Worst Professor Ever

While the new design is generally going over well, several people have said they missed the original picture, which was me burning my PhD in a bikini, with one even going so far as to say it really captured my persona.

Well, in the first place, y’all don’t know me. It was getting a little weird to have people expect me to be brunette  — did they not realize it was a wig? And worse yet, did they expect me to show up in a bikini wherever I went?

Degrees = toast

That picture captured my rebellion against a very specific form of academic social repression: the idea that smart women are not allowed to have any hint of sexuality about them. At all. Period. End of Stop.

(Yes, that is exactly why you laughed so hard. As a humor theorist, I was well aware of the incongruity formula at work: PhD + cheesecake = haha.)

It’s pretty obvious that women can’t win here. As Tina Fey noted, many men think you’re not worth listening to if you’re not sexually interesting. But even while damaged girls everywhere are enthusiastically equating their worth with their fuckability, the desire to look attractive also means you’re not worth listening to because you’re a) too stupid to realize the urges you’re provoking, b) a deliberately superficial, unfeminist trollop, or c) perversely, willfully not interested in being taken seriously.

The Sexy Librarian archetype MUST DIE, for it rests on the assumption that smart and sexual are opposite enough to be juxtaposed.

At least that’s was the message I was getting. One of my friends used to call me “The Porn Star Professor,” not because she actually felt I deserved this title but colleagues often gave me unwitting Looks of Disapproval. The combination of (shortish! flat!) blonde hair, difficult-to-conceal rack, and refusal to wear glasses apparently screamed “please do not treat me as a serious professional.”

Oh, Tina, I love you so but I fear part of your success came from wearing glasses...

To a certain extent, that was my choice. I could have frumped it up, and that is absolutely what you’re supposed to do if you want to be taken seriously. I did at first, but then got fed up, refused and eventually left the field that insisted my PhD didn’t count without the correct rites to avoid “distracting” everyone.

(There is a workaround here, by the way, which is looking attractive accidentally. That’s totally okay, and in fact preferred. As Cynthia Heimel brilliantly noted, this was Marilyn Monroe’s thing, to jiggle around in a state of near unconsciousness. What fun!)

Now, I would never walk into an office wearing a bikini and expect to be taken seriously — and yes, that’s one reason I didn’t want that picture on the header – but fretting about cleavage ( = female attractiveness = any sort of obvious feminine form) is another issue altogether.

A Virginia Tech job hunting site says it outright : “cleavage is not business-appropriate (despite what you see in the media)” and later clucks “Don’t be deluded!” in the “for Women” section. Um, thanks, Patronizing Big Brother Business Advice Site, because otherwise I might have believed that Sex and the City could happen to me! On a managerial forum, a recent post by a male manager who felt his co-worker’s cleavage was inappropriate set off a whole nother debate, with one woman noting that if you have big boobs, their visibility is basically unavoidable. So it’s a major pain in the ass to be told that your first priority in life is  hiding them.

And you kind of are. I never wore anything inappropriate but there the girls were, even if I wore a freaking turtleneck, inappropriately reminding everyone that women have boobs. Shame on me!

That’s the subtext of “professionalism” debates, that you can’t possibly expect people to focus on what you’re saying if your secondary sex characteristics are at all apparent.  And some jackass pseudo-scientist like Desmond Morris would probably use biology to define as natural what is, in fact, a behavioral decision on everyone’s part — everyone, not just the women involved. It’s called the social contract, or politeness, and the whole point of being evolved brainful neotenous monkeys (or whatever) is that we’re not allowed to use the “natural” defense anymore.

But no, I’m forgetting it’s my job to singlehandedly control everyone else’s biological inclinations. This has been one of the most dramatic successes of The Program, getting us to internalize, apply and self-impose The Eight Million Double Standards of Common Decency! Hahahahahahaha.

I really don’t get it. I ogle men’s asses all the time, but I don’t make it obvious, and even the most perfect male buttocks are no excuse for not focusing on my work or any other such nonsense. When faced with this crap, and people wigging out over Serena Williams (wow, she’s too sexy for her athleticism!) you can’t blame women for organizing Slutwalks to emphasize that “asking for it” is never a valid legal interpretation of rape.

So, although the Vandy students wore cleavage so low I found it distracting, I would never have thought to tell them this entitled bystanders to behave in any particular way.

I would, however, tell them you pick your battles. If you’re in desperate need of that job, it’s not the time to make Slutwalk-style stand on your right to wear cleavage. On the other hand, if nobody ever pushes boundaries, nothing changes, so maybe wait until you’re indispensable before letting your freak flag fly. There’s no single right answer here, and it’s not simply a matter of personal choice to be who you are or not caring what anybody else thinks because societies — social contracts — just don’t work that way.

I would also tell someone who needs a job to get a great haircut and interview outfit. Insisting that looks can’t matter at all is just naive escapism that usually conceals an active agenda against those wanting to look attractive.  And who the hell knows, maybe you’re like that yourself and would really like to work with others of your ilk, getting together over lunch and calling all of those stupid superficial lookists “sluts”. Fine, great, go ahead and have fun with it. I’ll be shopping for scarlet letters in the meantime.

That picture was a single, joyous moment of escape. But it wasn’t me for all time, or even for most of the time. In fact, I’m getting some up-to-date photos taken for my websites. The photographer said the current header picture was “cute and flirty” and I groaned and told her that, while it was a cute picture, it was everything I hated about being a professor. So she asked what I wanted to look like in the new pictures and I hadn’t a clue. Except that I would not be wearing glasses, and I would wear cleavage if I damned well felt like it.