Jill is obviously getting some criticism of her blogging, when others claim that it's exhibitionism. I have to say: isn't it all? I can't lecture without showing off. I insist that from 20-200 students stare at me for two hours. I insist on their attention, and I display my entire sorry self to them: my taste (or lack of it) in clothes, my errors when using technological equipment, my language and voice, not to talk of my scent and any unconscious habits I might not know about... believe me, the students know them intimately. I also write papers for international conferences, I have taken exams and I have assessed exams... All those insecure girls, dreading having to exhibit a piece of themselves on the oral exams, wouldn't life have been so much easier if somebody had told them that it's OK, that you need to be a bit of an exhibitionist to manage?

So what's wrong with exhibitionism? What's wrong with vanity? Or is perhaps nothing wrong, it's just that I hear those words as dysfemisms, good Scandinavian Protestant that I am? (OK, you might want to scratch good.)