A Compendium of Sexy Librarianness: NSFTWHF*

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Featuring Parker Posey, The Lipstick Librarian & Mickey Spillane

Heather McCormack & Lauren Gilbert, Cold Spring Harbor Library and Environmental Center, NY -- Library Journal, 02/13/2009

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It's Friday, tomorrow's Valentine's Day, and we're in the middle of a heartbreaking recession. What better way to gird your loins against the weak dollar than with our compendium of Sexy Librarianness, a light look at the trope of the lascivious professional in American popular culture. We know—it's a stereotype rooted in many people's lack of imagination—but it's also fun to review the material this image has conjured.

Note: Some of these links may contain material that is NSFTWHF*; please browse at your own discretion. Preferably in the privacy of your own home with the door closed and the shades drawn.

Good resources on the images of librarians, including the sexy variety:
—"Never Mind the Bollocks, Librarians Invented Sex, Stupid": destined, if we do say so ourselves, to become a classic in the literature on librarian tropes, this collaboration between LJ editors and librarian twitterers will blow your pretty little brains out.

—"Stereotypes of Librarians": a tidy overview of the prevailing crone image, complete with advice for changing it from The Lipstick Librarian and one Katherine Glab, author of the essay "The Sensuous Librarian," published in the seminal anthology Revolting Librarians (1972), which our John N. Berry III reviewed back then. He says of "the little red book" today, "RL arrived at a key moment in what we thought was the revolution. Now the writers have slid into obscurity, been sucked deep into the establishment, are neglected in their dotage, or, alas, have died. Glad Jessamyn [West] and her gang are here to keep the flame alive, if not the fire."

—Kristi Mulhern's "Librarians in Books" nicely summarizes how the profession has been portrayed in a wide range of literature, from mysteries to romance to supersmut.

—"Martha Cornog's Dirty Dozen: 12 Manuals for Getting It On": Academic, this is not; but it does serve as proof that librarians are not afraid to do reader's advisory on sex guides.

—Alison Hall's "Batgirl Was a Librarian" has been vetted left and right by librarians on the web as a seminal paper on the profession's standing in popular culture.

Movies and TV shows featuring sexy librarians:
—In Party Girl (1995), the famous "re-coding" scene sees hot, haute-couture hound/library clerk Mary, played by indie film queen Parker Posey, get reamed for miscataloging Freud.

—Also from Party Girl, here's Mary losing it on a patron for putting a book back in the wrong place ("I guess you didn't know we had a system!"). [Been there, done that at the Fargo Public Library back in 1998.—HM]

—The Simpsons, "Last Tap Dance in Springfield," 5/7/00, in which Marge and Lisa go to see the movie Tango de la Muerte featuring an aspiring champion dancer who rejects all other partners to prefer a librarian "who's only read books on dancing." The dancer then takes her in his arms and spins her around a couple of times, prompting her glasses to fall off, her hair to come undone, and the top button of her blouse to pop off, precisely in that order. Worth noting that the top button pops off because her cup size spontaneously goes up a few letters. Sorry, no blackmarket footage.

Music videos and/or songs featuring sexy librarians or references to them:
—"Goodie Two Shoes" by Adam Ant. OK, so the sexy female is an uptight journalist, but she fits the sexy librarian stereotype.

—"Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears. Everyone knows if you're female and work in a library, you're going to have moony-eyed admirers, also known as stalkers. Case in point right here. Good song, though.

—"Heaven Sent" by INXS. I know, I know—I'm showing my age with all these '80s bands, but I'm a sucker for lyrics like "Tuesday she works at the library uptown/ Some useful knowledge can always be found." No babe librarian appears, but the late Michael Hutchence invokes her aplenty.

—"You Better Pray" by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. You know the type: the high school art misfit, a petulant and dark-eyed notebook scribbler. Let's say he gets revenge on all the other cliques when his drawings magically come to life—and move the school librarian to remove most of her clothing. Yowza!

—"Librarian" by The Haunted. Shot in black and white, this arty little clip stars the band's attractive female members as bunned and bespectacled shushers who, like postmodern sirens, lure an unsuspecting slacker to his (SPOILER) death by bookshelves.

Self-described sexy librarians or those labled as such (most likely against their wishes):
—Everyone's favorite Lipstick Librarian.
—Microsoft's laughable Ms. Dewey.
—Jessamyn West amassed some "Naked Librarians" in what look like woodcuts or engravings.
—Though "hip" is the tag they're most often slapped with, Desk Set founders Maria Falgoust and Sarah Murphy also get the "sexy" label by extension. (For the record, we know there's much more to you than that; for starters, you're dedicated fund-raisers—check the Desk Set's upcoming Mardi Gras party/book drive for the A.P. Turead School in New Orleans.)

Sexy librarians in pornography:
—A most unique bibliography by Dan Lester. Not for naturally queasy.
—Former librarian Candi Streck's "Sex in the Stacks" is a mini bibliography of XXX-rated fiction featuring librarians.

Sexy librarians in books:
—There's actually a novel (a romance?) called Sexy Librarian by Julia Weist.
—Librarian dames pop up in noirs constantly, like Mickey Spillane's Dead Street.

Miscellaneous amusing and odd sexylibrarianess:
—"Library Science Jargon That Sounds Dirty" from McSweeny's.
—Librarian Dress Up! Uh, wow.
—ALA's Librarian Hotties calendar (a spoof, of course).
—A strange "Reference Note" from the wilds of the web.