Skip to main content

It's not just librarians who suffer from stereotyping

Unfortunately, lawyers get it too...and one of the best (for best, read "irritating and patronising") ones is the Legally Blonde female lawyer.

Y'know - that attractive yet dumb blonde girl who floats through life, until an major event makes her re-evaluate everything, and then she works her socks off to show everyone how smart she really is?

Seems like the BBC have been watching a few too many repeats of that film recently, judging from their reporting of this story (although Legally Blonde isn't specifically mentioned in the report).

Look: she's blonde!
Look: she's pretty!
Look: she used to work in a beauty-based job! That means she must be stupid!
Look: she went to court to battle on her Mum's behalf! Isn't that an unexpected event!
Look: she's studied to become a lawyer! And excelled at her studies!
Look: she's actually really, really smart! Who could have imagined?

Dear god - all it needs is her bust size, and a hint that she'll be sleeping with powerful people in law firms in order to get a job, and it could be a Daily Mail report.

Really, BBC, is this the best way you could report this? The undertone of surprise that someone female, blonde and pretty could also actually be really rather intelligent, and able to make full use of an amazing opportunity when it's presented to her, is quite disturbing. For a profession that's working its socks off to try and address inequalities in the representation of women, this sort of patronising reporting undermines everything that women in law have worked so hard to get...you know, that small thing called "recognition of their equal skills"?
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
I don't see the problem, replace the protagonist with a male joiner or mechanic who represented his old day in court against some cowboy builders, and it reads just the same. Sure, it's a frothy piece which isn't going to win a Pulitzer, but as an old fashioned human interest David v. Goliath tale, I thought it kinda worked?
27 June 2012 at 21:03
Michael said…
What else do you expect from the beeb? ;-)
28 June 2012 at 15:17
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f...
12 comments
Read more

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...
16 comments
Read more

UK librarian blogs - the list so far

I’ve pulled the previous entries into one alphabetical list, with a few categories. Will be back later with more detailed discussion of what I’ve learned by doing this. And, as always, if you know of other librarian blogs, let me know and I’ll add them in! Institutional Library Blogs / Professional Group Blogs aRKive Appears to be the blog of the Reid Kerr College library, or someone related to the Library, but unable to confirm as it doesn’t have any ‘about’ section that I can find. Lots of posts about library topics, books, IT… Brit Lib Blogs Google Group There’s a Google Group for British librarian bloggers! Unfortunately it looks to be pretty much unused at the moment. CILIP Blogs CILIP has various blogs by either staff, or links to relevant blogs, available from the Communities section. Varying levels of activity on these blogs – the PTEG blog has one post from November 2007, while Lyndsay’s CILIP Blog has been going has been going for almost a year, with at le...
14 comments
Read more