Life as an image bearer
When I first became a veterinarian, image mattered a lot. I was young and female in a profession that valued experience and was overwhelmingly male. I quickly learned to use everything I could to look like “the doctor” was supposed to look: business professional clothing, white coat, stethoscope, name tag labeled “Doctor Janisch.”
Yet even after I introduced myself as Doctor Janisch and began taking a history and doing an exam, people looked over my shoulder to the equally young male veterinary technician. They told him the answers to the questions I was asking them. For many people a woman simply was not a veterinarian, regardless of the name tag, degree or competence.
Still, the more professional the image I portrayed, the easier it was for me to do my job. At work, online, in the car we drive and the house we live in—image matters.
