Worst Professor Ever

Professors aren’t supposed to say “tits,” let alone have them. I know because I was one and, thanks to a Hungarian grandmother, I have a serious rack. As it turns out, cleavage is not endorsed by the American Association of University Professors.

And boy, are there are a lot of other things professors aren’t supposed to have. Blonde hair. Cute clothes. Sense of humor. A television. A life. But it was my looks that really got people. I’m not saying I’m Angelina Jolie or anything. Objectively, I’d go with “striking.” Good legs. Pretty popular with the fellas.[1] But waaaaay too hot to be a professor. You may ask where I get off making egotistical statements like that. But what else was I supposed to gazing upon a sea of shapeless ecru linen, non-ironic elbow patches, and bad brunette haircuts? And every time I told someone on the outside what I did, I’d get the same incredulous response: “You’re a professor?” Like I was trying to punk them or something.

My colleagues (that’s what we call co-workers in the Ivory Tower, “colleagues”) weren’t much better. To be fair, I bet they didn’t know what kind of disapproving expressions their faces were making. I’d also bet they couldn’t put their finger on what, exactly, was bothering them. I didn’t figure it out, either, until the first time I saw Lady Gaga — whoa, who was this couture-clad blonde bitch? She was clearly awesome, but she scared me a little bit.

Then I had a terrible thought: My God, I’m Lady Gaga to these people!

There’s also the fact that in grad school, one of my friends used to call me “the porn-star professor.” This was because, voluptuous mega-klutz that I was, it was entirely plausible that I’d accidentally re-enact some pornographic cliché where a busty astrophysics “professor” (wearing Clark Kent glasses and micro-mini lab coat, of course) trips and scatters her papers. Cue the cheap synth music and paunchy, over-endowed “research assistant.”[2]

Back then I didn’t know enough to wear a jacket over my t-shirt. After a while, though, you figure out that boobs don’t work in a classroom. It doesn’t matter if you’re showing actual cleavage or wearing a turtleneck; the mere act of having tits is unprofessional. Male students, especially, harass you in class and worse yet, they seem to like it when you shut them down. Suddenly you’ve become their personal dominatrix, and you’re not even getting paid the going rate.[3]

So you tone it down deliberately. After getting my PhD I never showed my legs at work. (Criminal, really.) Passing for a professor meant wearing pants — no, slacks. And blazers. Lots and lots of blazers to cover up the rack. No ankle, no cleavage, no body part that could be deemed erotic. Wrists might be pushing it, even.

Every woman does this when she needs to be taken seriously. You slap on the glasses and frump yourself up for the sake of classroom or co-worker management. Way to go, co-workers, you’ve been duped by the same trick Julia Roberts uses to look “ugly.”. Me, I felt like Professorial Barbie (sans Dream House) and that certainly didn’t make me feel like a serious professional.  But you do what you have to do.

So yeah, it’s pretty obvious that smart people are not allowed to be sexy.  At least if they’re women. Apparently, attractiveness will diminish the quality of intellectual debate, presumably because your male colleagues have to waste their precious mental energy not looking at your chest. Or that logical syllogism you’re voicing will cause less blood will flow to their erections, which (as we learn from Viagra ads) is the biggest tragedy that can happen to anyone, ever. Seriously, people act like combining sexy and smart will bring on the Apocalypse or something.

And I especially love how it’s my job to make you feel better about yourself by either a) acting dumber than I really am or b) looking less attractive than I really am. Because otherwise you feel justified in assuming that I got my PhD from Porky’s. Are we still doing this? Really?

Of course if I kowtowed to everyone’s hang-ups and dressed like a frump, I validated their dumb-ass world view. I left the jacket open sometimes, just so the class wouldn’t forget I had tits. And in my last year of teaching, I wore whatever I wanted. Jeans with ass-enhancing booty pockets, beautiful graphic-print wrap dresses, cleavage if I felt like it. That was fun, though it upped the number of collegial “WTF” expressions exponentially.

There’s this very pretty idea that if you’re proud enough of who you are, the world will change for you. Yeah, that has its limits. If your appearance does not match people’s expectations, you’re the one who gets screwed, and it’s ultimately your problem, not theirs, to figure out what to do about it.

When I’d had enough of people’s personal insecurities becoming my fucking problem, I left academia. Because from where I’m standing, my blonde hair doesn’t negate my authority. My cute dresses don’t interfere with my ability to discuss the ramifications of international shipping law. And my tits don’t mean I can’t learn about electron particle motion — in real life, and not in whatever porno you’re playing in your head while you’re talking to me. And everyone’s just going to have to deal with that.

But professors, as it turns out, aren’t supposed to say “porno” either, especially when calling out co-workers on their stupid assumptions.