Satanosphere

In a new blopost called I Know Sexy Librarians. You, Governor, Are No Sexy Librarian Tragic Optimist Ann Z takes issue with all of the homina hub-bub surrounding VPILF Sarah Palin. I like this blopost a lot!

But you know what? Despite the fact that it’s totally not cool to use your mayoral abilities to try banning books, and despite the fact that yes, semantically it is kind of bullshit to use the epithet ‘librarian’ in conjunction with ’sexy’ to describe a hot woman wearing just about anything plus glasses … I have to take issue with the Traj in an important way.

Here’s the thing. She wants to take the image of sexy librarian back somehow and make it about information archival prowess or something. I don’t know, but librarians have been waging this battle for EVER… and it just doesn’t get much traction, because:

1. you can’t abbreviate this cultural construct any better than ’sexy librarian’ (or sometimes ’school teacher’ is used the same way) — like you can’t get off on a picture of a ’sexy woman with a slight frown gazing down her nose over glasses, who has her hair pinned up in some fashion’ — it’s a code to say ’sexy librarian’ and nobody means actual librarians any offense here; and then
2. if you’re not someone who is somehow physically appealing or attractive or alluring, then it really doesn’t matter one bit if you are “the person who can find what you need, who can juggle and evaluate and sift through and sort through and organize so much information your head spins, and then shows you the best of the best and a couple of great ways to keep on searching should you need to find more” because that in and of itself is not inherently sexy (granted, of course Rule 34).

Which is a long way of saying, “If you smell bad and/or have horrible hygeine and/or present yourself without care and/or have any number of social disabilities (e.g. not knowing when to shut up about yourself) you’re not sexy to most people, no matter how amazing you are about information.” Which is still a pretty damn long way of saying “the stereotypes work, don’t take it so personally.”

Last 5 posts by Quacky

• LET ME TOUCH HIM - November 19th, 2008
• I'll just put this right here - November 19th, 2008
• Look who's sticking out like a sore thumb - November 6th, 2008
• A New Hope - November 5th, 2008
• Please Bother to Vote - November 4th, 2008

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