Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Obvious unspeakables

We have a weekly pizza lunch in one corner of a lab, and a former employee brings in old magazines. The cover of a journal I'd never seen before (Spin) quotes a singer I'd never heard of (Hayley Williams) to the effect that “sexy doesn't have to be a tan blonde girl showing off her goodies.”

Hurrah for the resoundingly obvious! "Sexy" means capable of exciting sexual desire, and if the number of babies in the world is any guide it is a quality shared by those "tan blonde girls" and by stout middle aged African women and by elderly Japanese women and so on around the globe. Perhaps each one she passes doesn't go "Ahhhh," but she has it where it counts.

What people seem to mean by "sexy" instead is something more like young and available, which is a dirty linguistic trick to play on unsuspecting minds, especially in conjunction with the implicit assumption that "sexy" is what makes a woman valuable. It follows that to be valuable you must always be young and always available, or at least apparently available.

And it is so obviously wrong...

Another unmentionable fact is that by the time a child reaches kindergarten he has learned to speak, to walk and run and play games, moral rules, the ways of the neighborhood, and probably his letters and numbers as well. From observation and imitation he has learned more than you realize--if he could reach the pedals he could pilot the car down the block. Of course he'd want to play bumper cars too. Teaching him how to use the toilet took effort. All taught by his parents (probably mostly mommy). The credentialed educators aren't going to be teaching him nearly as much, nearly as fast, or nearly as well. Why kowtow to a teaching certificate? The hard teaching jobs are at home, and so is expertise (except for class management). But we have such great respect for degrees and credentials that what grandma advised never shows up on the radar. Did she enroll everyone in Little League, or tell them to get out of the house and go play until dinner time?

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