Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com. Cienna's volunteering this week at a camp for young spiders from broken webs, so this colun is a re-run from April of 2016.

Dear Cienna,

Do you have any opinions on sexy-librarian porn? I’m kind of flattered by the trope, but I also wonder if maybe it doesn’t raise expectations to an uncomfortable level with my prospective girlfriends.

Annie, Admiral

Dear Annie,

I’m glad you asked! I have stronger opinions on porn than all the right hands in Gary Herbert’s public health department combined. Generally, I’m pretty positive about the sexy librarian trope, and here’s why: People who objectify librarians find their brains as sexy as (if not more so than) their physical appearance. Librarians are intellectuals. Gatekeepers of knowledge. Curators of imagination. Smart people pant over stuff like that. They swoon. And isn’t that a refreshing change in porn?

Of course, if prospective girlfriends are making you uncomfortable with their objectification – if they demand you collect late fees while wearing a ball gag or read them Goodnight Moon while sitting on their face (and you’re not into it), I suppose that’s problematic. Maybe you should remind them that you’re not just a sexy brain stuffed inside a sexy body with the entirety of modern thought harnessed at your fingertips, you’re a real person with nonbookish interests who sometimes wants to sit in sweatpants, eat Muddy Buddies and watch Real Housewives punch each other in the Fake Tit.

Kisses!

Cienna