Sociology Lens

Source: www.vintagefashionclub.com

In an advanced capitalist society, such as the United States, individuals express their identities through the items they purchase, how they present themselves to others. For those with a lot of money, this often means conspicuous consumption, or buying items with the express purpose of being able to show them off to others (e.g. a waterfront mansion, a yacht, a Maserati). But expressing one’s personality through clothing, jewelry, make up, and other grooming practices is not just reserved to the rich. We are all taught to be conscious of our appearance. We know that we are being judged based on the choices we make, and our ability to conform to fashion norms and trends. In this way, fashion is a performance in which we all engage. (more…)

www.oprah.com

Angelina Jolie recently made a huge decision, choosing a double mastectomy to prevent what she and her doctors saw as an inevitability—breast cancer. She then bravely came forward with the decision, writing an op-ed detailing how she made the choice, trying to take away the stigma and fear many women experience. She describes not only the testing that she underwent, but also points to the inequities of breast cancer—that it happens in mainly low- and mid-income countries, and that even in wealthy countries, many women cannot afford the genetic testing or preventive care that she had. She also fights the notion that her post-operative body is now less feminine. I am grateful for Jolie’s willingness to speak up about her choice; I have a family history of breast cancer, and have personally known women who, even after diagnosis, struggle with the mastectomy choice, fearing that they will be less feminine, less attractive after surgery. Jolie’s op-ed is demonstrative of how the breast cancer movement specifically, and the women’s movement more generally, has affected our culture. Rather than viewing the disease (or in this case, its prevention) as a private issue, Jolie uses her experience to influence change. She makes the personal political.

Jolie’s decision and the public discussion she has reinvigorated provides us a chance to talk about the many facets of breast cancer. For all the discussion of the BRCA mutations and the increased cancer risk they produce, these genetic factors are only related to about 5-10% of breast cancer cases. And while the genetic influences are important, there are some breast cancer activists who want to change the focus from these individual level predictors, to other less-researched causes. I’m particularly interested in the environmental arguments, which tend to have less traction in public discourse. (more…)

Source: jezebel.com

An exciting new journal is slated for release next year—Routledge’s Porn Studies. The journal, the first of its kind, will focus explicitly on erotic and pornographic materials, as well as sex work generally. As its call for papers makes clear, it aims to include interdisciplinary, intersectional, and global analyses. Such a journal is a brave endeavor because the topic of pornography is an incredibly volatile one in academic and activist worlds. The journal is still a year away from publication and has already sparked angry responses, highlighting an ongoing problem in approaches to pornography that will be the focus of my post. (more…)

Source: http://www.neurosci.ucla.edu

Last Wednesday, Cheryl posted an interesting analysis of the nature vs. nurture debate that has plagued the social and biological sciences since their emergence. More and more research, from both disciplinary areas, is accumulating to overturn this simplistic dichotomy. Rather than thinking of ourselves as purely determined by our body chemistry and structure OR by our social environment, it is useful to think of ourselves as what Donna Haraway terms “material-semiotic” entities—that is, as unique combinations of natural and cultural elements. This way of theorizing the relationship between nature and culture—or rather, the mutual and continuing construction of nature and culture—is given to us by critical science studies scholars. By thinking, as Haraway does, in terms of “naturecultures,” we escape the nature/nurture divide, merging the two inseparably. What we call “nature” and “culture”/“nurture” are actually mutually constituted. (more…)

King Leonidas, left, and Xerxes, right (source: http://screenrant.com/330-prequel-movie-xerxes-sandy-109614/)

In a recent post, I discussed a longstanding trend in American (and Western) media of using racial Others to embody evil.  From adult action films to children’s animated features, we can find examples of villains whose malevolent nature is clear from the racial/ethnic stereotypes used to characterize them. But racial stereotypes are not the only stereotypes used to denote wickedness; we can also find many examples of non-normative sexualities and gender performances associated with evil. Importantly, this sexual Otherness is often developed alongside and in relation to racial/ethnic Otherness. (more…)

The History Channel’s miniseries, The Bible, has been lauded by some and scrutinized by others. Recently, some have raised questions about the show’s portrayal of the Satan, specifically the striking resemblance between the character and President Barack Obama (you can read a commentary at the HuffPost). The show’s producers have called the claims “utter nonsense” and insisted that actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni’s long record working on religious film sets made him an obvious choice for the role.

I’m no mind-reader and won’t speculate whether the producers intended any connection between Pres. Obama and the devil. I’ve raised this little controversy for another purpose, to demonstrate a long-standing film tradition of racializing villains. From spy flicks and action blockbusters to children’s animated movies and faith-based media, evil is often embodied by dark-skinned characters. Think about it—who are the bad guys in James Bond movies? What stands out about the animated character, Jafar, in Disney’s Aladdin? And what can we say about the Devil in the History Channel’s The Bible, especially compared to the heroic characters? They are all highly racialized depictions of racial/ethnic Others. They draw on nasty stereotypes designed to make us fearful. They are shown as morally corrupt and physically unattractive. Jafar, for example, conforms to ethnic stereotypes much more than Aladdin or Jasmine, both of whom could easily pass (in white westerners’ imaginations) as well-tanned Americans if not for their desert setting.

Source: fanpop.com

Edward Said famously wrote about this representational tactic in his book Orientalism (you can watch a documentary about Orientalism, featuring Said, called On Orientalism, on YouTube). Said explains that Orientalism is a patterned way of representing Arabs and Muslims as a unified cultural group (despite the fact that the terms aren’t synonymous, that Muslims live in many places outside the Arab world, and that “Arab” is used to describe individuals from many different backgrounds), less civilized than white Europeans or Americans, and capable of terrible things; in other words, Orientalism is a discourse that presents Arabs/Muslims as a dangerous threat. Not limited to specific media, Orientalism surrounds us and, from an early age, inculcates us with a particular way of understanding the Arab world. It gives us a specific language that governs how we conceive of Arab people and naturalizes our stereotypes. The Arab is a terrorist; the Arab is patriarchal—these terrible generalizations make sense and seem real in an Orientalist framework. (more…)

A photo of my best friend and me

A recent article in Marie Claire magazine caught my eye. The title asks, “Are girlfriends the new husbands?” As the article explains, young adult women are increasingly turning to best friends for the kind of support that one might expect only from a romantic partner. As they choose to remain single later into life, women’s best friends become intimate partners (though not sexual ones). Cohabitation, “family” vacations, even some type of co-parenting between best friends is becoming more common. I should note, the article doesn’t discuss race, sexuality, class or any of the other intersecting social categories that affect women’s lives, so we cannot make sweeping generalizations, but among an abstract category of 20- to 30-something year old women, the nature of friendship appears to be changing. And I’d like to argue that this change is a good one. (more…)

Source: Huffington Post and the Nu Project

In the past weeks, I’ve focused on the normative beauty expectations that govern women’s bodies and bodily habits. I was excited to see a recent article at the Huffington Post on one Minneapolis photographer’s attempt to challenge those norms. Matthew Blum, assisted by his wife/partner, has begun the Nu Project (warning: website NSFW), a multipart photography project in North and South America, in which he attempts to document real women’s nude bodies. All volunteers, the “models” represent a spectrum of bodies—different ages, shapes, weights, heights, skin colors, breast sizes and so on. Although Blum admits that he hasn’t fully achieved the diversity he envisions—relying on volunteers means he can’t seek out the “type” of women missing from the project—the photos do present a variety of bodies. As he explains the project, “The things that I had seen either used models with typical model bodies or average people who were made to look extremely unimpressive. I figured there was a way to treat women (of any size/shape) like models and photograph them beautifully, respectfully without a lot of sexual under or overtones” (quoted from HuffPost). Projects like this may encourage more women to appreciate their bodies, and because Blum refrains from sexualizing the women, the presentation resists objectification. Blum reports that many of the volunteers say participation has helped them see themselves as beautiful.

But do projects like this produce social change? That is, do they actually challenge our deeply held beliefs about beauty? And what happens when we consider representations of stigmatized male bodies? (more…)

Source: NYC.gov (http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2012/pr013-12.shtml)

This past September, a new initiative went into effect in NYC. The initiative, called Latch On NYC, is intended to support women’s right to exclusively breastfeed their infants, and to support women in that endeavor. To achieve its goal, the project involves a breastfeeding awareness campaign, and some voluntary limitations on hospitals—specifically, they are to limit new mothers’ access to formula.  The initiative emerges out of an increased understanding of breastfeeding’s benefits to infant health, among other things.

Before continuing, I want to acknowledge the feminist quagmire that I’m entering by talking about breastfeeding. It is a contentious issue, and rightfully so. Even though feminist communities may not agree, at the core of their arguments is an acknowledgement of the social conditions that shape women’s experiences of child bearing and rearing, and the necessity of empowering women to live meaningful, autonomous lives. On the one hand, breastfeeding is often seen as part of a patriarchal essentialism that ties women inextricably and completely to their reproductive capacity (this article at Jezebel touches on this kind of feminist argument). Freeing women from these types of expectations (even from the requirement to be a mother) has been a primary goal of mainstream feminism in the US for decades. Formula gave many (predominantly white, middle class) women the ability to nurture careers and babies simultaneously. On the other hand, for many women, breastfeeding is a luxury that they have continually been denied. Working class and poor women, often women of color and immigrant women, face major barriers to breastfeeding—long work hours or multiple jobs, caretaking jobs that require women to be away from home for extended times, nutrient-poor food, health concerns and lack of access to medical consultation, etc. As documented by Dorothy Roberts and others, American society has long impeded the reproductive autonomy of women of color and poor women. And regardless of class status, the social stigma against public breastfeeding has, itself, been very restrictive.

Where exactly does Latch On NYC fit in this imbroglio? Well, it addresses some concerns and overlooks others. For example, the public awareness campaign—posters which feature angelic babes from varying racial/ethnic groups, and the slogan “Breast milk is best for your baby. It’s your right to feed your baby only breast milk and get the support you need”—may help dispel some of the social stigma. Additionally, by encouraging hospitals to develop better breastfeeding programs, we may be able to provide better information to new mothers, especially those who might not have had access to lactation consultants in the past.

But its emphasis on “you” individualizes what is actually a social (set of) problem(s). Like much of the public discourse on breastfeeding, the focus tends to be on women’s choices—in this case, to breastfeed or to use formula—and how their choices impact children. Sure, there is recognition that hospitals contribute in important ways to this choice, but the campaign still emphasizes the mother’s ultimate role in doing what is best for her baby. Just under the surface lurks a problematic sense of responsibility, a space to use guilt and blame to force a mother’s hand (see Sutherland, 2010 for more on mothering and guilt/shame). And more than that, this emphasis on the mother’s choice renders invisible those structural conditions that feminists from all backgrounds have questioned. The campaign does nothing to get employers to provide safe and hygienic spaces for women to feed or pump when necessary. It does not address the conditions poor women face—for example, it does nothing to longstanding structures of inequality (lower quality health care facilities in lower class neighborhoods, racial inequities in occupational and educational settings) that interfere with women’s reproductive and childrearing choices. Nor does it address the essentialist beliefs that many women want to reject.

To top it off, I don’t think that this campaign is even really about women and enabling their choices or rights. If the failure to address the many conditions that enable or constrain breastfeeding doesn’t convince you, perhaps the posters will. The priority, the person who matters, is the baby; the mom, the “you,” is implicit. Just like the famous fetal images that appeared in Time Magazine and were later appropriated by the anti-abortion movement, which seem to depict the fetus as independent from its mother’s body (see a short comment here), the breastfeeding mother and her body are all but erased by the Latch On campaign. I’m sure there are other ways to interpret the images—and I’m open to hearing them—but I am nervous about a campaign “for women” that seems so uninformed by feminist theory or the long, problematic history of infringements on women’s reproductive rights, and that literally leaves women out of the picture.

Further Reading

Roberts, Dorothy. 1999. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books.

Sutherland, Jean-Anne. 2010. Mothering, Guilt and Shame. Sociology Compass 4(5):310-321.

Taylor, Tiffany. 2011. Re-examining Cultural Contradictions: Mothering Ideology and the Intersections of Class, Gender, and Race. Sociology Compass 5(10): 898-907.