Sociological Images

Last month the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a series of graphic anti-smoking ads intended to “raise awareness of the human suffering caused by smoking and to encourage smokers to quit.”   The campaign, titled “Tips From Former Smokers,” depicts individuals who have experienced some of the potential effects of tobacco use, including stomas, stroke, lung removal, heart attack, limb amputations, and asthma.  For example, this ad features several former smokers who offer “tips” on how to live with a throat stoma (hole), such as “Crouch, don’t bend over—you don’t want to lose the food in your stomach”:

This ad shows Terrie, a throat cancer survivor, completing the morning routine she performs in order to maintain her appearance after losing her hair and teeth and having a tracheotomy:

Finally, this ad depicts several people who suffered a vascular disease brought on by smoking who had to have limbs amputated:

In addition to the whether these ads will be effective in persuading smokers to quit, we might ask whether fear and stigma are appropriate health promotion strategies.  Is it possible or ethical to scare people into changing their behaviors?  What are the implications of using stigmatized people to serve as a warning label to others?

What’s most striking about these ads is how they use and portray the human body.  Medical sociologist Deborah Lupton suggests that health promotion campaigns such as this one do not simply depict bodies but also produce them; that is, the ways we talk about and create images of certain bodies says something about who or what that body is and what it does. She argues that when the body is seen as uncontrolled, say, with holes or missing limbs, then the self is understood as undisciplined.  For these former smokers, their undisciplined selves resulted in their uncontrolled bodies. Lupton suggests that by producing the body as a site of contamination or catastrophe the rest of us can be kept in line by fear.

In these ads, a group of disabled people and cancer survivors are used as a warning for current smokers to quit.  The ads invite us to feel disgust at their bodies and fear at what could happen to our own.  In particular, Terrie’s ad invokes gendered beauty norms and prompts viewers to imagine themselves without traditional markers of attractiveness such a full head of hair.

Paying attention to how health promotion images use the body is one way to think more critically about bodies, well-being, and how to effectively promote healthy behaviors.

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Christie Barcelos is a doctoral candidate in Public Health/Community Health Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Last week, as most of you no doubt heard, the Susan B. Komen for the Cure breast cancer awareness group announced it would no longer fund breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood, saying it had a policy against funding organizations that were under investigation (Planned Parenthood is currently under what many see as a politically-motivated investigation about whether it used any federal funds to pay for abortions). The decision drew a lot of attention and criticism of Komen — not just of the decision about Planned Parenthood, but of its role in the breast cancer awareness/research community more generally.

The Komen Foundation is known to many primarily because it’s often listed as a recipient of the funds companies promise to donate when we buy products branded with a pink ribbon. But many critics express concern with this type of marketing-as-awareness, and discussions of the “pinkification” of breast cancer and criticism of the policies supported by groups such as Komen surfaced as part of the debate about the organization over the weekend (which is ongoing, with the VP for Public Policy at Komen announcing her resignation today).

Given this, Dmitriy T.M. thought readers might be interested in the trailer for the documentary Pink Ribbons, which looks at the rise of pink ribbon branding and its impact on breast cancer prevention efforts. I post it with the caveat that I haven’t been able to see the whole film, but would love to hear from those of you who have, or who can speak to the issues it raises:

If you’re looking for basic global demographic information, World Health Rankings provides a great overview, using World Health Organization, World Bank, UNESCO, and other data. The website allows you to select a country, then provides a detailed breakdown of many demographic details, such as population pyramids (you can select different years in the past, or look at predictions for the future), leading causes of death, etc. Here’s the 2010 population pyramid for the U.S.:

You can also easily access all the age pyramids here. The 2020 projections for Brazil show the changing demographics due to the dramatic decrease in the fertility rate, which Lisa posted about this weekend:

There’s an interactive map of the top 15 causes of death in the U.S., allowing you to look at variations by county. Here’s the map of deaths due to heart disease, with Clark County, Nevada, highlighted:

You can also look at life expectancy for different nations for every decade between 1960 and 20101, a “real-time” clock that tracks global deaths (you can look at how many have died in the last year or month, or you can click “now” and reset the clock and watch as the clock estimate how many people die of various causes of death worldwide), and maps showing the prevalence of various causes of death around the world. Lots of neat representations of rather depressing information.

Also, as I wrote this post I realized that now every time I see a population pyramid of the U.S., Community‘s song “Baby Boomer Santa” is going to play through my head.

Today cheerleading can be an incredibly athletic and risky sport. Because it is associated with women, though, and serves a sideline function for football and other male-dominated sports, cheerleading is often not considered a sport at all. Less than half of U.S. high school athletic associations define high school cheerleading as a sport and neither the U.S. Education Department or the National Collegiate Athletic Association categorize it as one.

Instead, cheerleading is frequently labeled an “activity,” akin to the chess club.  Accordingly, cheerleading remains unregulated by organizations responsible for ensuring the safety of athletes, leading to rates of injury among cheerleaders higher than even those among American football players.

A similar logic appears to be at play regarding the Lingerie Football League, 12 teams of women that play live tackle football in underwear.  Here are some highlights from a game:

So, here’s the thing.    Last month 16 of the 26 players on the Triumph, a team in Toronto, resigned over safety concerns. From a story at the Toronto Star sent in by Emily M.:

…four players described the ill-fitting hockey helmets and one-size-fits-all shoulder pads designed for young males that they had to wear.

“We would have headaches during practice… They made a hockey helmet a football helmet, and that’s not what it’s for.”

…

Sprained ankles, concussions and pulled hamstrings were among the injuries sustained by Triumph players in their first game… their team had no medical staff.

One of the players reported that, when they brought their concerns to the coach, he shrugged and said: “You know, it is what it is.”

“You know, it is what it is.”  In other words, “You’re women in underwear. It doesn’t matter what you do, you’re not really playing football.”  Ideology triumphing over reality.

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

Gay men and bisexual men still represent a disproportionate number of HIV cases in the United States (CDC).  In addition, African-American and Latino men are significantly more likely than white men to be diagnosed with HIV and die from AIDS-related illnesses.  Numerous HIV prevention campaigns are thus aimed at these populations.

It’s important to try to reduce the HIV among these populations, but we also need to think critically about how prevention strategies reinforce stigmatization.

For example, this ad from a western Massachusetts clinic uses the phrase “man up, get tested” — taking care of yourself by getting tested for HIV is linked to your masculinity.  What’s interesting is that by including only men of color in the photo, the ad suggests that black and Latino men are particularly obsessed with their masculinity, more so, perhaps, than white men.  It also potentially reinforces stereotypes about black men as hyper-sexualized and Latino men as machismo.

In 1922 the American Social Hygiene Association, funded by the American Public Health Service, created a social marketing campaign aimed at American teenagers. While it was predominantly about sexually transmitted infections, it also taught about good health and hygiene in general. And maintaining health, then as now, is not only about health but also about conforming to social norms–especially gender norms.

The posters aimed at boys were titled “Keeping Fit”:

And the girls’ posters were titled “Youth and Life”:

Comparing the boys and girls’ posters, you can see that fitness is not just about physical health; it is also about particular character traits. For boys, those traits are will power, courage, and self-control–traits that are based on a puritan work ethic that we value in a competitive capitalist society.

While courage and endurance were important for both boys and girls, fitness for girls was less about power and self-control, and more about grace, beauty, and friendship.

TEXT:

Paint your cheeks from the inside out. Outdoor exercise, baths, regular meals, and plenty of sleep will help. Most girls could be prettier than they are because most girls could be healthier.

TEXT:

Copy the pose but not the shoes. Correct posture gives attractive figure, straight back, freedom of action for heart and lungs, good muscle tone. Stand tall — chest up, not out — toes straight forward when walking or standing. A well-poised body develops self-respect, and wins the regard of others.

Men were taught how to grow up to be honorable husbands and fathers, while women were taught how to grow up to be good wives and mothers.

For boys:

TEXT:

The youth who achieves self-control can go joyfully and clean into marriage with the one girl he is willing to wait for, and become a husband and father without the danger of causing suffering to wife and child.

For girls:

TEXT:

A woman physician who is also a mother. The girl of today will be the woman of tomorrow. She will need brains, vitality, and sound training, if she is to take her place in the world as a mother and a useful citizen.

It may be tempting to think that we know more now than we did back then and that with progress we make fewer mistakes today than they did in the past. However, controversy surrounding many health topics such as obesity, circumcision, and the way we screen, treat, and fundraise for breast cancer should tell you that we still have many assumptions behind our health recommendations that are based on ideology.

The posters are held at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries

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Christina Barmon is a doctoral student at Georgia State University studying sociology and gerontology.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

An extended version of this post also appeared at Ms.

Lindsey B. alerted us to a newly published paper in the Journal of Marketing Research suggesting that the current approach to raising awareness of breast cancer hurts more than helps.  You might have noticed, just maybe, I mean if you’ve been paying attention, that breast cancer has become associated with the color pink.

Stefano Puntoni and his colleagues found that when women were exposed to gender cues, like the color pink, they were less likely than women who had not been primed with a gender cue to think that they might someday get breast cancer and to say that they’d be willing to donate to the cause.  Pink, in other words, decreased both their willingness to fund research and the seriousness with which women took the disease.

Puntoni explains this finding with a common psychological tendency. When people are faced with a personal threat, they tend to subconsciously go on the defensive.  In this case, when women are exposed to information about breast cancer at the same time that they are reminded that they, specifically, are vulnerable to it, they subconsciously try to push away the idea that they’re vulnerable and that breast cancer is something that they, or anyone, needs to worry about it.