"With her delicate features, blue eyes, and blonde hair, Carrie Preston could double as a porcelain doll," reads the first sentence in this profile of the Boston University professor in BU Today from earlier this week. She's not a doll, actually; instead she teaches an introduction to Women’s Studies class where, I'm going to go out on a limb here, they probably cover something or other about likening women to passive playthings and whether or not an academic's appearance has anything to do with their success. (It does, of course, we're just not supposed to be upfront about it).
Preston is giving a lecture on the pederasty in ancient Greece, the author of the profile observes. "The practice was completely accepted at the time, she notes, because sex was about power and virility," unlike now, of course, where sex is about weakness and impotence.
"Preston asks a series of provocative questions," it goes on, which, I totally bet she did. "Toward the end of class, there is a rush of opinions and questions," and a rush of blood to primary sexual organs. "The professor has clearly gained her audience’s attention," if you know what she means.
"Preston likes to push boundaries, something that’s made the 34-year-old College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of English an enormously popular teacher." That and her banging bikini bod. “It’s not uncommon to hear students say, ‘I follow Carrie Preston around and I take every class she offers..." Can you blame them? Just look at this literal, breathing doll come to life.
"Preston smiles, brushing off the praise students heap on her as she sits in her book-lined Bay State Road office," and what a smile it is. "Teaching is her primary occupation, she says, not something she does as a side note to scholarly work," although she could've been a model, we're just putting that out there.
Preston has written a book titled "Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance", we learn, but you can't imagine she's had too many solo performances lately, if you see what we mean there, and "signed a contract for a second, Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and the Pedagogies of Transnational Performance, all while teaching a full course load..."
"Learning to Kneel" and full loads. Is this a professor profile or video description on Pornhub?
It goes on from there. Obviously I'm having a little fun here, she's clearly an accomplished academic and a beloved teacher, and the author of the piece, a woman, it's worth pointing out, didn't intend to liken this teacher she obviously admires to a doll. That's not the case at all. She meant to liken her to a horse, actually, as with this quote from her husband, which ends the piece: “She’s kind of a thoroughbred—she doesn’t mind trotting around, but she really wants to race.”
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3 comments:
She should start off every article in some appropriate way. Think of the page views. As a commenter points out, it's what launched the piece to a much wider audience.
I guess all attention is good attention
This was hilariously mis-judged. Reminds me of that guy who headlines the Jeremy Lin piece "Chink In The Armour" - both of these writers MUST have just had massive brain farts, the crimes in question are so egregious they must have been genuinely innocent mistakes.
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