gender

In recent weeks, we’ve seen multiple examples of women on the political right straddling two kinds of womanhood: the girlboss and the tradwife. The visibility of these women exposes a hidden link between conservative womanhood and girlboss feminism that deserves our attention. 

Katie Britt broadcast her response to the State of the Union from her kitchen. Michelle Morrow, the conservative activist from North Carolina who has just been elected state Superintendent of Education in North Carolina, burnishes her credentials as a wife and mother above all else.

They aren’t the first to do this; #tradlife has been trending since at least 2019. Tradwife influencers perform a version of femininity that leans on a strong husband providing financial support so they can devote themselves to caring for children and the home. There is almost always an apron, a kitchen, and a perfectly coiffed, carefully made-up woman in a serene environment cooking from scratch recipes — a vibe that belies the real chaos of having young humans to care for in a home. 

We might assume that tradwives hearken back to an earlier “backward” mode of femininity and marriage. But this way of being in the world is unmistakably modern because it involves “choice” and entrepreneurship. It is not enough for a tradwife to simply focus on her husband and kids, she must be entrepreneurial about it. She must blog about it, vlog about it, become an influencer. This is where the “girlboss” mentality comes in.

Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In told women that if they would just ask for what they wanted in the workplace, like the men, they too would advance. But women continue to face barriers in corporate America and marginalization in labor markets. Despite this girlboss feminism has been incorporated into our culture across the political spectrum. US women widely believe structural problems are with women ourselves. With individual effort, good planning, the right domestic help, and a little luck and chutzpah, we can overcome societal inequalities. We rely on a myth of mutuality that belies the true gender division of labor in American families.

It turned out lean-in feminism was both colorblind and a sham. And the #tradwives know it – there are even Black tradwife influencers. They say proudly: we have decided it’s way too exhausting to run the family and corporate America at the same time. So we will focus on our family and “opt out” of the vulnerability and constant stress of the labor market, which values our labor less. And in doing so, we take a stand with men and shore up the dying ideology of the father as breadwinner. We choose this, and you too can see just how great this choice is on our successful TikTok channels. 

As we discuss in depth in our new book, The Gender Order of Neoliberalism, U.S. has long drawn soft power from the idea that its women are “empowered.” Not “backward,” like those oppressed women in the Middle East or India or Africa, who are poor and come from patriarchal cultures. Our women, we like to tell the world, make choices of their own, work outside the home in high-powered jobs, fly planes, and even save women in other parts of the world.

But focusing on the individual choices of women who must “do it all” was not always what “women’s empowerment” meant. We show in our book that women involved in transnational feminist organizing in the 1950s and 60s lobbied for reproductive justice, fair pay for fair work, universal childcare, universal healthcare, and fair trade between countries. Those visions of empowerment have all but disappeared from our collective political imaginations. What would a joyful life look like if there were community kitchen tables, childcare collectives, and widely available healthcare? Where are the inviting visuals for that kind of empowerment?

Our impoverished feminist imagination leaves us straddling the skinny divide between tradwives and girlbosses and reinforcing the notion that women should continue to be America’s social safety net.

Smitha Radhakrishnan is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. She is author of Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India.

Cinzia D. Solari is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. She is author of On the Shoulders of Grandmothers: Gender, Migration, and Post-Soviet Nation-Building.

A recent photo from Dina Litovsky showing a model’s inflamed feet in slingback heels went viral, with reposts from National Geographic and a whole host of Instagram influencers. The photo garnered just over 500k likes and comments criticizing the prioritization of beauty over pain. This is not the first time these images have gone viral. In Louis Vuitton’s 2012 show in Paris, photos of runway models’ battered and bruised feet made the rounds.  

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Photo by Dina Litovsky – see reflections, and even more images of the modeling industry, on the Substack here

Models can and have refused to wear outrageous shoes, but they risk paying the price by being judged as unprofessional, especially models with low status and prestige within the industry. The industry often praises models for their ability to endure long shoots and poses overtly or subtly contortionist. Yet measuring professionalism by a model’s willingness to endure pain demonstrates the toxicity of professional status at the cost of one’s wellbeing. Phrases like “beauty is pain” and “look good, feel good” link one’s appearance to their inherent value and capabilities. On the catwalk, the consequences of professional norms skew models’ agency, and prices of pain are paid to justify, uphold, and maintain a professional image.

These runway shoes teeter between symbols of empowerment and oppression, as models embody cultural ideals of gender, race, class, and sexual identity. Simultaneously, their personhood is commoditized as “aesthetic laborers.” Empowered by the high fashion industry’s exclusivity and idealism, models experience dogged yet isolating work conditions. These images serve looks, but also serve as reminders of social expectations of beauty that reinforce of cultural standards shaped by power, race, and status. Sociologist Ashley Mears’ ethnography of models, Pricing Beauty, argues these ideals become prescriptive shaping cultural expectation of how people should look and be.

The struggle spreads from the fashion industry to the everyday consumer. In her essay “Always Be Optimizing,” Jia Tolentino connects pain and suffering to self-optimization. Narrating her experience and research on intense Pilates and barre workouts, Tolentino argues that gendered beauty ideals have transformed into a pursuit of optimization that hides oppressive cultural beauty standards. These painful practices are obscured as self-care, sweating it out, and getting a toned and sculpted body. Important here is the illusion of “agency” in doing “self-care” and choosing to “optimize” or improving one’s womanly figure. These lures of “look good feel good” and cultural expectations of beauty and that “beauty is pain,” justify the aches and pains from working out. Shoes are both a vehicle for our feet and for gendered cultural and societal expectations, standards, and ideals worthy of praise.

Rachel Bickelman is a MA and PhD student at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Over the course of the past year, M&M’s have been plastered all over the news, social media, and even Super Bowl commercials. In January 2022, Mars Wrigley gave the brown M&M shorter heels and replaced the green M&M’s boots with sneakers in a push toward more inclusive marketing. 

What resulted was outrage. Tucker Carlson became the face of the backlash, stating, “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous.” Carlson was not the only one speaking out. In a Rolling Stone article titled, “Let the Green M&M Be a Nasty Little Slut,” senior writer EJ Dickson argues, “The green M&M has spent decades building her brand as a horny, sexy bitch, and for what? For her creators to give her Larry David footwear in the name of feminism?”

By September, the purple M&M had made her debut. Carlson soon reignited the war, leading to Mars’ temporary suspension of their spokescandies. On FOX News, he remarked, “The green M&M got her boots back, but apparently is now a lesbian maybe? And now there’s a plus-sized, obese purple M&M.” While all of these comments are nonsensical, they point to the pressure placed on women to conform to gender norms and accommodate men’s sexual desires.

Sexualization of Women in the Media

M&M’s were not the first nor the only gendered commercial food product. In the 1940s, the Chiquita Banana, the world’s first branded fruit, made her debut. The original Miss Chiquita Banana was racialized and sexualized in order to appeal to the American market. Her femininity, specifically, was oversexualized through her flirtatious winking and eye-rolling as well as her frilly dresses and lipstick. 

M&M’s has long employed the same strategy by sexualizing their female spokescandies. Their hypersexualization not only appears in their dress, but the erotic nature of the commercials in which they have been featured. The green M&M has been pictured pole dancing, stripping, and fondling chocolate, among other overt sexual acts. What’s more, the male M&M’s can be seen ogling her in the background, reinforcing the pervasiveness of the male gaze, in which men actively view women as passive ‘objects’ of their sexual desires.

Emphasized Femininity

Emphasized femininity refers to a range of traditional feminine norms that encourage women to accommodate men’s sexual appetites and desire for control. It legitimizes the gender hierarchy and upholds various forms of oppression. 

As women step away from the “stereotypical cultural notions” of emphasized femininity, men must “negotiate the dilemma of incorporating women’s resistance into their masculine identity projects.” Therefore, when the female M&M’s became less conventionally attractive and “sexy,” those that subscribe to the ideals of hegemonic masculinity felt threatened. They became angry that their sexual desires were not being satisfied, even with regard to a candy mascot.

This outrage reveals that women face the prospect of being labeled “socially undesirable” when they possess masculine characteristics.

In Carlson’s words, “When you’re totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity.” In our patriarchal society, when a woman exhibits defiance or authority, men feel threatened unless they can stigmatize and feminize their behavior.

When this happens, a woman is no longer a “good girl,” but a “bitch,” “lesbian,” or “slut.” Evidently, for women to be valued by men, they need to be subservient to the male gaze.

Impact of Hypersexualization

The hypersexualization of women is incredibly harmful to young people. Adolescents’ exposure to a sexualized media environment leads them to recognize women as sex objects. When women and young girls constantly see their bodies objectified, they begin to internalize the idea that the most valuable thing about them is their body. They become acutely aware that they are seen as “sexual playthings waiting to please men’s sexual desires” and begin to feel unworthy if they do not meet society’s standards. It does not go unnoticed when children see that the very candy they eat is sexualized.

When people become outraged when a female M&M’s shoe is changed, what message does that send? Of course, a so-called “culture war” waged against M&M’s is ludicrous, but there is power behind words, and this controversy’s real-world implications must be addressed. The vicious cycle of sexualizing women, mascots or not, for profit must be brought to an end, and prominent figures need to realize that the oppression of others is not a punchline.

Jillian Nord is a sociology student at Hamilton College.

In recent years, sociologists have given attention to hookup culture and other modern forms of dating. Too often, however, this discussion ignores the experiences of trans people, and occasionally it focuses too narrowly on the college campus, ignoring the current prevalence of dating apps among many age groups.

Focusing on trans experiences is especially important, as a 2021 study found that trans youth are twice as likely as cisgender women to have experienced physical dating violence, and fifty percent more likely to have experienced psychological dating violence. A 2023 study identified common experiences, most notably being fetishized and having to deal with others’ assumptions about trans people. “Because I’m a trans woman, people instantly assume that I must be this massive bottom,” said one participant. Another participant, a trans man, reported similar experiences, saying “I just felt like they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to an idea they had about me.”

Other research has looked at trans people’s decisions to disclose their trans identity to prospective partners on dating apps. Most participants proactively and explicitly disclosed their identity, citing concerns about violence. One participant, who was genderfluid and lived in a rural area, mentioned that when meeting someone face-to-face from a dating app, they always thought, “that person could be the person that kills me.” Others, however, will engage in softer disclosure methods, such as showcasing different facets of their identity on apps that allow multiple profile pictures.

Who is most vulnerable within the trans community? Another 2021 study found that BIPOC, queer, and transfeminine people are the most likely to have experienced dating violence. A 2022 study looked at the dating experiences of BIPOC trans women, finding their cis male partners would often conceal their relationship from the public. Consequences of this stigma included physical violence and psychological trauma. “We getting killed just because of the guys here were scared that they secret would come out,” said one woman. They also mentioned engaging in “survival strategies,” including hypervigilance, dressing to avoid being “found out,” and avoiding certain men.

The authors of these studies suggest several remedies to the problems they discussed. First is comprehensive trans-inclusive education, whether in the form of school curricula, sex education, or violence prevention training, which have been shown to make trans people and their partners more comfortable. Second, dating app users wanted better filtering options, with one person saying, “The majority of the interactions I have with cis men on dating apps are just shit, full stop . . . can I have less of them pop up?” Finally, some study authors recommended the prohibition of “trans panic defenses,” which allow perpetrators of violent crimes to justify their actions as a loss of control after learning their victim is transgender.

As trans people are reaching new levels of visibility and coming under fire in unprecedented ways, social science research shows us that it is important to look for ways to make for a safer and less anxious future for trans people as we look for romantic and sexual partners.

Leah Long is a history and sociology student at Macalester College who researches and writes about trans history and politics.

The #MeToo movement that began in 2017 has reignited a long debate about how to name people who have had traumatic experiences. Do we call individuals who have experienced war, cancer, crime, or sexual violence “victims”? Or should we call them “survivor,” as recent activists like #MeToo founder Tarana Burke have advocated?

Strong arguments can be raised for both sides. In the sexual violence debate, advocates of “survivor” argue the term places women at the center of their own narrative of recovery and growth. Defenders of victim language, meanwhile, argue that victim better describes the harm and seriousness of violence against women and identifies the source of violence in systemic misogyny and cultures of patriarchy.

Unfortunately, while there has been much debate about the use of these terms, there has been little documentation of how service and advocacy organizations that work with individuals who have experienced trauma actually use these terms. Understanding the use of survivor and victim is important because it tells us what these terms to mean in practice and where barriers to change are. 

We sought to remedy this problem in a recent paper published in Social Currents.  We used data from nonprofit mission statements to track language change among 3,756 nonprofits that once talked about victims in the 1990s.  We found, in general, that relatively few organizations adopted survivor as a way to talk about trauma even as some organizations have moved away from talking about victims.  However, we also found that, increasingly, organizations that focus on issues related to women tend to use victim and survivor interchangeably. In contrast, organizations that do not work with women appear be moving away from both terms.

These findings contradict the way we usually think about “survivor” and “victim” as opposing terms. Does this mean that survivor and victim are becoming the “extremely reduced form” through which women are able to enter the public sphere? Or does it mean that feminist service providers are avoiding binary thinking? These questions, as well as questions about the strategic, linguistic, and contextual reasons that organizations choose victim- or survivor-based language give advocates and scholars of language plenty to re-examine.  

Andrew Messamore is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Andrew studies changing modes of local organizing at work and in neighborhoods and how the ways people associate shapes community, public discourse, and economic inequality in the United States.

Pamela Paxton is the Linda K. George and John Wilson Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at Austin. With Melanie Hughes and Tiffany Barnes, she is the co-author of the 2020 book, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective.

Mattel, creator of the Barbie doll, has launched “a doll line designed to keep labels out and invite everyone in—giving kids the freedom to create their own customizable characters again and again.”  This doll has minimal makeup, a short hairstyle with an attachable long-hair wig, a flat chest, flat feet (for wearing sneakers, hiking boots, or platform sandals), and clothing that includes femme and butch options.  The clothes and accessories can, of course, be interchanged into dozens of different combinations. 

For those old enough to remember the 1960s dolls, I have one word for you:  Skipper.  For those too young to know, Skipper was Barbie’s little sister and had a pre-pubescent body: flat chest and flat feet, since she was too young to wear heels. Imagine Skipper only with hair that could go off and on, and a more expansive wardrobe (which, in the 60s, we would have called “tomboy”).

In fact, Mattel sidestepped controversy by diplomatically calling the new doll “customizable” rather than gender-inclusive.  This doll does not include adult body types at all.  It is more of a genderless kid than a gender inclusive adult.  For gender inclusion recognizes that policies, programs, and language need to be broader to encompass the fluidity of gender expression and orientation.  According to Gender Spectrum, the organization whose mission is to create a gender-inclusive world for all children and youth, gender inclusivity means being open to everyone regardless of their gender identity and/or expression.  Gender inclusion would thus include people with large breasts who identify as men and people with penises who identify as women.    

Of course, Mattel’s 12-inch plastic dolls were never particularly realistic, and never had genitalia.  In addition, anyone with even an ounce of creativity could, and did, dress their Barbie doll in the clothing that came with a Ken or G.I. Joe doll, cut off Barbie’s hair, pierce Ken’s ears, draw on tattoos, create their own accessories, and so on.   

Interestingly, Mattel has already made Barbie dolls dressed as men.  Between 2011 and 2019, Mattel released an Elvis Barbie, a David Bowie Barbie, a Frank Sinatra Barbie, and an Andy Warhol Barbie.  These are standard buxom Barbie dolls dressed as the iconic male figures.  Some might consider these dolls at least as gender-bending as the Creatable World^TM dolls.  But they are also less threatening because they are marketed to adult collectors, not to kids who will play with them.  And Mattel has yet to create Marilyn Monroe Ken or Barbra Streisand Ken. (If you’re listening, Mattel, I’ll accept royalties.)

Changing your Barbie’s skin color was a little more challenging, but by 2009, Barbie’s 50^th anniversary, Mattel had released far more ethnically diverse Barbies, although they were still primarily princesses, graceful goddesses, and buxom movie stars.  Over its nearly 60-year history, Barbie’s body shape remained a lingering complaint of feminist critics, well after Barbie got more racially diverse and Teen Talk Barbie no longer said “Math class is tough.”  For even the pilot and presidential candidate Barbies had big chests and really tiny waists, making one wonder if she would hit that glass ceiling pointy boobs first.  Sure, it could be seen as a sign of strength that Barbie does everything Ken does, only in downward pointing feet that only fit in heels.  But as millennials began to become moms who buy (or refuse to buy) Barbies (see, e.g., this feminist mom’s explanation), and Mattel’s sales started to plummet, Mattel began to rebrand itself in 2016 with the launch of new Barbie body types—petite, tall, and curvy. 

Perhaps Lena Dunham, whose nudity in Girls was considered transgressive, deserves thanks.  We should also thank the artists and activists who had a dream for Barbie and used social media to share it, going much farther than Mattel to re-imagine Barbie, gender, and pop culture.  Indeed, they make Creative World^TM dolls look pretty conventional.  The changes Mattel has been making can be seen as a direct result of the willingness of artists, activists, and fans to playfully engage with—rather than simply criticize—their dolls.  Creatable World^TM dolls may be another step Mattel is taking to embrace diversity and include more consumers.  How far it will go might once again depend on what fans of the dolls demand and how creative people get in making their own visions known.

Martha McCaughey is Professor of Sociology at Appalachian State. She blogs on sexual assault prevention at See Jane Fight Back (www.seejanefightback.com)

For feminists, liking Barbie is tough.  This top selling American toy has long been criticized for fueling sexist stereotypes, because women are not actually focused on dream houses, dream dates, beauty, and unbridled consumption. 

And yet Mattel has made attempts to refashion the doll as women’s positions in society have changed.  By the 1990s Barbie had careers as a firefighter, police officer, and in the military.  She had also been a racecar driver, a pilot, and a presidential candidate.  However, the 90s also gave us the infamous Teen Talk Barbie whose voice box had been programmed to say, “Math class is tough.”

The Barbie Liberation Organization (B.L.O.) switched Teen Talk Barbie’s voice box with that of talking G.I. Joe, and put the altered dolls back into their original packages and back onto store shelves.  They released videotapes to major television news outlets explaining their action and calling attention to Mattel’s outdated gender ideology.  With G.I. Joe saying, “Let’s sing with the band tonight” or “Wanna go shopping?” and Barbie saying, “Dead men tell no tales” the B.L.O.’s media-savvy culture jam threw our gendered expectations into sharp relief.   

In addition to the B.L.O., women’s groups expressed concern that Barbie’s math-anxious statement would discourage girls from pursuing math and math-related fields, and so Mattel removed the offending remark from Barbie’s voice box.

Inspired by the B.L.O. and other culture jammers, for Barbie’s 50^th anniversary in 2009 I initiated a “Barbies We Would Like to See” exhibition on my campus.  The exhibition included Muslim Girl Barbie (made from a 1960s Skipper doll), Stay-At-Home-Dad Ken, Public Breastfeeding Barbie, and Lesbian Wedding Barbie—to name a few.

And now, as Barbie turns 60, we can see how participatory social media has made it possible for anyone with a dream for Barbie to share it instantaneously and widely.  For example, Black Moses Barbie videos on YouTube use Barbie dolls to depict imagined moments in history with Harriet Tubman, and photographer Mariel Clayton creates elaborate scenes with Barbies—sometimes violent, sometimes sexual, sometimes both—which she photographs and shares on her public Facebook page.  There are entire Instagram accounts devoted to depictions of Barbie and social critiques made through Barbie, for instance Sociality Barbie, the anonymous Instagram feed with over 800,000 followers that depicts Barbie as a Portland, Oregon hipster.  In our documentary video on Barbie in the age of digital reproduction (produced by Martha McCaughey and Beth Davison, linked above), we see how these artists and Barbie hackers go much farther than Mattel to re-imagine gender and pop culture.  Indeed, they make curvy Barbie, released in 2016, and the gender-neutral Creative World^TM dolls, released this year, look pretty conventional.

In line with Rentschler and Thrift’s (2015) argument that feminist meme propagators do feminist cultural production, Barbie artists and activists sharing their altered dolls on social media are doing feminist cultural production and creating “feminist community-building media” (Rentschler 2019).  In this age of digital reproduction Mattel can neither thwart nor ignore what people want to do with their dolls.  Indeed, the changes Mattel has been making to their dolls can be seen as a direct result of the willingness of artists, activists, and fans to playfully engage with—rather than simply criticize—their dolls. 

Barbie has always been malleable.  Thanks to feminist media, perhaps Mattel can now acknowledge what Barbie hackers have long known: that gender, like the doll itself, is plastic.  

Martha McCaughey is Professor of Sociology at Appalachian State.  She is the author of The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science, and Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense.She blogs on sexual assault prevention at See Jane Fight Back.

Works Cited

Rentschler, Carrie, 2019.  “Making Culture and Doing Feminism.” Pp. 127-147 in Routledge International
Handbook on Contemporary Feminism Ed. by Tasha Oren and Andrea Press.

Rentschler,
Carrie and Samantha Thrift, 2015. “Doing Feminism in the Network: Networked
Laughter and the Binders Full of Women Meme” Feminist Theory 16:3:329–359.

Talks about product design are a great tool for thinking about sociology because they show us just how much work goes into understanding our basic assumptions about the things we use everyday. Design shows us which parts of a product are absolutely essential for function, and just how much is only there for show. Small choices in color, curvature, or casting can do a lot to shape how we use products and what we assume about people who use them.

Karin Ehrnberger recently sent in her TEDx talk on a product re-design to swap a hand blender with a hand drill. The talk highlights gendered expectations for household labor and shows us what happens when we shake up those assumptions in the design. Fans of pointlessly gendered products will love this talk, and I also think it has a lot to teach us about labor itself, especially in how Ehrnberger highlights the difference between what gets to be a “tool” and what is just an “appliance.” Check it out!

Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website, or on BlueSky.