their bosses. I couldn’t hold off on telling mine because my job would have to change. I couldn’t lift heavy objects, eat weird things, be painted with aluminum, or be around noxious gasses. I couldn’t participate in certain dangerous situations—speed driving or hang gliding, for example—that I’d ordinarily jump at.

  It actually turned out that my having to ask for help was a blessing for everyone. The producers saw how quickly we could get things done if Tory, Grant, and I weren’t solely responsible for cleaning up the whole shop after a shoot. Even after years on a hit show, we were still doing the grunt work.

  I used to be one of the guys, but now there was no denying I was a woman, with egg-making ovaries and an occupied uterus. Every day at work during those nine months, I crash tested pregnancy on Discovery. I was the first woman in the history of science entertainment TV to be visibly gestating on air. (FYI: Nine months is a myth. It’s really ten months or forty weeks.)

  If a man is expecting a baby, he is not defined by it. People don’t assume his schedule, focus, or commitment to the job will change. But when a woman is expecting, she has to contend with a new label: MOM. No one asks male colleagues, “Are you going to quit after the baby is born?” But a lot of people on the show and in my social circles asked me, and were surprised when I said, “Why the hell would I do that?” Pregnant women don’t actually transform into wood nymphs in flowing linen dresses and flower crowns who hum lullabies at their engorged bellies. I was pregnant, but I was still me.

  * * *

  BUMPS, BRUISES, BITES, AND BURNS

  I sustained countless injuries on MythBusters and other shows, all on beh
alf of science, and I’ve got the scars to prove it.

  Stomach burns. For an episode of Head Rush, against my better judgment, we were boiling water in a covered Erlenmeyer flask. Bending down to look, I said to the producer, “With nowhere for the steam to vent, aren’t we creating a pressure vessel, a bomb?” Just as I stood upright, the beaker exploded. Boiling water and glass blew into my stomach. I lifted my shirt up to find blistering second-degree burns on my skin. Two seconds earlier and it would have hit me in the face. I went to the hospital and got treated, but to this day, I have a scar that looks like a wolf when I get tan.

  Metal flakes in the eye. Once, while using a grinding tool on metal, a flake of it got through the side of my safety goggles and embedded in my eye. I had to have it removed by a doctor, because metal splinters rust in the eyeball and have to be drilled out.

  Backfire bruises. Every time I fired a rifle, I’d get huge bruises on my shoulders.

  Lost toenails. I once dropped a chunk of steel on my boot, which bruised my pinky toe so badly, my nail turned black and fell off.

  Bite marks. We did a myth about whether a guard dog could bite an arm off. I wore a protective suit, but when the dog bit me on the arm, I got a canine-mouth-shaped black-and-blue mark that didn’t fade for weeks.

  Internal rash. I didn’t know I was allergic to polyurethane until I inhaled fumes and found I was affected systemically. A rash would pop up randomly on the surface of my skin as red, tiny bumps itchier than poison oak.

  Hair removal via head mold. We made a mold of my head, and the release agent didn’t take, so when Tory pulled the casting off of my face, most of my eyelashes and eyebrows came with it. That hurt. The hairs are still embedded in it. I had to be very creative with makeup and false lashes for a while there.

  * * *

  I hadn’t changed, but the people around me sure did.