VERY IMPORTANT POLL

[telophase]

I have a BURNING DESIRE TO KNOW if something I observed in my middle- and high-school days holds true elsewhere. This poll refers to situations in which you are carrying school books/notebooks/etc in the arms, and NOT in backpacks, bags, etc.

The first poll is for people who went to middle/high school equivalents in the U.S. The second is for those who went to middle/high school equivalents elsewhere in the world. If you attended both U.S. and non-U.S. school, feel free to answer both polls.

Sorry for the lack of the usual silly otherwise, but hey, I can't be terribly witty all the time.




ETA: ARG FORGOT TO MENTION -- Also, please use the gender you presented with in middle/high school. I managed to not think about my not-very-good wording until after the polls were posted, and I understand if you choose not to answer because of that. :)


Picture A:

Picture B:

Poll 1: U.S. people
[Poll #1562652]



Poll 2: Non-U.S. people
[Poll #1562653]

Comments

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

Heh. It never really bothered me until I went to school in Chicago. I took an insane amount of grief the first and only time I held my books like (B), and I still unconsciously find myself correcting myself today.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I was fairly oblivious to the gender difference in the way books were carried until my sophomore year of high school, but normally carried them like (A), just because I tended to have too many to carry like (B). Nobody ever gave me grief, but it annoyed me that I felt self-conscious about it when my elbows were tired and I carried them like (A).

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I went to an all-female high school, so you'd think there would have been more diversity about this, but no, backpack or B, always.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It's one of those bizarre little unstated Things One Must Do, I think. So far, from my grand sample of 8 people in the US and 1 in the non-US, it holds up elsewhere.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Do you think you might have gotten grief for carrying them the "wrong" way, or would people not care?

[trobadora]

Non-USian here, and ... we didn't carry books around without bags at all. Sorry? *g*

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hee! I thought about putting this as an option, but decided not to, so as to force those who carried a bag 90% of the time and used their arms 10% of the time to answer about their arms. :)

[cajunbaby86.livejournal.com]

I usually carried my books like (B) in high school. We had maybe 4 minutes to change classes, and as mine were all over the school, I was practically running to each of them. As crowded as it was when I was there, most people carried them like that so they wouldn't get knocked out of the arms in an accidental rush. Now before and after school, when I was just standing around, I'd sometimes hold them like (A).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My school had a huge gender divide - almost no boys carried them like (B) and almost no girls carried them like (A). I thought about it today as I was walking down the hall at work, carrying my ebook reader like (A), and how self-conscious it *still* made me feel to carry it the "wrong" way. XD

[ewein2412]

i've just messed your poll up because i had a dyslexic moment and got the pictures swopped.

i haven't a clue how the boys carried their books. Also, my hands are way too small to carry my books the way that boy is carrying them in the picture!

i have no memory whatsoever of it mattering.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

No worries - I did the same thing! If you care to, you can always change your vote. Click on the "Poll #whatever" link at the head of the poll, then the "Fill out poll" link in the subsequent screen. It'll bring the poll answers up again, with what you originally chose filled in, and you can choose new answers. :)

[strigine.livejournal.com]

I answered, but...1) I have very short arms (dwarfism) so B is really my only option, and 2) I didn't answer the questions about what other people did because I don't remember. @_@

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I can't picture anyone carrying books at all, so I have no idea about other people.

I don't wish to take the poll because of the wording, but from what I can remember, if I wasn't using a backpack, I think I used a mix of those two. If I had just one or two things to carry, then probably more like A. But if I had a lot of stuff to carry, then B. (Like, I actually don't understand how A could be feasible for the number of books that guy is carrying. Standing still, maybe he can hold it tightly against his leg, but that wouldn't work so well walking, and his fingers aren't long enough to hold the final book; it would slide down as he was walking.)

But most of the time I think I had my backpack in every class, rather than putting my backpack in my locker and just taking the relevant books to each class. (Mainly because I liked to read/draw during class, so would like to have other stuff in my backpack.)

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Like rushthatspeaks, I went to an all-girls school, and if the books weren't in a backpack everyone seemed to carry them B-style, even if they were only carrying one or two books/binders/whatever.

...as a pointless aside, A looks like a much easier way to drop them accidentally or have them knocked out of your hand if you run into something/someone, but maybe that's just me.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I saw the same gender divide, and in fact holding books like A makes me feel weirdly exposed.

[cicer.livejournal.com]

That is a really interesting point. Position A makes me feel uncomfortably exposed as well.

I didn't notice this until very recently, but I tend to keep my arms crossed or otherwise in front of my body most of the time. For example, when I'm carrying a purse I tend to clutch the purse strap with either hand. I often wrap an arm around my waist and tuck my hand between my other elbow and my body. And when I carry books (position B!) I also wrap my other arm around the stack of books. Hm. I wonder if this is also a gendered thing, that women are most apt to keep their arms crossed or in front of their bodies. I bet it is.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I may not pay enough attention, but I feel like I've almost never seen people carrying books like A. Wouldn't you drop them all the time? It seems like a weirdly inconvenient way to carry books, to me. I'm not judging, but it's all New! and Strange!

[bzoppa.livejournal.com]

ditto. How could they carry them that way?

[awamiba.livejournal.com]

Mostly we carried books in our backpacks, but if we had too many to fit in there (due to 4 minutes to cross the entire building several times a day), boys would carry like A and girls like B. I don't know why other girls carried that way, but I was trying to hide my bouncing breasts while I ran to class.

[chomiji]

I find myself wondering whether this is because girls often have small objects on top of their books (pencils, for example) that boys usually carried in their pockets.

Even after both boys and girls were wearing jeans to school (girls weren't allowed to wear trousers until 1968 or so), the boys tended to carry a lot more stuff in their pockets. They were more likely than girls to have shirts with pockets, also.

I also remember an incredibly sexist comment in some science book or kids' magazine or something where the author noted this behavior and said "Girls cradle their books like babies, while boys carry theirs like spears." Yeah. Spears. Huh.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

If you carried your spear like that, you'd be whacking people at crotch-level every time you turned around!

Perhaps the author meant to say "...boys carry theirs like the Three Stooges carrying spears."

[kitsuchi.livejournal.com]

I'm non-US, and I can't say this is something I would ever have noticed. So I couldn't say what other people did. Generally just use backpacks!

I think I mostly carried books like B, supported on my hip. Novel-sized books I would carry like A, but bigger or more books would get uncomfortable.

I see friggin high school students every day

[mustangsally78.livejournal.com]

And the straight boys do the A carry and the gay boys and the girls do the B. The dyke-ier lesbians use messenger bags and the slutty straight girls just stuff everything in their handbags.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Someone saw me with my iPad the other day, carrying it "just like a schoolgirl!" (I don't have a case for it yet, so it's in a laptop-sized sleeve and I'm nervous about it. But I'd still carry it that way; gender conditioning FTW!)

[golden-bastet.livejournal.com]

...Well, from what I can remember, LOL.

I don't even remember what the guys did, but I'm betting it *was* A.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

I concur with the 'my hands/arms are too small to carry like A' contingent. Also, I grew hips somewhere in that period and that makes a difficult angle of attack for attempting to prop something on my side, especially several heavy, slide-y hardcover books.

Okay, now I picked up an empty DVD case and discovered I STILL wanted to carry it B-style... :D

[cawingcrow.livejournal.com]

My "B" style was slightly different-- tops of the books were farther away from the body and turned out more than that picture, as I was propping the back side of the books on my hip (and to the side to clear my chest). I suspect a combination of hand size and hip location and prominence determines what most people would do (though guys would have peer pressure as well--not to do the "girl" thing).

[lilyayl.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I carried and still carry (when I don't have a bag) books on my hip (unless I had a lot, in which I hold the stack whatever way I can without dropping them). I use my hands a lot when I talk though and keeping the books on my hip made that easier. If I needed to swing the books inward, I could. (One of my high schools had a bottleneck hallway that became absolutely packed between every class and I had to use it 2-4 times a day, depending on the day).

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

I find it more interesting that according to this poll 94.33% of your readers here are women.

*slightly smarmy smirk*

Heeeey, ladies. How you doin'?

(reposted to fix grammar bug)

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

I always used A and thought nothing of it till this poll. It's more comfortable and natural than B is.

[gweniveeve.livejournal.com]

I always used a backpack and avoided carrying much in my hands.

BUT I don't think I could have balanced the books like in "A" -- hands smaller, maybe?

[chisotahn]

Heh, I got to answer both polls. Yay for attending a few years of middle school equivalent in Europe?

Also, never thought about this before. Hm. I couldn't answer the male questions as I honestly can't remember (been too long, and my group of friends was made up almost entirely of females) but the results are interesting.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I actually had to pick up a large hardback to figure out which one I use, but as soon as I tried A, I knew it felt odd.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Mostly B (when I didn't have a backpack), but really that was because I was mostly carrying too many books to carry them comfortably like A. A small number of books and/or relatively thin/lightweight books did consistently get carried in the A style (and that's how I'm likelier to carry books now).