This is the best blogpost I’ve read in awhile and it came from @DivergentRays ’ excellent website, which I spent a lot of time on last night.
“A registered nurse, Shawna Kaye Green Hall (b.1951) belonged to the early webmasters who came to the web either shortly before or shortly after their retirement. In 1999 she mentions on her me.html that she will retire in 3 or 4 years. Contrary to the common belief that the amateur web was build by 13 year old boys, it were mostly much older people who took care about making, collecting, and organizing interface graphics, like back and home buttons, welcome signs, etc, as well as decorative elements, like bullets, rules, background images. Think of Lucy and Alan Richmond, who retired from NASA to start stars.com, where the first web developers could find tools and elements to make their pages; Royal Frazier, founder of the first GIF gallery; Randy D. Ralph who put together the Icon Bazar; not to mention Chuck Poynter; who we should thank for the Dancing girl and other early GIFs.”
Thank you! This is what I’ve been wittering on about since I discovered the new age of websites. I was part of all that. Making graphics etc. Being a member of many groups for women on the 'net, such as Netsisters and the Gardenhouse, to name the two largest. And all the web competitions; the Site Fights, the Rumbles etc. It was a wild and exciting time to be into building personal websites.
I too was on the younger side back then but remember often coming across graphics made by older women. Not only websets, but I remember pixel art that went by a different name. Like “tags”? Those were usually paid.
I also remember the presence of older women in many online spaces. I became obsessed with The Sims shortly after it came out and used to lurk a lot of the gallery stories and CC sites. Many players were in their 20s/30s and there was a whole contigent of people who would casually mention being retired or being grandmothers. Same with other simulation games, actually.
It’s funny that there’s a whole perception of that era of the web being dominated by adolescent boys when my experience of it was on a side of it that had soooo many women and girls and they were doing all the cool things.
