Men. Now, I don’t want to come across as sexist or anything, but it’s time someone came out and said it: the problem with men is, that they are always – and I mean, CONSTANTLY – falling off of things.
You literally can’t take them anywhere. Especially not anywhere that involves a moderately elevanted surface, am I right?
Slightly baffled by this post? It’s merely the culmination of a few months trawling the British Library Labs images corpus and noticing that there is a very strong tradition of illustrating men falling off of, or out of things. I wasn’t aware beforehand that this was a stereotype, but now I’m completely convinced. There are almost more pictures of men going flying (by accident, not on purpose) than there are of cats, or fairies, or ladies fainting, or images of the subjugated peoples of the British Empire that make me slightly uncomfortable.
And no, since you ask, there are very few of women taking spills: so far the only one I’ve been able to locate is this one. Of course, Maria’s Image of the Week from yesterday does depict a lady plunging through space… but I’d suggest that she’s in fact made a conscious decision to do so!
The Sea of Books 