I've never used "Rate My Professor" to actually make a decision about a class. Suggestions from my friends and the sheer need for a specific class at a specific time meant that an anonymous website was pointless to me, although I knew people who used it. When I was a freshman, one of my roommates briefly told me how she looked at an overall rating for a professor, mentioning a "hotness" rating that seemed useless. Maybe students would pay more attention if the professor was attractive? That was the only rationale we could think of.

"Rate My Professor" resurfaced at the beginning of this summer when I was bored enough to look up some of my favorite professors. I couldn't help laughing at the chili pepper next to a professor I've known for about a year, not because she wouldn't be considered attractive, but because it just seemed ridiculous that students would describe her as "hot" on a website that the whole world can see. There are much more important words that come to mind when I think of her (and my other professors): brilliant, kind, and helpful just to name a few. Some of those words appeared in the available comments, making me smile as I remembered how I had enjoyed her classes.

And then I read the comments calling her "sexy." I'll admit that my first reaction was to laugh again. The brashness of anonymous reviewers was a little hilarious. I even told her about them and we laughed again. The more I reflected on the words of those brazen students, though, the more uncomfortable I felt. It just seemed wrong to describe an authority figure as sexy. Was there no sense of respect? She'd spent a semester teaching a difficult subject and one of the first words that came to mind when asked to describe her was sexy? I wondered if it occurred to any of those faceless people that she was married, and ogling her was not only disrespectful to her, but to her husband. The fact that these reviews were left by students who attend a Christian university made them seem a little more awful.

"Rate My Professor" recently removed its chili pepper ratings after a short Twitter campaign led mostly by female professors. Being a woman in higher education is tough enough without students objectifying them through a hotness rating on an anonymous website.

Although I'm glad that "Rate My Professor" has removed the unnecessary hotness scale, I don't know how effective it will actually be. Female and male professors alike were subjected to the chili peppers, so I'm not sure removing them will suddenly end female professor objectification. The real realm where female professors were treated differently than their male counterparts was the comments section.

The two male professors I know who had once been chili peppered had no comments about their physical appearance. There were remarks about availability during office hours, sense of humor, story-telling ability, and required reading, but no one called them "sexy." No, comments on male professors were respectful and relevant. Some of the comments I saw for my once chili peppered female professor did discuss her office hours, grading, and so on, but I'll never be able to forget that at least two people called her sexy (and at least one countered). It seems the comments section is much more poisonous than any symbolic vegetable.

Unfortunately, "Rate My Professor" can't feasibly remove comments. It's the one area where instead of selecting on a scale, a student can give specific details that will be useful. Knowing that 16 novels will be required in 10 weeks for a particular English class is helpful. Knowing that a professor can make a subject interesting even during an intensive is important. Maybe "Rate My Professor" should delete all reviews commenting on physical appearance and warn reviewers about this policy. After all, they're unnecessary. They're not helpful. They're demeaning and sexist. And no one really wants to know that the person lecturing them was considered "sexy" by John Doe last spring.