So, I totally do not condone glamorizing and fetishizing librarians without first talking frankly about the working conditions of so-called women’s professions, crumbling public role of libraries as social institutions, etc. I also don’t condone (or really care to admit that I even still think about, in the year 2007, ) Vice magazine. So, when last week when I somehow looked at last month’s Vice on the internet (like somehow looking at a gross dude whom you hooked up with in 2001 on myspace, or worse, friendster), I found their Swedish Librarians spread to be both repulsive and compelling. It made me think for a second that what’s really wrong with American libraries is America, that if libraries are allowed to reflect a just society instead of a collapsing capitalist nightmare, that if we as citizens are granted decent standards of living and given by law the means to live as women with autonomy and dignity, that perhaps librarians can thrive as explicitly feminine public servants (who actually live intellectual lives!) and that libraries can prove themselves as essential functioning spaces instead of bad-smelling Barnes and Noble. But I can’t really justify thinking about these photos at all- as anything different than overtly exploitative well-styled gazing at goofy Swedish ladies.
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