This feedback makes it clear that acting feminine is considered a weakness, instead of a strength. You shouldn't be ashamed to look beautiful, wear dresses and make-up, and present cute slides with a pink theme and occasional kitty picture.
This is what the whole "like a girl" is about: if you express your femininity in the things you do and the way you look, people associate that with incompetence.
Bright colors in slides, whether pink, blue, purple, or orange, is distracting in a presentation. It takes attention off the information being presented and puts it on the design choices.
Visual ticks - wringing your hands, messing with your hair, licking your lips - make you appear less confident, and has nothing to do with gender.
The vocal tick - making every sentence sound like a question - is distracting no matter who presents it.
These aren't gender specific criticisms in any way. Regardless, unless you're addressing a gender specific topic, why bring your gender into it in the first place? I'm interested not in the person presenting about algorithms, but the algorithms themselves.
A man would be rightly chastised for presenting a de-duplicaton talk with bright pastel blue slides, pictures of beer, and rubbing his forehead while presenting, why shouldn't a woman?
What you just said only applies to the pink slides comment. Excess fidgeting and uptalk are gender-neutral and make a presentation weaker whether you're male or female.
Black and yellow, beloved combination of many Star Wars fans, also known as "death of readable presentations" (yes, I got that comment and I've learned to never do this again)
what would be a stereotypically masculine presentation? not trying to bait or anything, I'm just curious what that would be? Some kind of bro-ish stuff included?
This is so not true. Suits are heavily discriminated against in our industry. If you wear a suit to a conference you probably won't get much attention.
EDIT: I must go to the wrong programming conferences, never see suits. Wish the down voters would just share their experiences!
I did not downvote, but I personally don't have any issues with people wearing suits - wear what you like. Only thing I've disliked seeing are popped collars, but more as a warning sign to stay away from the people wearing them if I can help it.
I also do not penalize for dress during interviews either. It's a distraction from the important things, and irrelevant to the answers to the questions of coding ability and culture fit.
I don't think cute things are seen as sign of weakness. At least I haven't seen anyone complain that some octocat was too cute for a professional company like github.
This is what the whole "like a girl" is about: if you express your femininity in the things you do and the way you look, people associate that with incompetence.