Sociological Images

Way back in 2008 we posted about the conflation of food with women’s bodies — that is, presenting women’s bodies as food, and presenting food items as sexualized women, an issue covered in depth by Carol Adams. Two readers sent in additional examples. Sarah noticed this ad for canned tuna fillets, which have apparently sprouted heels-wearing legs:

And Whitney R. pointed out that Ludacris’s 2003 album, Chicken-n-Beer, presents a woman’s disembodied leg as the equivalent of fried chicken, ready to be consumed:

For many more examples — including a bikini-clad pin-up turkey — see our original post.

For the last week of December, we’re re-posting some of our favorite posts from 2011.

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You often hear that everything is sexualized nowadays, and not just women but men too. In the September 2011 issue of Sexuality & Culture, we examine this idea in an analysis of Rolling Stone magazine covers.  Specifically, we wanted to know if men and women are equally sexualized, and if they have become either more frequently or more intensely sexualized over time.  To do this, we analyzed every cover from the first issue of Rolling Stone in November 1967 through 2009, minus a few (such as those that featured cartoons rather than people, etc.). You can read more about our methods in the article here.

In order to analyze these 1000+ images of men and women, we developed a “scale of sexualization.”   This scale was composed of 11 different variables to measure different aspects of sexualization.  For instance, a cover model was given “points” for being sexualized if their lips were parted, if they were scantily clad (more points if they were naked), if the text describing them used explicitly sexual language, or if they were lying down on a bed or otherwise posed in a sexually suggestive way.  Images could score anywhere from 0 points (and 176 did) to 23 points (though 20 was our highest score).

Once all of the images on all 43 years of Rolling Stone were scored, we divided the images into three groups:  those images that were generally not sexualized, those images that were sexualized, and those images that were so sexualized that we dubbed them “hypersexualized.”

The graph below shows our findings:

Looking first at images of men (represented by dotted lines), we see that the majority of them– from 89% in the 1960s to 83% in the 2000s — were nonsexualized.  Men are sometimes shown in a sexualized manner (about 15% in the 2000s), but they are rarely hypersexualized (just 2% in the 2000s). In fact, only 2% of the images of men across the entire dataset — all 43 years — are hypersexualized.

But, again, the vast majority of men — some 83% in recent years — were not sexualized at all.  So, if you were to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone in the 2000s, you would most likely see men portrayed in a non-sexualized manner, such as in these images:

In contrast, women, especially recently, are almost always sexualized to some degree.  In fact, by the 2000s, 61% of women were hypersexualized, and another 22% were sexualized.  This means that, in the 2000s, women were 3 1/2 times more likely to be hypersexualized than nonsexualized, and nearly five times more likely to be sexualized to any degree (sexualized or hypersexualized) than nonsexualized.

So, in the last decade, if you were to pick up a copy of Rolling Stone that featured a woman on its cover, you would most likely see her portrayed in a sexualized manner, since fully 83% of women were either sexualized or hypersexualized in the 2000s. Here are a few examples of hypersexualized images:

In our article, we argue that the dramatic increase in hypersexualized images of women — along with the corresponding decline in nonsexualized images of them — indicates a decisive narrowing or homogenization of media representations of women.  In Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, journalist Ariel Levy (2005:5) describes this trend in this way:  “A tawdry, tarty, cartoonlike version of female sexuality has become so ubiquitous, it no longer seems particular.  What we once regarded as a kind of sexual expression,” Levy writes, “we now view as sexuality” (emphases in original).  In this article, we offer empirical evidence for this claim.

So what explains this trend towards women’s hypersexualization?  We don’t think it’s just the idea that “sex sells.” If that were true, we’d see many more images of women on Rolling Stone’s covers (only 30% of covers feature images of women) and we’d also see more sexualized and hypersexualized images of men.  We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Mary Nell Trautner and Erin Hatton are Assistant Professors of Sociology at SUNY Buffalo. Trautner is the author of many articles on the relationship between law, culture, organizational practices, and social inequality (and has written a fantastic Soc Images Course Guide for Sociology of Gender courses).  Hatton, a sociologist of work, is the author of The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America.

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

I’m having fun imagining the marketing meeting for this ad, sent in by Margot Magowan.

Chapstick Exec: “Okay, so the problem is that I can’t think of a way to get tits and ass into advertising for our product. Can you help me?”

Ad Exec: “Hmmmm… how can we get women bent over?”

Chapstick Exec: “I don’t want to be obvious-obvious, like that sexy organ donation ad, just obvious.”

Ad Exec: “Got it!  We’ll do ads where the chapstick is lost and women are looking for it. The first ad will involve her bending over with her ass towards us, the second will involve her bending over in front of us, so we can look down her shirt.”

Chapstick Exec: “Make sure there are tight jeans involved and you’ve got a deal.”

I made up the second ad, but you never know.

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s Blog.

Demand #8 from the Occupy Wall Street list of demands is a call for a “gender equal rights amendment,” a good sign that OWS is thinking about inequality in all its various forms.  This sentiment, though, seems to be lost on (supposedly) liberal filmmaker, Steven Greenstreet, whose past work  includes documentaries about the Mormon influence in passing Proposition 8 and the conservative backlash against Michael Moore.  Greenstreet is also the proud creator of the website, Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street.  He was watching news coverage of the Occupy movement that inspired him to tell a friend,

Wow, seeing all those super smart hot chicks at the protest makes me want to be there… Hmmm… Yeah, let’s go with that.

We instantly went to Tumblr and made [Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street]. Our original ideas were admittedly sophomoric: Pics of hot chicks being all protesty, videos of hot chicks beating drums in slow-mo, etc. But when we arrived at Zuccotti Park in New York City, it evolved into something more.

There was a vibrant energy in the air, a warmth of community and family, and the voices we heard were so hopeful and passionate. Pretty faces were making signs, giving speeches, organizing crowds, handing out food, singing, dancing, debating, hugging and marching.

The evolution from “sophomoric” to “something more,” inspired by “community and family,” is not evident on the website.  Aside from the obvious reduction of activist women to sexual objects, this site is shockingly offensive in its inclusion of young women/girls, one with the caption “She is identified as being 18 years old.” [Hint: If you have to identify “her” as being of age, that’s a sign you probably shouldn’t be posting the photo.]

And these photos:

Greenstreet does not provide information about whether he gained permission from the girls/women featured, but since no names are provided, we can assume he did not systematically seek permission.

It is also unlikely that Greenstreet informed his subjects of his intention to post their photos on the Hot Chicks website.  With his accomplice, Brandon Bloch, Greenstreet shot a video with interviews of women in which it is clear they thought their words, not their bodies, would be the focus:

And in case the message that women are primarily sexual objects wasn’t clear, Greenstreet even includes photos of professional women in his voyeur collection:

Greenstreet has posted criticism on the Hot Chicks website like a badge of honor:

@JaeChick: Nothing like degrading women to get attention. You are a small, sorry excuse for a man.

@MeFunk: Whatsay you take down your sexist video, issue a formal apology to female protesters, and then I pour hot coffee on you?

He responded to critiques of sexism with the following statement:

Apparently a lot of controversy has erupted online from people passionately opining (among many things) that this is sexist, offensive, and dangerously objectifies women. It was not my intent to do that and I think the spirit of the video, and the voices within, are honorable and inspiring.

However, if you disagree with me, I encourage you to use that as an excuse to create constructive discussions about the issues you have. Because, to be honest, any excuse is a good excuse to bring up the topic of women’s rights.

Wow, what a humanitarian.  It appears that this fumbling display of overt sexism was really just a ploy to get us talking about women’s rights.  Thanks, Steven.

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Thanks to Katrin, Melanie L., Jessie W., and Nathan Jurgenson of Cyborgology for asking us to write about this topic!

Cross-posted at Ms.

According to a BBC News story sent in by Leiana S. and Kinesiology professor Mary Louise Adams, the International Boxing Association may soon require female boxers to wear skirts.  The President of the Association, Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, argues that it will allow viewers to tell the difference between the men and the women who currently wear the same uniforms, including headgear.  Right now the skirt is an optional variation on the official uniform but, Dr. Wu says, “After we hear about its comfort and how easy it is to compete in the uniform, it may be compulsory.”

At the European Championships in Rotterdam last week, female boxers from Poland and Romania adopted the new uniform.  A coach of the Poland team said: “By wearing skirts, in my opinion, it gives a good impression, a womanly impression.”

(source)

(source)

This might be an example of officials assuming that (1) men are the main audience for boxing and that (2) men will watch women’s boxing more if they differentiate/sexualize women.

It might also, however, be an example of an attempt to retrench difference between men and women exactly when those differences start to dissolve.  Discomfort with the lack of actual differences between men and women sometimes leads individuals to encourage or enforce artificial ones.  I would say that this is one of the main functions of clothes today. Yeah, I said it. I think exaggerating what are actually rather weak and strongly overlapping differences between men and women is one of the primary functions of clothes.

In any case, it’s probably a combination of both.

Earlier this year they tried this with Badminton, but it didn’t take.

The idea that female athletes aren’t sufficiently feminine has been around as long as sports have been around.  Today, the feminizing of athletes is ubiquitous.  See our posts on Serena Williams’s ESPN cover, Candace Parker “is pretty, which helps,” press photos of female athletes in dresses, groundbreaking female sailor is also pretty, sexualizing female Olympic athletes, diets of champions, media portrayals of female athletes, and valuing dads in the WNBA.

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.

Okay so I did a google search one day and I stumbled across two images that… well, I just have to show them to you:

(Victoria’s Secret models, found here)

(Disney fairies, found here)

I seriously don’t want to make too big of a deal out of this. I really don’t.  I highly doubt that one of these images was modeled after the other or that there was some deliberate attempt to link Victoria’s Secret with Disney or sexy models with little girls.

That said, the two images point to a common visual trope. In this trope, a group of sexy women get lined up (often touching each other).  They look almost identical, with the exception of a tiny bit of variation in skin color and hair.  And they’re costumed in such a way as to make them look both alike and different (e.g., all in underwear of different colors).

The effect is to erase their individuality, but multiply the impact of the image. We don’t see a five or six women, we see Woman with a capital “W” (or Fairies in the second case).  It’s like seeing a buffet from afar, you see Food, but not necessarily macaroni and cheese, little tuna sandwich triangles, fried okra, and fruit salad.

Let’s call it the there’s-no-such-thing-as-too-much-conformity-to-the-male-gaze trope.  Or, I-like-my-women-like-I-like-my-collectibles (lots of ‘em, all of a type, and on display).  Or, women-come-in-a-rainbow-of-colors-just-kidding.

Do you have a better name for it?

UPDATE: Here’s another one, sent in by Ann T. (says Ann’s boyfriend, “I know it makes ME think of cancer”):