telophase | (no subject)

Apologies if I don't reply to your comment on the poll in my previous post - they're all interesting, but I am feeling overwhelmed. XD

I am fascinated by the gender divide in book-carrying styles, and how it seems to be fairly strong - there are some of you who didn't notice a strong correlation between gender and carrying styles in your school. Several of you commented that style A - arm straight down, books against hip - seemed more unstable than style B - cradling them on hip/against chest. Which seems to be true, and may be one of the reasons guys, who tend to have larger hands than girls, carry them that way. Hm.

I think I might want to come up with a few more questions, such as seeing if it's the same globally or if it changes regionally in slightly smaller areas than "US" and "not US", and work on the gender-specifying language a bit more, and find out if people got flack for carrying them the "wrong" way, etc., and put it into another survey format to make it wider. (And find a good free online survey builder that will let me get a lot of responses. SurveyMonkey's free thing only stores 1000, which is probably way more than I'll actually get. I need to check Google Docs and see how elaborate I can get the survey function to get...)

ETA: KwikSurveys looks pretty good, actually. Anyone interested in the subject enough to help me write it up? :D

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Now that I think about it, I think I saw something about this in a textbook somewhere... and I think it was related to a time when backpacks weren't carried but book straps were used -- but the way girls and boys carried their books was reflected in your A and B.

Huh, that's fascinating!

ETA; Dumping these references here to have them later on.

Jenni, M. A. (1976). Sex differences in carrying behavior. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 43, 323-330.

Rekers, A. G., Mead, S. (1979). Human sex differences in carrying behaviors: a replication and extension. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 48, 625-626.

Thommen, E., Reith, E., Steffen, C., (1993). Gender-related book-carrying behavior: a reexamination. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 76, 355-362.

Edited 2010-05-11 03:27 (UTC)

I can carry at most one book down by my side. Any more and it's too much of a strain on my wrist. I carry with my arm because it provides more support.

ISTR reading something published in the 1950s or 60s that asserted prepubescent boys and girls all typically carried books in style A, and that girls shifted to style B during adolescence. Further, that the shift from A to B happened independent of any puberty-related changes in hip size/shape.

It *might* have been in The Naked Ape (Desmond Morris). I've got a copy somewhere...I will try to remember to look.

A friend of mine took flack for carrying his books "like a girl". (That was one area in which I managed to behave in accordance with majority social norms, so I escaped that particular variety of targeting.)