Sociological Images

Lady Gaga, for all the things that can be said about her, is doing something interesting with disability. Ruth D’R. sent in these images from a recent photoshoot:

(I included this last one beacuse I thought it might be referencing mental illness.)

We’ve featured Gaga’s video for Papparazi before (to highlight it’s sexualized violence), but I thought it was worth re-using in this context because it, too, has disability imagery:

She kept the disability theme at the VMA awards:

So, what do you think? Do you think Gaga is trying to make some kind of statement? Or is she just trying to be edgy and doesn’t really care about the issue?  (As seems to be common in fashion.)

Is she simply sexualizing disability? And is that good or bad?

Is the overall effect to make people with disabilities seem empowered?  Or, as in the very first image, helpless?

Might she be trying to problematize the “normal,” as she does in many ways but, in this case, normal bodies? Does it work, given her conformity to norms of attractiveness (both body and face)?

Or… since Gaga is known for being just-plain-weird, does that mean that her adoption of these props is an attempt to be weird (as in: wheelchairs and walking with a limp are weird and so I’ll do them to be weird)?  Even if that is true, does pushing them into view normalize them?  Heighten their weirdness?  Both?   Or does it depend on the viewer?

For more analysis, read also this blog post over at Bitch magazine written by Annaham (someone who actually knows something about disability studies).

For more on disability and representation, see our posts on the model, Victoria, what does a sexy disabled man look like?, Britain’s disabled model competition, dolls with Down’s Syndrome, a nude calendar featuring Paralympic athletes, the  misery of wheelchairs, the disabled girls video game, little people in commercials, and the international symbol.

Annelise M. sent us a link to a relationships advice slide show at ADDITUDE, a website for people with Attention Deficit Disorder and other learning disabilities.  The slide show title is “7 Tips for Better Communication in Your ADHD Relationships.”  However, even though men are diagnosed with ADD and ADHD two to four times more often than women, the subtitle makes it clear that the advice is for women only and the text specifies “ADD women” and the “partner” or “spouse” is always a “him” (so also heterosexist).  The advice was gender-neutral, but the authors decided to go with gender stereotypes instead.

The slide show begins with this image reminding us that women are always talking at men:

Continues with this image reminding us that women are always talking period:

Then turns to this image to make sure we understand how annoying it is when women talk:

And finishes up with this image illustrating just how crazy women are:

You could easily have read this in Cosmo or Glamour, replacing “ADD women” with “women,” and it would have been just another typical advice list for women (who, with or without ADD, are totes annoying, amirite?).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hermes sent in a link to a feature in The Morning News titled “Men at Their Most Masculine,” in which men were asked about what made them feel masculine and photographed in situations that reflect their masculine identities. Under each image is the quote that was included with it:

“I feel masculine when I am home, I can take care of myself. I often feel emasculated when I leave my apartment though, with everyone asking me if I need help. I don’t need any help.”

“To be masculine is to dominate in one’s field of study.”

Some of the following are definitely Not Safe for Work, so after the jump…

(more…)

I don’t know much, perhaps anything, about how Little People feel about their representation in the media.  However, when AJ S. sent in the commercial below, I couldn’t help thinking about the early inclusion of blacks in U.S. television and movies.

When black actors were given their first roles in American entertainment, they usually played characters that were highly offensive and stereotypical.  However, while the representation was problematic, the fact that black actors were hired at all was a major step forward at the time and the fact that individual black actors were getting paid was no small thing.

I wonder, then, how to think about the commercial above.  It counts on an audience thinking that Little People are, at best, adorable and, at worst, laughable.  Then again, it’s an opportunity to raise awareness and for actors to get jobs.

Is this presence better than no presence?  Does it matter that nothing seems to have changed since The Wizard of Oz?  That is, is it unfair to characterize this as “early” representation? Then again, have representations of blacks undergone a qualitative change? One could argue “no.” Is the comparison with representations of blacks even fair?  Useful?  Obfuscatory?  What do ya’ll think?

P.S. – I put the “disability” tag on this post with some consternation.  Being small can be framed as disabling, but I imagine this is a political issue.  I also know that some conditions that cause short stature are disabling in other ways.  I don’t know… just doin’ my best here.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Months ago Ryan emailed us about a video game called Katawa Shouju (sometimes translated as Disabled Girls or Crippled Heart). From the website:

Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends—and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right.

A design sketch of the girls:

An article at GameSetWatch refers to the game having a “perverse and contemptible premise.”

Ryan says,

A lot of the discussion about this game seems to be about the disabilities of the girls and how disgusting it is. I don’t really share that opinion personally…I don’t really see what’s wrong with casting a girl with burn scars on her face as a love interest within a game. Or for that matter , what’s wrong with casting a girl with no legs or deformed arms as a love interest? I mean, it’s one thing to fetishize…but on the other hand it might be good for someone who has similar disabilities to feel like they can be desirable.

It’s an interesting point. I suspect there are things about the video game I would find disturbing, and if the girls are portrayed in a ridiculing way, that’s problematic. But some of the reactions to it seem to assume that having a person with a disability as a potential love interest is automatically ridiculing them. But why would that be? Why would it be more “contemptible” to portray these women as romantic/sexual interests any more than other women in similar games? Some of the objections to the game are based on the idea that you must be laughing at people with disabilities if you show them as sexy or romantically interesting. But that’s based on the idea that of course they can’t really be sexy, so it’s mean to portray them that way…which points out some interesting assumptions about people with disabilities and their romantic and sexual lives.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Reader Magnetic Crow says,

I think what bothers me about this is the premise of a “school for disabled kids only”, the fact that the girls are ‘othered’ from the get-go by this isolation, and the fact that this is probably being made to play to an exploitative fetish. Were it any other dating sim, and one of the girls available for dating just happened to have been born with no arms, or had lost her legs in a traffic accident, I would feel a lot more comfortable.

Other posts about video games: Evony’s boob ads, gender and race in RuneScape, Border Patrol game, Miss Bimbo and Sexy Beach 3, Rape Simulator, My Life, Medal of Honor’s all-White military, a game called Battle Raper that is exactly what it sounds like, blaming moms for video game addiction, sales of Grand Theft Auto, and “military entertainment.”

We also have a posts of a girl with a limp as an ugly friend, Goodyear ad featuring a sad kid in a wheelchair, nude calendar of Paralympic athletes, dolls with Down’s Syndrome, models with disabilities in a British Top Model show, representing people with disabilities, what is an “alt model”?, and amputee model Viktoria.

Kristin W., Brad W., and Deb G. sent us the Bacardi Breezers “Get an Ugly Girlfriend” ad campaign, discussed over at Jezebel. The message? Ladies, if you want to look better, get an ugly female friend to stand next to:

There are profiles of the various ugly girlfriends you can get:

Of course this ad campaign suggests to women that the most important thing about them is how they look. But, more insidiously, as Sweet Machine points out, it places women “in competition with other women for male attention” in a world where “self-esteem is a zero-sum game.”

This is how patriarchy creates in-fighting among women: If men have the power, and the only way to get power is to get men, then women feel compelled to try to get (the attention of) a man (or men).  Other women are their competition.

Women are stereotyped as bitchy and catty as if it is an inherent feature of femininity when, in fact, women’s subordination to men creates the conditions that force them into competition.

We see it happen live in this horrendous clip from Battle of the Bods.

More examples of cultural endorsements of the idea that women and girls are always in competition with one another here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Commenter Joanne pointed out an update, via Shapely Prose:

Sean-Patrick Hillman of bacardi.com comments below:

June 21, 2009

Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

I’m a bit confused, though–I did a quick google search, and Bacardi Breezer seems to be sold in a lot of places, including Canada and the U.S., but maybe they’re imported by a third party and not directly by Bacardi? I know I’d heard the name Bacardi Breezer before I saw these ads. Apparently I’m going to have to go on a tour of local liquor stores to see. What a horrible life I lead.

And I also agree with several of the other commenters–how awful must it be to be cast as an “ugly” person?

From AdWeek comes information about an ad campaign mounted by a gym in the Netherlands where a scale is attached to the seat in a bus stop and the weight of any seat occupants displayed in big red digital numbers. As Melissa McEwan from Shakesville notes, not only is this “fat-hating/shaming, but deeply hostile to the physically disabled, who have to exchange their privacy and dignity for their basic comfort just to wait for a bus.”

Shakesville commenters are currently parsing the insidious messages sent by this campaign.  One survivor of an eating disorder, LizardOC, points out, for a person with anorexia, such a public weigh-in could be deeply distressing, but also a source of strange attraction and fixation.

It would have given me not only another opportunity to cultivate my dangerous preoccupation with my weight, but a little more confirmation that the rest of society completely supported (hell, demanded) it.

I always thought that public shaming was more effective as a deterrent or punishment than a positive exhortation to do something.

NEW! If you don’t have the chance to be publicly weighed on a bench, you can weigh yourself every time you go to the bathroom with this toilet seat that has a built-in scale (sent in by Taylor, who found it at Yanko Design):

Thanks, Taylor!