In less than one week, I will be visiting Albuquerque, New Mexico (about a 5 hour drive) for the Southwest Pop Culture Association‘s annual conference where I will be presenting “Sexy Hipster Librarian: Exotic, Erotic, the Other.” We have all heard of the sexy librarian trope in pop culture, but this presentation will examine how letting-down-the-bun and the sexualization of the librarian affects student relationships in Academia.
I will be using Daryl Bem’s research on the exotic becoming the erotic but placing it onto the hetero-normative “dominatrix” librarian as the “other.” We do not always know what really compromises the assumption users hold of a certain perception, how it impacts library use, student interaction with librarians, and professional credibility and identity. Through qualitative research, I explore how this popular stereotype affects student-learning, campus perceptions, and the sexualization of young, female librarians.
I’ve never been to a pop culture conference, but I think it will be interesting and fun to present on librarianship from my perspective and project it into the pop culture ‘scene,’ since the stereotype is already so predominant in all of our minds.
Amy Pajewski 