Lena Is Still in the Room

Ryan Cleland (he/him)

TW: Sexism, harassment 

Lena Forsén was a Swedish model featured in the November 1972 issue of Playboy. More than fifty years later, she appears again—this time not in print, but projected on the screen in my computer science class. Why?

To understand that, we need to go back to the summer of 1973. Alexander Sawchuk, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, was preparing material for a colleague’s conference paper. Tired of the grainey, outdated test images used since the 1960s, Sawchuk, a graduate student, and the lab manager set out to find something more visually striking: ideally, a glossy, high-resolution photo of a human face. 

As luck would have it, someone walked into the lab with a recent issue of Playboy. They opened it to the centerfold and found what they were looking for. They carefully cropped the  top third of the image—Forsén's face—and digitized it. That image, known as “Lena,” became one of the most widely used test images in image processing, and also one of the most controversial. 

In 2019 Forsén herself told the filmmakers behind the documentary Losing Lena, "I retired from modeling a long time ago. It's time I retired from tech, too... Let's commit to losing me." In 2024, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  banned the use of the image in all of its publications. 

So why is she now staring back at me in class? 

To find out, I visited senior computer graphics lecturer Dr. Fang Lue Zhang. 

Walking into his quiet office on the third floor of the Cotton Building, Zhang greeted me warmly. He said he  was “happy to be interviewed about this interesting question.” The image, he explained, is deeply embedded into the discipline. “Every course, every textbook has used it.” Still, he acknowledged that its continued use may now be alienating. 

“People realise it's probably not alright. Maybe because years ago people did not have as much concern or consideration, but now people have much more respect for more and more women in engineering and people start to rethink the history of whether it is correct or not,” he said. 

Zhang was clear that he personally doesn't find the image inherently offensive. “Lots of my friends who are image processors, most of them do not have feelings about whether it brings disadvantage or any effects to the field,” he said. “Maybe I am wrong, but that’s what I get.” 

To understand whether Zhang’s view was widely held, I asked some of my classmates. Their responses varied. 

One woman told me that the image’s origins made her feel unwelcome. “Choosing a sexualised photo of a woman, even if she isn’t fully nude, sets a precedent. As a woman in computer science, that doesn’t feel very inviting.”

Another student shrugged it off: “You know compsci students don’t go outside—they don’t touch grass.”

And another said, “I guess it doesn’t bother me that much. To me it's just a lovely picture of a lovely lady and if I didn't know anything about the associations of playboys I wouldn't bat an eyelid.” 

The image clearly provokes a range of responses. But if even a small number of students find it alienating, does it belong in the classroom? Computer Science has long suffered from a gender imbalance. According to the New Zealand Technology Industry Association, women make up just 28 percent of the tech workforce. But it wasn’t always this way. In the early days of computing, many programmers were women. Programming was considered low-status clerical work, akin to typing or operating a telephone switchboard.  

In 1967, Cosmopolitan published a piece titled “The Computer Girls,” encouraging women  to pursue the field. In contrast, by 1985, 38% of computer science jobs in the U.S. were held by women. As computing grew more prestigious and lucrative, men began to dominate the field. Cultural changes—like marketing personal computers as boys’ toys and persistent gender sterotypes—contributed to the decline in women entering tech.

Many of the women I spoke to described social barriers that made computer science feel unwelcoming. Several pointed to a sense of exclusion, saying it often felt as if cliques had already formed, leaving them on the outside—or worse, feeling unsafe. 

“I didn’t know who I was gonna sit next to, who I was gonna be comfortable with,” one student told me. “Proportionally, compared to other classes, the chance of sitting next to someone uncomfortable felt high.” She recalled one unsettling incident in math class.  “I had a guy who stalked me that day. He followed me around a bit. I didn’t see him again, but I found out later he had asked out a friend, and a bunch of other friends, too.” 

Stories like hers make it clear that the issue isn’t simply the gender imbalance. It’s the behavior of a select few which can create an environment where some women feel unsafe. 

As another student put it: “I’ve realised it’s not all gross guys. The problem is I just don’t always wanna take my chances.” 

Against this context, using the “Lena” image in class felt like more than a historical artifact—it felt like a message. It reinforces the sense that Computer Science remains a space where women are expected to tolerate discomfort and objectification. It's normalised. For students who already feel a minority in class, being asked to engage with an image rooted in Playboy history is incredibly tone-deaf. That discomfort, students told me, was compounded by the broader culture of the field. 

Still, there are signs of change. Some students said they’ve found comfort in the increasing presence of women in teaching roles. “It would be nice if there was more acknowledgement in class about ethics, and that women’s voices are so few that often they don’t come up,” one student told me. She praised her lecturer Andrew Chalmers, saying, “I would feel comfortable going to him—he would take me seriously.” 

Another remembered a standout teacher: “One of the most amazing teachers ever was a lady teaching Information Systems.” She also appreciated that her group projects had gender balance, with two men and two women.

Even Dr. Zhang echoed this point. “More female staff members will attract more female students,” he said. “When I studied, my class had only 30 students and just three women. But now, in our staff, we definitely have more than that—nearly 40%.” 

Change takes time—but representation matters. 

Last month, I travelled to Tāmaki Makaurau and sat down with Vicki Mercer—my programming teacher of four years, and without question the best I’ve ever had. In 1985, she graduated from the then North Texas State University with a Bachelors in English and “Information Systems”.

We spoke about what she called the “dark ages” of computer science, and what it was like to be there during the field’s formative years. Between stories of hole-punching code and writing in Assembly, she reflected on how surprisingly mixed her classes were. Her first programming instructor  was a woman, and she said she always felt comfortable in those early classrooms.

Growing up in an era when the “Lena” image was widely circulated in computing circles,  Mercer said she hadn’t even heard of it. 

Her experience echoes what many of my peers had shared: the best antidote to misogyny or exclusion in tech isn’t debate over symbols—it’s increasing the number of women in the room. 

Mercer moved to New Zealand in 1996. Since then, she said, the number of female students in her classes has remained relatively steady: “sometimes there were four or five, some years only one or three and several years there were none.” 

Mercer recently stepped back from her role as ICT manager and teacher at Glendowie College. One of her former students,  Cat, now teaches programming in her place—a small but telling sign of progress.  

As for the image that sparked these conversations, “Lena” was quietly removed  from our Assignment.  Dr. Zhang cited  evolving standards. “Just remove it for now and maybe later we can replace it with another Image.”

There was no formal announcement, no classroom discussion. But the decision mattered. For many students—especially those who had felt uneasy or excluded—it marked a subtle yet meaningful shift: evidence that the culture of computer science can evolve, that it can listen, and that it doesn't need to cling to the past to teach the future. 

In a field so often committed to innovation, perhaps it's only fitting that the conversation around who belongs—and what messages we send, even unintentionally—continues to move forward.