When it comes to love, it’s what’s inside that counts…assuming you measure up.
Business Standard reports on the findings of Rice University sociology professor Michael Emerson, who found that women really do prefer tall men. Emerson’s study data showed that women preferred tall men for two reasons: feminity and protection.
One woman from the study said she wanted to feel delicate and protected at the same time. Sociologically, the preference for taller men seems to play into stereotypical gender roles and patriarchal society. Men weren’t as concerned with matters of height, but when they did weigh in, they preferred shorter women.
University of North Texas sociology professor George Yancy says, “The masculine ability to offer physical protection is clearly connected to the gender stereotype of men as protectors. And in a society that encourages men to be dominant and women to be submissive, having the image of tall men hovering over short women reinforces this value.”
In that case, instead of peering up into a man’s eyes this Valentine’s Day, I might just stand on a chair.
Lieberman draws from Michael Kimmel’s Guyland, which argues that our society rewards those who follow the “rules” of masculinity and show “no fears, no doubts, and no vulnerabilities.” This type of emotional detachment has become a common defense mechanism in the dating world, says Lieberman, as women are often applauded for taking on attitudes typical of men.
Most of my peers would say ‘You go, girl’ to a young woman who is career-focused, athletically competitive, or interested in casual sex.
Some feminists have viewed casual sex as an example of women’s liberation, as the freedom to break gender norms and act more masculine. However, according to sociologist Lisa Wade, this “freedom” doesn’t go both ways.
[No one says] “You go, boy!” when a guy feels liberated enough to learn to knit, decide to be a stay-at-home dad, or learn ballet.
According to both Kimmel and Wade, our culture celebrates “thick skin” and emotional detachment in sexuality, rather than the transgression of gender norms. Hookup culture has created a dating field with a “whoever-cares-less-wins” attitude.
With emoticons and emojis replacing emotions, another complication of modern-day dating, according to Lieberman, is modern-day technology. Text messaging has become a main form of communication, and Millennials have developed self-screening skills that model Kimmel’s rules of emotional distance.
[When responding to a guy’s text,] it can’t be 10 minutes on the dot, because then it is obvious you were waiting. It should be longer than 15 minutes to show you’re not desperate but within the 45-minute window if you are trying to lay groundwork for that evening.
What is “screwed up” about dating, according to Lieberman and sociologists, is not that this generation has become emotionally desensitized by casual sex, but that Millennials are looking for love in the midst of a culture that views emotional apathy as empowering and possesses the digital means to censor any emotions they may experience.
Contrary to conservatives’ emphasis on family values, sociologist Jennifer Glass at the University of Texas at Austin concludes that “red” states have higher divorce rates than their “blue” counterparts. Although previous studies have argued that socioeconomic factors, such as financial strain, explain this difference, Glass and her team of researchers found that it is actually specific elements of conservative Protestant culture that contributed to this higher divorce rate. Religious conservatives are more likely to emphasize abstinence before marriage and discourage living together without being married. They also marry and start having children younger than other demographic groups. All of these factors, Glass argues, contribute to marriage instability and the higher rates of divorce in states like Alabama and Arkansas than in more liberal states.
Other scholars, including sociologist Phil Cohen, have examined the overall decrease in divorce during the recent economic recession. From 2009-2011, couples seemed to be sticking together through tough financial times. However, as the economy has rebounded, so has the divorce rate. Rather than pulling together to overcome economic hardship, it seems that couples have postponed divorce until they could afford it.
Sociologist Andrew Cherlin, who studies changes in marriage over time, asserts that this is far from a surprising or unique trend, telling the LA Times, “This is exactly what happened in the 1930s. The divorce rate dropped during the Great Depression not because people were happier with their marriages, but because they couldn’t afford to get divorced.”
A survey about how Americans spend their time reports that men and women are finally working similar numbers of hours per week, at the office and in the home. That means the end of women bearing the bulk of the domestic load, right? Wrong.
Senior points out one of the fundamental problems: “Not all work is created equal. An hour spent on one kind of task is not necessarily the equivalent of an hour spent on another.”
For instance, taking care of children is often more stressful and strenuous than other solitary and monotonous domestic tasks, like washing dishes. One woman in Senior’s book describes doing the dishes as an opportunity to sit in the kitchen and let her mind wander. When put that way, it sounds a lot less stressful than wrangling toddlers.
Women also tend to be responsible for time-sensitive tasks. Getting kids ready for school or carting them off to extracurricular activities on time can greatly add to a woman’s stress. This leads women to do more multi-tasking than men. Having to manage time so strictly can cause mothers to worry and feel a constant sense of urgency.
Although it seems we have come a long way with men and women dividing chores on the domestic front, when we break it down to the stress and demand involved with individual tasks, women are still bearing the brunt of household management and childrearing.
University of Connecticut sociologist Bradley Wright has developed SoulPulse, an app that asks research participants twice a day about their activities, thoughts, and feelings.
Wright, working with pastor and author John Ortberg, hopes to enroll 10,000 people in the study over the next three years, to gain a better understanding of how people – believers and atheists and everything in between – define spirituality for themselves.
“Everyone – well, almost everyone – is spiritual or religious. Now, we have an app to find out, what do they mean when they say that,” Wright said in an interview with the Washington Post.
This study implicitly draws from the late Robert Bellah’s argument that liberal Protestantism has declined even as it’s been successfully incorporated into mainstream spiritual and secular values and discussions. The individual experiences of spirituality reported by the SoulPulse app combined with the appearance of liberal Protestant doctrine across many belief systems makes for an intriguing sociological link between the public and the private in 21st century American spirituality.
Hearkening back to Tipper Gore’s contested campaign against violent rap music, using rap lyrics as a conviction tool in criminal investigations is not as uncommon as you might think. Onthemedia.org discussed police work and rap lyrics with Kathleen Horan and the use of rap lyrics as evidence with University of California, Irvine sociologist Charis Kubrin.
Horan asserts that rap lyrics can and are being used to police gangs. Police have been able to locate videos of certain crews taunting other crews in the form of rap music. The lyrics don’t necessarily name a victim or perpetrator but are suggestive of the circumstances of crimes. Horan points to lyrics from one of the Flock crew’s raps, that was posted to YouTube, as an example:
Better take your last breath, yeah.
Next time I see your name comin’
It’s at the [ ? ]
And I didn’t really want to do it
But I had to
Put myself in your shoes
This [ ? ] I’d be mad too…
Horan asserts that, while one rap video isn’t going to be enough to bring down a crew, rap lyrics do and should operate as a component of an investigation.
Sociologist Charis Kubrin tells a different side of the story through the experiences of aspiring rapper Tosin. Tosin was found guilty of making terroristic threats based on the “incriminating evidence” of his rap lyrics. The racial stereotypes surrounding rap music, Kubrin believes, make guilty convictions more likely in these scenarios, and as a result, she argues that rap lyrics are prejudicial and shouldn’t be used in court.
Although they earn a majority of secondary degrees and constitute a majority of voters, women, particularly low-income women, continue to struggle in education and employment. According to a new report by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, “the key findings paint a portrait of an estimated 42 million women — and 28 million dependent children — saddled with financial hardship.”
American society today doesn’t follow the idealized American Dream of a working father, stay-at-home mother, two beautiful children, and a white picket fence. In fact, forty percent of American households with dependent children have mothers as the primary or only breadwinner. Female workers are still not making the same amount of money as their full-time male counterparts, earning on average only 77 percent as much as men.
After surveying 3,500 adults across the United States, the report also finds that of low-income female respondents:
75 percent wish they had devoted more time and energy to education and career — relative to 58 percent of the general population.
73 percent wish they had made better financial decisions over the course of their lives — and so did 65 percent of the total survey group.
Low-income women are more likely than men to regret tying the knot when they did — 52 percent versus 33 percent.
And nearly one-third of low-income women with children wish they had postponed having children — or had fewer of them.
Shriver argues for the relevance and importance of making gender equality a national priority, saying,“Women are at the center of our country…When women do well, men do well and the nation does well.”
Nordic countries boast some of the highest rates of equality, economic security, and social wellbeing. Though sociologist Lane Kenworthy isn’t necessarily suggesting that the United States regulates its industries or redistributes wealth, he thinks that America should take a page or two from Sweden’s book. In an interview with The Washington Post, Kenworthy calls for a restructured welfare system and an entirely new conversation about social policy. He argues that implementing more “public insurance programs” would allow the U.S. government to help citizens cope with the economic booms and busts that come with capitalism.
Different countries have tried different things, and a lot of what I suggest we do is based on previous experiences. Paid parental leave, for example, has existed for more than a generation in some European countries, as have universal child care and preschool.
Along with universal childcare and paid leave for new parents, plenty of developed nations have adopted other social insurance policies—like universal health care and protection against lowered wages. And although Americans tend to be pretty divided when it comes to expanding federal welfare, there are domestic examples of these types of federal programs bringing, and keeping, people out of poverty.
While most conversations about lowering American inequality tend to focus on strengthening the labor movement, placing hefty taxes on the rich, or regulating corporations, Kenworthy is “pessimistic” about these solutions.
I look at what’s happened in Western European countries, and I see union density declining nearly everywhere…Nordic countries rely very heavily on public insurance and less heavily on regulation than many American progressives believe, and…it’s not as though they sock it to the rich more than we do. Their tax systems are slightly less progressive.
According to Kenworthy, solutions to inequality should focus on policies that boost “economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity.”
Photo by Martin Bowling via Flickr CC. Click for original.
The latest controversy in criminal justice revolves around the defense of 16-year-old Ethan Couch, who killed four people when he hit them with his car, driving at double the speed limit and double the legal blood alcohol level (as an underage drinker, actually, there is no acceptable limit, but let’s stick with the charges). Couch’s defense argued that he suffered from “affluenza”—a condition under which he had lived such a privileged and entitled life, with so few consequences for bad behavior, that he could not now be held suddenly responsible for his actions. Bizarrely, the judge accepted this defense and sentenced Couch to ten years of probation and a stay in a rehab facility known for its hippotherapy (affectionately, if a bit dismissively, known as “having a therapy pony”). Had affluenza not been accepted as a defense, the usual sentence for Couch’s crimes would have been 10-20 years of prison time.
In an article for Forbes, Dr. Dale Archer reminds us that the lack of consequences that accompanies privilege isn’t anything new:
Economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen introduced the term ‘conspicuous consumption’ in the 19th century to explain the behavior of […] families who spent their accumulated wealth in ostentatious ways to show off their newfound prestige and power.
Archer goes on to stress that the real worry is how common the modern trend of affluenza seems to be. He worries that the Keeping Up With the Kardashians era may be breeding a generation of narcissists, if not sociopaths who not only don’t understand punishment but also balk at the idea that they have anything to be punished for. He cites social psychologist Sara Konrath of the University of Michigan:
Her study of 13,737 college students found that there was a 40% decrease in empathy currently, when compared with 20 or 30 years ago.
In the end, it may be the application of the cute name “affluenza” that proves most offensive: personal responsibility is all the rage when it comes to the poor and people of color, but wealthy whites’ privilege appears to have found yet another way to keep them above the fray.
Still from Goldiblox adverstisement via youtube.com
Although its catchy advertisement went viral, Goldiblox, the new toys encouraging girls’ interest in engineering, has been more discouraging than disruptive to some. Debbie Sterling, engineer and founder of Goldiblox, may have a refreshing aim – to increase girls’ interest in STEM by introducing them to engineering fundamentals at a young age – but why does the toy’s narrative have to be centered around beauty pageants? And why so many pink ribbons?
In an article for Al Jazeera, sociologist Lisa Wade of Soc Images explains that, because “toys are among the most heteronormative things in America,” we probably won’t be seeing one that rejects gender stereotypes altogether any time soon.
“The idea started in the ’70s that the way we should liberate women is to get them into guys’ stuff,” she said. “There’s nothing about this toy that breaks with what we tell girls to do in this country every day: model what boys do, but not break with femininity.”
Though Goldiblox supposedly addresses gender disparities in engineering programs, assuming that girls need a princess-centric toy to get them building, as opposed to good ol’ non-gendered building blocks, is not radical.
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