Cutting off excess skin for career — and TV is a report from The Pittsburgh Post Gazette on Obesity and how it can change your work life. Michael McGrorty noticed this odd little paragraph down near the end of the article:
“Another of Olson’s studies showed that female librarians were more likely to be overweight than female businesswomen, but the librarians asked her not to publish that information in a journal, she said. Olson said that study suggested that weight might influence what careers people choose — perhaps obese librarians were not confident enough to pursue business careers.”
or maybe…
This paragraph is akin to saying that more chefs than waitresses have bad breath, so maybe bad breathed chefs would have been waitresses had they not had bad breath. It almost seems to imply the people cannot change themselves should they desire to do so. If a fat person is going to pick a career that they would not pick due to their weight, then why not work it off? I mean, I’m attempting to become a librarian through Pitt’s MLIS program because I didn’t have the knowledge previously.
I dunno. Maybe it just gets under my skin that this guy is going to suggest that fat librarians have low self-esteem. As far as I can tell, to be a librarian (at least a professional librarian) is to tackle current information controversies with the intent of posing viable solutions. I just don’t see how someone with low self-esteem is going to tackle hard issues, since what’s the point if you already don’t like yourself?
Sorry about the tangent. I’m currently working on final paper of the semseter and am a little tense like a jack-in-the-f@cking-box. Please demote me.
Re:or maybe…
See, the poor business women HAVE to lose weight, because image is EVERYTHING in the business world. Whereas librarians are free to be whoever they are, having more important things to do than worry about whether they’re a size 6 or a size 10.
Confident, schmonfident.
Re:or maybe…
Also, the kind of personality that draws people to public service types of careers is typically quite different than that of the business types. I have no doubt there is much more anorexia in business women than librarians, but distressingly fewer people would see that as a negative value judgement as seems to be implied with obesity.
Most of the large librarians I know are hardly shy and retiring and suffering from low self-esteem (most of them are real firebrands actually).
Perhaps because librarians often get exposed to a broader range of people than do business folks, they are less concerned with the whole image issue and expect people to accept them as they are, just as they do in their everyday work?
Re:or maybe…
Just pick up any chick lit book and figure out where the low self-esteem is. Most are set in private/white collar/entertainment industries, and have page after of food anxiety, comparing asses, bulimia and self-doubt. Not that there’s a comparable body of librarian chick lit….
Hrrumph!
Job opportunities are altered by weight, height, skin color, smoking/non-smoking, style of dress, speech patterns, facial expressions and then education and training.
I do not need a study, poll, or dissertation to know this, it is a sad and unfortunant fact. I cannot wait for the next report that offers keen insight into such things as water is wet, and the sun is warm.
I wonder…
maybe ‘businesswomen’ (what a generic term) get more exercise in their career activities. I know that some days I just sit in front of a computer for 8-10 hours. Depending on how you define ‘businesswoman’ that could include people who have to do some sort of physical activity as part of their day to day tasks, like managing a store for example. Or maybe they sit around as much as we do, I don’t know. Just a thought.
Weight?
I’m assuming they adjusted for age, correct?
There’s a lot of things that could cause this, and so far all you’ve seen (maybe) is a coorelation.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL