Sexy Librarians
It all began when a friend of mine linked to this fashion spread featuring gorgeous Swedish librarians (http://tinyurl.com/3yx462). Good heavens! No wonder the literacy rate in Sweden is 99%. (I’ll resist making any puns on the words “stacks” and “stacked,” though the temptation is powerful.) Those photos started me thinking about the idea of sexy (or naughty) librarians, a motif that pops up in porn and other contexts pretty frequently. Why are librarians sexy? A little digging around online turned up some interesting sites on the subject . . .
My first search took me to fantasy writer Holly Black’s website, where she has a whole page dedicated to the idea of the sexy librarian (http://tinyurl.com/2l97b). She notes: “It is no coincidence how many librarians are portrayed as having a passionate interior, hidden by a cool layer of reserve. Aren’t books like that? On the shelf, their calm covers belie the intense experience of reading one. Reading inflames the soul. Now, what sort of person would be the keeper of such books?” I think she’s on to something there. (And you should read Holly Black’s novels, staring with Tithe. They’re brilliant.)
River of Data has a page on Images of Librarians in Pornography (http://www.riverofdata.com/librariana/porn/) listing pornographic novels that feature librarians, including titles like Chained, Whipped Librarians; The Hottest Librarian; The Librarian Slave; The Oral Librarian (I assume that doesn’t mean she curates a collection of audiobooks); and Sex Behind the Stacks, among others. I wouldn’t exactly call it a recommended reading list, and I can only imagine the reaction if you went into an actual library, approached the actual librarian (sexy or otherwise), and requested one of those titles; you might pierce her cool reserve . . . or she might just point you toward the computerized card catalog with no more than an arched eyebrow and a faint smile.
Another investigation into the sexy librarian can be found at a website devoted to explorations of Images of the Librarian in Popular Culture (http://tinyurl.com/22paer), specifically a paper titled “The Librarian with an Alterego Convention,” which considers various instances of librarians with secret identities (sexual, superhero, or otherwise) in literature and pop culture — it’s a short, fun paper, worth a read.
But enough words. Time to bring on the pictures of naked ladies! (I didn’t have much luck turning up images of nude male librarians, I’m afraid.) The Sexy Librarians gallery (dubiously subtitled “for men only”) has an impressive array of pornographic images featuring sexy librarians — or at least, as the site admits, “women close enough to a book / bookshelf that we can pretend they are Librarians.” Have fun judging these books by their covers (at http://librarians.vegard2.no/index2.html).
Some more interesting images have been gathered by real-life librarian Jessamyn West, and are linked from this page (http://jessamyn.com/naked/links.html), including vintage photos, weird advertisements, and strange ephemera — along with the expected photos of naked women near bookshelves, of course.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 24 January 2007 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Caught in the Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.