Tattooed Librarian calender. Hmmm.

(11:38:31 CDT)

Tattooed Librarian calender. Hmmm.

Looks like the Texas Library Association is putting out a calender featuring tattooed librarians (all female). The all female part does not really surprise me, since tattoo culture is increasingly being co-opted as a feminism thing, whether the sign of a drunken outing and idiocy or the sign of inner strength and self-expression. That, and sexbrarianism, that concept that librarians are sex starved cats just wanting for some big old dog to eat them up, still mostly focuses on the female librarian. Not to say that there is not a market for tattooed male librarians, but the sex-pot male librarian image is a focuses on shorter, more effeminate men with shy faces. And, based on images I have seen really hairless bodies. I suppose it fits, if you think about it. The "sexy librarian" female tends to be flatter chested, more boyishly faced with glasses and more of a sexless walk. Sexbrarianism is something like the opposite of sex, it would seem, a willful embrace of quiet androgyny.

While I still hold to the adage that the main difference between someone with a tattoo and someone without is that people with tattoos don't care that you don't have one, I am annoyed by their increased ubiquitious-ness. Especially since many of them tend to be faceless celtic swirls or stars. It is like dozens and dozens of people every day go "I want to be branded, but not anything too personal, it's the act that I care about! Yeah, I'm a badass!" At least get a personally significant tattoo. The people who have them, who design tattoos to fit them, always look better inked than those who just pick out the pretty celtic cross and randomly pick a spot on their back.

For the record, I don't quite consider the Tasmanian Devil as being "personal".

Do tattooed people really deserve the increasing amount of ire of people who try and describe tattoos as disgusting or a cry for help? Of course not. If you do not like tattooed skin, then don't get one and don't date people who have them. Jesus. As excited and nauseously upset some people get on the subject, you can't help but wonder what their other triggers are. Do they see red-hair and projectile vomit? Is the presence of face freckles (God's own little tattoo ink) enough to cause them to grow weak and fuming at the same time, falling down to their knees as spittle bursts from their red face? Probably not, but seriously, let it go. If you have that much time to be judgmental on other people, their are dozens of important causes that could use a little passion. Go and campaign for them, and rest assured that all those grannies who were once teens getting stars and initials tattooed because it was Spring Break will always live with that. Seriously, if they did not get something they wanted to keep for life, they will be punished for it. And if they wanted to keep it for life, then more power to them. You don't understand it. That's fine. They probably didn't do it for you. I'm sorry about that.

In the realm of the people who go "yuck" at tattoos (busting out an old tiredness which suggests that women with tattoos look like bikers) is the Annoyed Librarian, who talks about the calender linked above in her blog entry "Tattooed Librarians are Diverse". She wrongly implies there is not an engineer fetishism, meaning she has never heard of geek-chic fetishists, which might be a good thing for her, but I do agree with her statements, and the ones in the comments, that point out that the fight to disprove librarian stereotypes is tiresome (about as tiresome as people who think they have the right to a moral stance on other people's tattoos). Sure, something like 70% of the librarians I know are 1) female, 2) bespectacled, 3) shy and withdrawn, and 4) read young adult literature. Outside of this, though, and even inside of this, you get a wide range of ideas about what is sexually correct, what is politically correct, where the future of technology is going (ranging from "print is dead" to "computers are a fad", five bucks, each, says they are both wrong, everyone needs to stop trying to find that "one outcome"), about which tv shows and movies are most watchable. Librarianism does attract a certain sort, and a certain sort of camp follower, if you will, but internally there is a huge range of difference. What I find truly tiresome about the whole thing is trying to harp on the librarian with tats and funky glasses as being different than the librarian with old fashioned wire-rims and a bun. They both read Twilight and get nervous about crowds. Hipster librarian versus traditional means very little, in the long run.

However, outgoing but cranky lovers of the classics, though, like me? I am a bit of a rarity. And I'm tattooed, to boot, though back to that whole adage thing. I don't really think about it most of the time. I still love my tattoo, but I would rather focus on something, anything, that matters.

Si Vales, Valeo

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