Sociological Images

…if it was ubiquitous.  The billboard, advertising the HBO series, is in New Zealand:

More objectification of men (NSFW).

(Source: Copyranter.)

Ok, so we know that, in the U.S., full-time female workers make about 85 cents for every dollar made by full-time male workers.  But how does the U.S. compare to other countries?  This graph, sent in by Katrin from the OECD Fact Blog, shows that we do better than some, but worse than most developed countries:

We do as badly as Switzerland, Finland, and Portugal.  We do better than the U.K., Canada, Germany and, especially, Japan and Korea.  But we do significantly worse than 13 other countries… with Belgium, New Zealand, and Poland leading the way with the smallest wage gap (at 10% or smaller).

Poledra and Catherine told us about the Couger Pride ad campaign by Air New Zealand. This commercial was banned from the air due to complaints:

In addition, Air New Zealand had a contest for cougars to attend the Rugby Sevens. Catherine says,

They offered sixty women over 35 years the chance to win tickets to the sporting event (which is more like a Mardi Gras) as well as “cougar costumes and the equipment to make enough noise to attract the attention of young males.”

This video contains footage of the winners (?) at the event:

As Catherine points out, in theory the “cougar” phenomenon could be empowering, in that it recognizes that women remain sexual throughout their lives. But we often see older women who are interested in sex with younger men portrayed as, literally, predatory, as in the commercial, and the age difference as shocking or comical (whereas age differences where the man is older are less noteworthy — just as an example, note how much attention Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher got when they started dating, while David Schwimmer from Friends, who is 43, is engaged to a 24-year-old and that seems to be unremarkable; Jerry Seinfeld also married a much-younger woman with little public scrutiny).

According to the Huffington Post, New Zealand’s Rape Prevention Education director voiced a different concern, arguing that predatory sexual behavior shouldn’t be encouraged or laughed at regardless of the gender of the person engaging in it:

“[Air New Zealand employees] find it degrading and that it is encouraging potentially harmful behaviour, so my question is why is our national carrier promoting sexually predatory behaviour?” McGregor said. “We have also had complaints from male survivors who have been raped by women and they are very distressed that their situation is being laughed at and made out to be humorous.”

On this sign, woman = person… and in most places in the world, most of the time, that is weird!

The sign, found here (via), can be found in Haarlem, Netherlands.

UPDATE: In the comments, Tara linked to a BBC story about Fuenlabrada, Spain. They’ve replaced half of all walk/don’t walk signs with figures in skirts.

And Astrid linked to some examples from Germany.

The social construction of female as skirted aside, neat!

Spain:

Germany:

NEW! Pharmacopaeia also linked to a sign from New Zealand:

Also in the comments, Caroline asked us to link to our post where stick figures suddenly sprout skirts when paired with children.

More ads portraying men as stupid and trivial. Click here for more.

A very funny beer commercial – video powered by Metacafe

Miguel E. found all of these here!

NEW: In our comments, Pharmacopaeia pointed us to this commerical from New Zealand:

See also bros before hos.

This Australian ad for Lipton tea suggests that it’s mind clarifying qualities are so good that it could help even George Bush achieve the feat of naming all 50 states.

This Brazilian ad for Rolling Stone, featuring a picture of George W. Bush, reads: “We don’t show naked women to sell more. At the most, we show some asses.”

This Chinese Greenpeace ad, portraying Bush’s spin on global warming, reads: “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Voice yours at forum.greenpeace.org.”

This Chinese ad for an erasable pen reads: “Everyone makes mistakes.” 

In Malaysia, Bush is used to sell Smart cars.  Text: “Still looking for weapons of mass destruction.  Not smart.” 

Also in Malaysia, Amnesty International makes fun of Bush in their effort to inspire opposition to Guantanamo Bay.  “Write to him and help stop torture at Guantanamo Bay.  Remember, use simple words.”

This is a Mexican ad for a dog kennel.  “We don’t discriminate any kind of breed.”  (The source says that, in Mexico, like in the U.S., “dog” is a name for a bad person.)

 This ad for a Mexican newspaper reads: “Such a complex world needs a good explanation.”

This is an ad for the movie American Psycho in New Zealand.

In Portugal, playing war games (paint ball) is advertised as equivalent to playing George W. Bush.

This Swiss ad threatens, if you fall off your bicycle without a helmet, you may end up as dumb as George W. Bush.

These and more borrowed from here, found via adfreak.

Update: There have been some really nice points in the comments about how, in the process of making fun of Bush, we are also seeing the further stigmatization of ”people with developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and psychological diagnoses” (that from Penny in the comments).