*updates

First, thanks to all of you for making 2008 a great year for Sociological Images!  Our list of 152 blogs that link to us is one tiny way that we try to show our appreciation.  Browse through our list, if you like, and if you link to us in your blogroll and aren’t on there, please send us a note at socimages@thesocietypages.org to let us know.

Second, as usual, we have been up to some stuff behind your back!  Here it is:

Remember how the swastika didn’t used to connote total evil?  Neither did we. We added several more examples of pre-Nazi uses of the swastika to this post.

The Canadian Centre for Diversity put out an interesting PSA along the lines of the U.S. “I am African” campaign (so brilliantly parodied).  Find the link here.  Thanks to Julie C. for sending it in!

Our post about rape as hyperconformity to masculine norms sparked a ton of comments, many of them negative.  Maybe these screenshots of a whole series of recipes for a drink called the “Liquid Panty Remover” will influence you one way or the other.   Enjoy!  (Thanks to an anonymous commenter and Vidya for pointed us to a hoax billboard that led us to discover these.)

We added another example of an image of sexualized dominance, this time women’s dominance over men, to our post on the theme.  Thanks to Stumblng Tumblr for the submission!

Still on the topic of sex:  Laura at The F Word posted a video of a commercial that just begged to be added to our post on ejaculation imagery.

You wine drinkers are all sissies!  We added another set of ads to this post on messages about masculinity in Jim Beam ads.  Also on the theme of masculinity, we added a Gillette shampoo ad that tells men to “take charge” of their hair to this post about masculinizing beauty products.  And a reader sent us a link to more antics from Dmitri the Lover (I feel gross just writing his name).

We added a series of furnishings shaped like female bodies–mostly tits and asses really–to a post on in-no-way-theoretical objectification. Click here for the post.  Here’s a teaser just for fun:

Relatedly, we added an image of a pole-dancer alarm clock from a catalog to this post featuring the “Bitchcruiser.”  Yeah, you gotta take a look at that one.

On the theme of using women’s bodies to “sell” stuff, here’s another image showing how PETA sexualizes women as a way to advocate vegetarianism.

On gender and socialization, we added a screen shot of an Amazon webpage showing what to buy “for her” and “for him” to our post about gendered holiday gift marketing (sent in by Sofia A.) and we added an image of the video game Imagine: Babies to this post about how Miss Bimbo socializes girls into traditional gender roles.

Speaking of banal stereotypes, Jasmine sent us some more examples of truly boring uses of stereotypes.  This time they are used to promote eye care.  Find them here.

We added an image comparing a Brazilian brand of rum to Brazilian waxes (you know, those kinds of waxes) to make the claim that the brand is authentic to this post.  Because there’s nothing more authentic than a woman waxed to look like a child.  What!?

Finally, what better way to end our list than with a post about animals, “love,” and babies!  A bonded pair of male penguins at a zoo were replacing the eggs of male-female couples with rocks and sneaking off with their eggs.  The zoo keepers helped them legitimately adopt and now everyone’s happy.  We added a picture of this couple to our post about actual “homosexual” pairings among animals.

Hello Readers!  We enriched some posts this month.  Enjoy!

Ed L. sent us another good example of the way that a cultural understanding that marriage as about love, a relatively new idea in human history, can be used to normalize gay marriage by pointing out that men and men and women and women can love each other deeply.  Click here and scroll down for the commercial.

What is racist?  We added a second confession to one we posted earlier.

Our post on anachronistic portrayals of American Indians was cross-posted at Racialicious.   One of the commenters pointed us to some additional material that we’ve used to update the post on anachronism and an older post on American Indian mascots.  Scroll down.

We found another vintage ad using the “savage” to sell.  Check it out here.

We added a vintage Union-Castle cruise ad to this post of a colonial-era travel poster for Hong Kong. The Castle ad portrays Africans and their houses as a tourist attraction for Whites to enjoy.

We added two Swiffer ads and a link to Swiffer’s “break-up channel” to this post about cleaning products being portrayed as women’s “special friends.”

You may remember a recent post about how the new Risk boardgame has been re-fashioned to be, well, blatantly for guys only. Well, Julie C. went to the website and played the online game which is not about world domination, but in fact about banging hot chicks and other ways to prove you’re a manly man. It’s pretty remarkable. Enjoy! (Scroll down past the original post.)

There was a time in American history when women agonized about being too skinny.  Check out the two ads for products that will help women put on weight that we added to two others in a previous post.

We came across another example of an ad, this one from 1934, urging women to start shaving their armpits.  We added it to another, along with our discussion of the marketing effort that made armpit shaving a norm for women and a money-making endeavor for some.  Relatedly, we added some more vintage ads for douche and feminine deodorant, sent in by Ben O., to this post about douche ads.

In a comments thread, Tim pointed us to another product shaped by a boob.  We added it to our extensive post on products shaped like boobs.

In honor of the election, we offer you a summary of all our election 2008 posts.

This election has certainly brought racial tensions front and center. We highlighted two racist caricatures of Obama: on a waffles box and as a cannibal. We also discussed the cover of The New Yorker on which Barack and Michelle Obama were caricatured as terrorists. Whether or not this was racist was widely discussed and offered an interesting opportunity to ask “Who decides what we talk about?” In response to the argument that we were being too sensitive about the caricatures, we offered some evidence that caricatures of black people do not need to be racist.

Anti-Obama propaganda also included comparison with OJ Simpson, a monkey, celebrities, Osama Bin Laden, fascists and communists, a terrorist, a terrorist again, and a “half-breed Muslin.” See here for other racist anti-Obama propaganda.  Gwen asked “So what if Obama is an Arab?” (Note, too, this satirical T-shirt.)

We saw racialization–or the active production of racial meaning–in the fist bump controversy, in calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama,” and in asserting the whiteness of the White House. We discussed the resemblance between Obama and his Grandfather and the meaning of “Main Street” to illustrate the social construction of race.  And we offered examples of white privilege: in one we discuss the option of white ethnics to emphasize their ethnicity; in two we discuss a cartoonist who calls Colin Powell a race traitor for endorsing Obama and a Howard Stern clip that suggests that Blacks only endorse Obama because he’s Black.  We also remark on how easy it is to deride social theories of inequality.

The McCain/Palin ticket was no stranger to derision.  See also our post in which the McCain/Palin ticket is said to be favored by Nazis, another in which Palin effigy is lynched, and a third that discusses ageism in the election.

We’ve also seen plenty of sexism in this campaign. Hillary Clinton has been represented as a nut buster, asked to “iron my shirt,” critiqued for crying, and called a “bitch.” There are more examples here and here.  Also see this montage of sexism among political pundits. Both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were sexualized. See here, here, and here for Clinton and here, here, here, here, and here for Palin. (By the way, Barack Obama was sexualized as well, see here, here, and here.)

We commented, more sociologically, on the gender politics of this election. We discussed the mothering of baby Trig, conservative feminism, the politics of pink, and took a humorous look at the women’s vote with Sarah Haskins.

We also pointed to the way in which Obama and Clinton attempted to appeal to small town people and the ease with which we make fun of them.

For the intersection of race and gender, see our post in which Michelle Obama is called an angry black woman, is said to need to “soften” to be a First Lady, and our post that features the Bros Before Hos T-shirt (scroll to the bottom). For the intersection of race and class, see our post on Obama’s negotiation of the “elitist” label.  And, in making intersectionality invisible, see the SNL skit, “bitch is the new black.”

Looking more broadly at politics and media coverage, we discussed the portrayal of evil in the Reverend Wright scandal, McCain’s trivialization of war, the linking of a Democratic adminstration with a terrorist attack, pundit hypocrisy, political networks, a voter registration campaign that uses bondage imagery, suspiciously delicious polling techniqueshow cell phones shape polling findings, and trends in media coverage of Obama versus Clinton and Obama versus McCain.

In addition, we offered some examples of punditry from alternative media: on young voters, a call for alliance from the labor movement, a call to get your Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama, a political revival of the Budweiser Wassap video, and two examples of art inspired by the election (here and here).

We also put up posts of figures representing public opinion on blacks, a woman president, and politician parents.  And we offered images illustrating how the world would vote.

Finally, our favorite: “We’re not sociologists, we’re Americans!”

Hello Readers! 

Please enjoy this collection of posts that we’ve enhanced while you’ve been busy reading our new stuff and, um, all the election coverage you can stomach.  There will be more new material in our Special Election Round-Up!  Look for it on the morning of Nov. 4th.  But for now, click on these links and look for the bright red NEW!

Tini Puppini is a hyper-sexualized fake pet dog that combines sexualization with anthropomorphization in a super creepy way.  Just scroll past the sexualized equines in this post to the sexualized canines. It’s weird, I promise.

Single? Are the odds in your favor? We can tell you. We’d put up a map showing where single men outnumber single women and vice versa. And now we’ve added a link to an interactive map where you can choose particular age ranges and a screen shot of the map for the 30-45 and the 50-65 range.

Promoting smoking with doctors and Santa Claus? Oh yes! See some more vintage cigarette ads here.

miz_geek, in the comments to this post, pointed us to a commercial for Korean Air with truly blatant ejaculation imagery. Watch it here in our post where we collect, um, ejaculation imagery (scroll to the bottom).

Commenters Eoin and T.B. pointed us to another World War II carpool propaganda poster

In a hospital waiting room, we saw another sign instructing employees to do emotion work.  We added the images and further discussion on the topic to this post.

We added another instance of the use of the government-invented term “Hispanic.” This time it involves peanuts!

By “traditional marriage” do you mean polygamy?  We added two more examples of the satirical treatment of the traditional marriage.  The satiricist makes a pro-gay marriage argument by pointing to the trouble with the idea of “tradition.”

Scott W. sent us a great example of the use of the implicit promise of sex with a hot chick to sell, um, condominiums.  We added it to our post along that theme.

Our post featuring the sexualization of food is getting ridiculously extensive.  But when Denia sent us in a picture of hotdogs that said “Undress me,” we couldn’t resist adding them.  Click here and scroll all the way down.

NEW SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT

Karryn Lintelman generously allowed us to reproduce her assignment, The Rhetoric of Pop Culture, using Sociological Images and other resources.  Check it out here.

As always, we are busy behind the scenes.  Here are some of the posts we have enhanced over the course of this bizarre election month:

We added several images to this post about the media’s sexualization of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, as well as another image to this post about the “Drill Baby, Drill” t-shirt featuring McCain doing Palin doggy-style (which we thought, for some reason, merited its own post).

We added an interview with the creators of Obama Waffles to the post about “On the Campaign Trail.”

We have a fantastic collection of ads that demonstrate how white standards of beauty are applied to black women.  In them, the black and white women look almost identical.  We added another couple ads for Maybelline where “diversity” looks surprisingly like twins.  Scroll to the bottom here.

We added two more examples to our lists of ways in which people of color are used in advertising aimed at white people: to associate the product with a racial stereotype and to signify human variation

Ben O. had another image of a scale conflating health and weight.  We added it to our other example here.

We added two new images to this post about the frequently contradictory messages we get about eating healthier. The first image shows a sticker on a vending machine encouraging people to make healthy choices about what to eat. The second shows a picture of the products actually for sale in the vending machine, which don’t exactly provide consumers with a panoply of healthy options.

We added three new images to our post on The Frightened Sperm.  One is a cartoon depicting Michael Phelps as the winning sperm, one is a clip from The Family Guy showing Stewie in a spermship, and the last depicts an egg actively guiding some sperm while providing barriers to others.  Thanks to commenters Noumenon, MW, and Ranah respectively for these images!

We added another vintage douche ad (this one for a douche made from Lysol).  Thanks to Holly Mac. for this one!

We added another image of sexualized food to this post, this time the cow used to advertise Skinny Cow ice cream (scroll all the way to the bottom). Thanks to Blanca for pointing it out!

We added to this post about how Dove, a brand with the much-touted “Real Woman” ad campaign, and Axe, a brand marketed to men using highly sexualized images of women, are both manufactured by Unilever. The new content is a link to a post from Moment of Choice about a woman’s experience auditioning before a panel of men for one of the Dove commercials.

We added another image in our post about the Declare Yourself ad campaign, which we initially discussed in the context of Jessica Alba’s appearance in one of the ads.

To our post showing re-touching of celebrities, we added a link to a photo gallery comparing photos of celebrities to their Photoshopped images on magazine covers.  See it here.

Regarding how girls are socialized to think of themselves as high-maintenance divas, we added another image here.

CONSOLIDATIONS:

We combined two posts about Heelarious, a company making high heels for infants, into one post.

We consolidated two posts about policing masculinity that included Snickers ads featuring Mr. T into one post, found here.

ALSO:

We added another class assignment, this one by Alicia Revely.  Read it along with our other class assignments.

NEW FEATURE!

We crafted four sample class assignments using Sociological Images.  One for a lower-division class and three for an upper-division class.  Check them out here.

By the way, if you have crafted assignments using our blog, we’d love to publish them here!  Please send them along!  Email us at socimages@thesocietypages.org.

AND BACK TO THE OL’ BEHIND YOUR BACK:

A series of toys by Playmobil, sent in by Kirsten D., were added to our post illustrating what it means to be a neutral versus a marked social group.  See it here.

We add another beer commerical to the three we posted trivializing love, sex, and relationships in favor of beer. This one was pointed out in our comments by Pharmacopaeia. Thanks!

Daniel B. sent in a picture of the Spanish women’s Olympic basketball team in the infamous “slant-eyed” pose (meant to make them look, um, Chinese) and we added it to this post that showed the Spanish men’s team in the same pose. We added another image he found of the Spanish tennis team in that same pose to this post showing the Argentine women’s soccer team doing it too. Then we sat around and scratched our heads and wondered if every Olympic team felt the need to pose like that before leaving for Beijing.

We added a Budweiser ad in which foaming surf on the beach forms a phallus pointing to a bikini-clad woman’s crotch to our post on “subliminal” sex in ads.  (Somehow a month rarely goes by without a new addition to this particular post!)

We added a Mini Cooper ad that brags about the car’s “carfun footprint” to this post about the commodification of environmentalism. While it would be great if a car’s effect on the environment actually became a major selling point, when you look at the Mini’s gas mileage ratings (which I report in the post), it’s not clear that the “carfun footprint” is much more than a tagline.

We added another commercial, sent in by Corey, to this post about Just for Men’s Touch of Grey line, a product that allows the user to decide how much grey they would like to leave in… something we can’t image a woman’s hair dye company ever offering, since women don’t get to benefit from the “distinguished look.”

We added Paris Hilton’s humorous response to this post about John McCain’s campaign ad that associated Barack Obama with Hilton and Britney Spears in an attempt to portray him as a lightweight with no experience.

Elizabeth sent in a PETA ad that compared slaughtering animals to the beheading of a man on a Canadian bus. We added it to this post about the use of Holocaust imagery in PETA ads and who claims the right to use horrific incidents (both historic and current) in their attempts to frame social issues.

Remember that Trojan ad where men were pigs? Daniel G. sent us another ad portraying men as animals. In this one, men in a bar grow antlers so as to head-butt over a cute girl. Guess which one she goes for? Thanks Daniel!

We consolidated our products-shaped-like-boobs posts and added 17 (yes, 17) new boob-shaped products. Thanks to Stumblng Tumblr and Shakesville.

On a similar theme, we added some additional images of things shaped like women, generally, including a cigarette extinguisher. See them here.

And, still on this theme, we added one more urinal shaped like a woman. We added a second example of a non-American Indian appropriating an American Indian identity and doing conservation work. Click here for Archibald, I mean, Grey Owl.

We added another example of people of color being associated with “spice” and, thus, spicing up the bland world of white people. And this one in a truly misguided pro-diversity ad!

We added to our ad using the idea that Latinas are “hot” and “spicy,” some ads for Rio Casino in which a black woman is used to communicate “passion.” Both demonstrate how women of color are stereotyped as more highly sexual than white women. See it here.

We added a description of a chapter in the book Freakonomics that presents a theory on how baby names become popular to this post about historical trends in baby names, including a link to a website that tracks the popularity of names the Freakonomics authors predict will be most popular by 2015.

We updated this post about an Israeli air conditioner ad that let viewers manipulate a thermostat to make a woman’s nipples get more or less visible. We added a comment from the CEO of the company that he released after protests in Israel forced the company to take the ad down in which he calls people out for being hypocrites for targeting some sexist material but not others. And also says that if they can’t use sexist ads, products would have to actually have a competitive advantage. We thought it was awesome that a CEO would admit they need media images to sell their products because or they’d have to actually make something better or cheaper than what’s already out there.

Eva Longoria was recently accused of being “fat.” We added a pic of her offending body to this post on the scandal over Czech model Karolina Kurkova’s scandalous appearance on the runway and Ali Michael’s fall from grace. Thanks to Elizabeth A. for the tip!

We added an ad for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and one for Skyy vodka to this post about the sexualization of food. Scroll way down.

We added a Snickers commercial in which Mr. T. attacks a man for acting like a sissy (i.e., gay and/or feminine) to our other commecial demonstrating the policing of masculinity. Thanks to Penny R. for alerting us to the commercial!

Hello Readers!  Welcome to our third installment of Behind Your Back.  Below is a list of posts that we have enriched during the month of June without telling you.  Enjoy!

We added a commerical (found at Feministe) to our post featuring an ad using a male-to-female transgendered person to sell a epilator to women. The commercial is really interesting, as is Holly’s interpretation of why it’s problematic.

The evolving controversy over the Obama Sock Monkey toy led us to make a few updates on our post. If you didn’t notice, the company making the toy aggressively revoked its apology and we’re pretty sure they’re still selling it. Check it out here.

For contrast, we added the posters from the Terminator Trilogy to our post on how female heroines were represented in posters for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, as well as some more images portraying the heroines in The Sarah Connor Chronicles differently and some that feminize John Connor.

We added a Greenpeace video targeting Unilever to this post about Dove and Axe ads.  The video shows how the American beauty industry that is hurting American girls’ self-esteem is destroying the environment of other girls’ lives.  It’s pretty great. 

We found a particularly egregious Nebraska Wakeboard ad and added it to another objectifying ad for shoes.

We added an image showing the actual caption to this post about FOX News referring to Michelle Obama as a “baby mama.”

Matt S. sent us three more PETA posters and a video featuring Alicia Silverstone showing how how PETA sexualizes women in its anti-fur campaigns.  See it here (scroll down).

We found another ad using sex to sell homes and home-related products.  We added it to some others here.

Yikes.  P.J. sent us another doozy from Axe (also sold as Lynx in some countries).

We added a commercial illustrating the bizarreness of yogurt advertising articulated in this post.

Laura L. found another ad that trivalizes women’s rejection of men’s attention.  This Noxzema ad implies that women really like to be catcalled on the street, even if they appear not to.

And we added a fashion ad to this post about ads that use ambiguous images that could imply consensual sex or sexual assault.  Thanks again to Laura L.!

Finally, we added another sexualized image of Condoleezza Rice–as Lara Croft–to this post about differences in how Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton are portrayed.

Don’t forget to check out who links to us!  And if we’re on your blogroll and aren’t on the list, make sure to send us a note!

Happy July!