Bringin' Home the Bacon

Believe it or not, I've been to college. And since I've done gone and got myself some education, people will ask me the standard (and never not annoying) post-grad small talk, like if I've got a job and what I'm doing now. Usually I'll regale them with tales about how when I'm not applying for jobs or volunteering or whatever, I watch re-runs of Everybody Hates Chris while playing Farmville and reading the internets. But I'll occasionally disclose that I'm considering going back to school to get a degree in library science. Usually this is met with an "Oh, that's nice," but there are times where I'll get an interesting response from men in which they say, "Oh, that's hot!" To semi-paraphrase Bones: I don't wanna be a sexy librarian! Look, it's fine to find someones career attractive, it's fine to want to be desired and it's fine to have fantasies about a naughty nurse or a slutty schoolteacher, but I find it a bit insulting to superimpose the fantasy onto the reality. It's like everyday is Halloween in some people's minds and every (hot) woman is half nekid for their viewing pleasure.

When someone responds with "that's hot," it's as if myself and my career goals are being reduced down to sex appeal. Can I not have a career without it being "sexy?" Just because I identify as female does not mean that every single thing I do or say or think falls into either "sexy" or "not sexy." And it makes me feel that as a woman, I'm not a real person with real needs, desires and goals--and that's on top of feeling like I'm being belittled and patronized. (Silly lady with your lofty dreams! You just let the menfolk bring home the bacon. And make sure that while you're cooking it you do it in an apron and nothing else. But don't eat any! Can't have you rollin' outta that apron!) And I'm left feeling like someone doesn't care about me as a person, but as an object that fits a narrow-minded view of sexuality to be offered up for consumption, and I should be satisfied by that. Because that would mean I've done my job as a woman, DUH. In a world where women are told to be both a madonna and a whore, is it so much to ask that I don't have to feel the need to be either? To simply be my own self, for myself?

Dammit, I'll bring home my own bacon and fry it and eat it too!