Teachers and gender in the popular imagination

In her post yesterday about teachers and sexiness, NorthTOmom suggests that readers “Google ‘sexy teacher’ and see what comes up.” This got me thinking about my post about the “cool teacher.” So I did an experiment: first I did a Google image search for “sexy teacher.” (Suggestion: Do not do this at work.) The results were overwhelmingly female. Here was the top result:

Then I did a search for “cool teacher.” The results were much more male, and here was the top result:

Maybe that’s nothing more than a reflection of the gendered connotations our society gives to the words “cool” and “sexy.” But I also stumbled across this video of the “Top Ten Movie Teachers.” In reality, about three-quarters of public school teachers are female. Quite the opposite for teachers in popular movies, apparently:





What is going on in that warped collective mind of ours? And how does it affect the school experience?
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