The ad for Sony’s new digital reader is a sleek black board with the slogan: “Sexier than a librarian” written in white letters. You can see a picture of the add as well as Sony’s response to angry librarians on flickr.com and you can also see that its top two tags, even below ’sony’ and ‘library’ are ’sexist’ and ’sexism’.
What this slogan even means I have know clue. Is a digital reader supposed to be sexy? Is your local librarian supposed to be sexy? The digital reader, an object, shows books on a screen. The librarian, a human being, can also show you books on a screen or on a page. He or she can even show you the new Sony Digital Reader, not that I think that is going to happen now.
Just by googling the slogan, hundreds of blogs by librarians and non-librarians pop up with their plans to boycott the item or write Sony a letter. So here are my personal problems with it:
1. The assumption that the librarian is a woman
2. The comparison of the human librarian to the object.
3. Either they are implying the stereotype of the female, old maid librarian who is old fashioned and lacking sex appeal or they are implying the stereotype of the sexy “stripper after her day job” librarian who, try as she may, can’t be as sexy as the machine referred to.
4. The fact that Sony’s response is that it was “tongue in cheek” and that whoever the schmuck that wrote the response was has a cousin who is a librarian which really makes me mad because it’s like those people in bars who tell are racist/homophobic/sexist/ageist/etc. joke and then say, “It’s okay, I have a black/gay/feminist/Grandma/etc. friend!”
5. Again, why are either of these things “sexy”?
Phew, glad I got that off my chest.
