Kristyn G. sent in this excellent image showing the clear division of the world into two paths: that of the sexually active flirt, destined to a life of shame and loneliness (by age 40), and the good girl who can become a happy mother and grandmother:
Apparently it appeared in a “social hygiene” manual in the early 1900s.
Also see these trailers for old movies about teens gone wild.
NEW! Awesome reader Maria found the boys’ version:
Nikki L. sent us a link to this fascinating Tickle Me Elmo commercial. In introduces a new Tickle Me Elmo product, “Tickle Hands.”
The ad takes place on what appears to be an urban street (reminiscent of Sesame Street). Two of the kids appear white, while the other two look (probably deliberately vaguely) “racial,” maybe Asian and Latino (perhaps biracial). At the very end of the commercial the kids pose in front of a brick wall with a picture of Elmo graffiti-style. Two of them look like they’re flashing gang signs and Elmo, no joke, says “Yeahhhhhh Booooy.” Here’s a screen shot of the moment:
So let’s trace the evolution of the gangster meme.
1. Government policy strips urban centers of resources, jobs leave (along with useful things like grocery stores), housing prices fall and the poor become concentrated, and those with means move to the suburbs. With few “above ground” economic options, people turn to “underground” economies. With only the “underclass” left, politicians (who tend to listen more to those with economic power and cultural clout) continue policies that disinvest in urban communities of color. Say “goodbye” to things like nice parks and excellent fire protection.
2. In a world where obeying the rules gets you nowhere fast, violence flourishes.
3. The suffering and resourcefulness of young black, Latino, and Asian men in these communities appeals to a (mostly) white “mainstream” America for whom depictions of men of color doing violence confirms their beliefs about white superiority and advanced “civilization.” Hip hop and rap music becomes a huge money maker for music studios and producers (and a handful of men of color).
4. As hip hop and rap become commodified, they are depoliticized. The “oppositional consciousness” that once characterized these art forms becomes largely lost. For the most part, any artist that wants to “make it” has to be and say what producers think that mainstream Americans want them to do and say.
5. Now depoliticized, being “hard” and “urban” becomes synonymous with being “cool.” Everyone wants to be cool.
6. Being “gangster” is appropriated by white suburban youth.
7. Stripped of any meaning, it filters down to younger and younger kids.
Enter: Tickle Me Elmo “tickle hand” gang signs.
For more examples of this phenomenon, see these advertising images at a shoe store, Beyonce’s House of Dereon clothing line for girls, the marketing for the Alvin and the Chipmunks remake, and these candy “grills.”
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
One way to study social problems is to take a social constructionist approach. This approach suggests that the degree to which a social problem is perceived as problematic, as well as the kind of problem it is understood to be, is a function of social interaction. For example, many Americans consider drunk driving to be a very bad thing and a serious threat. Drunk driving is not only embarrassing, it is punishable by law, and a conviction could result in social opprobrium. It wasn’t always that way, and it still isn’t all that stigmatized in some parts of the U.S. and, of course, elsewhere.
So, social problems aren’t immediately obvious, but need to be interpreted and presented to us. And, of course, some people have more power to deliver a message to the public than others.
Artist Susannah Hertrich developed this graphic (via) designed to bring to consciousness the difference between the likelihood of harm from certain threats and public outrage:
I am unsure as to how she measured both “public outrage” and “actual hazard” but, giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that this information is based on some reasonable systematic measurement, the image nicely draws our attention to how some social problems can receive a disproportionate amount of outrage, contributing to their social construction as significant or insignificant social problems (or, alternatively, their social construction as public problems for which outrage is appropriate and useful, versus private problems that have no public policy dimensions).
So, for example, heat is seen as relatively harmless even though, as Eric Klinenberg shows in his book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, it kills many, many people every year and is severely exacerbated by social policies both directly and indirectly related to weather. But the people who die from heat, and those who love them, tend to be relatively powerless members of our society: usually the elderly poor.
Conversely, the threat of terrorism attracts a great deal of public outrage, but is not a significant threat to our individual well-being. Still, certain members of our society with an ease of access to the media and authoritative roles in our society (mostly politicians and pundits) can raise our fears of terrorism to disproportionate levels.
Similarly, bird flu makes for a fun story (as all gruesome health scandals can) and gun crime feeds “mainstream” fears of the “underclasses” (often perceived as black and brown men). Both make for good media stories. Less so, perhaps, pedestrian accidents.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Not too long ago, we posted about Dora the Explorer’s makeover. Everyone was talking about it and lots of people felt that it signified a disinterest in strong role models for girls (Dora being one of the only ones out there), in favor of pretty ones.
A recent post at Vintage Ads reminds us that taking strong female characters and subjecting them to trivializing beauty regimes is nothing new. Enjoy this ad for the Bionic Woman Beauty Salon:
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Elizabeth U. sent in a link to an interactive database that shows requests to have books removed from public and school libraries between 2007 and 2009. Here’s a screenshot showing all requests; at the website you can hover over each point and see what the book was, the basis of the challenge, and in many cases the result:
I looked through quite a few of them. The most common reasons for challenges that I noticed are language and claims that the books are “pornographic.” Several cases seem to target books about sexual health. And Rudolfo Anaya’s book Bless Me, Ultima was challenged in at least two places for being “anti-Catholic.” I remember reading it as a teen and don’t remember that at all, but then, I had only the vaguest notion of Catholicism at the time, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed.
The most disturbing account I found:
Tuscola, Texas (2007) Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God was removed from the Jim Ned High School’s library’s order list after complaints from the parents of a student who also filed complaints against a teacher with the local sheriff, claiming that the book’s content was ‘harmful to minors’ under state law. The parents objected to violence, sexual themes and profanity in the book. After meeting with the teacher, the parents were unsatisfied and registered an official complaint with the sheriff’s office, leading to the teacher being placed on paid, administrative leave. NCAC, ABFFE and the NCTE sent a letter to the superintendent and school board opposing the ban and the community’s actions.
Filing a formal criminal complaint with the sheriff, leading to a teacher being put on administrative leave? I find that terrifying.
And sorry for my absence the last few days! I’m moving and the internet got cut off at my old place earlier than I asked, so I had no internet all weekend. Also, I leased a horse! My life is now complete, but it is interfering with all other activities since I spend every possible moment exploring the nearby desert on him.
Companies donate to political campaigns in order to gain some leverage over policy making processes. This fun interactive graphic (via) allows you to see which companies donate primarily to Republican and Democratic campaigns, and which straddle the political fence. These are the companies with the largest total contribution:
The most Republican leaning:
The most Democratic leaning:
You can also search by type of company. For example, media and entertainment:
Transportation:
Pharmaceuticals:
UPDATE: Comments on this thread have been closed.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
In the Bible (book of Genesis), God sends two angels to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. These angels were charged with the task of evaluating the rate of sin within the walls. If the people were completely overridden by sin, God would destroy them.
What if those angels were statisticians, with access to GIS and geomapping software? How would the story have been different?
Some geographers at Kansas State University recently did an analysis of the spacial distribution of EVIL in the United States. Which part of the country is most afflicted by sloth? Lust? Greed? Envy? Wrath? Gluttony? Pride?
That’s right, folks – these geographers have operationalized sin, quantified it, then measured and mapped it. Pride is the aggregate distribution of all other sins, since it is supposedly the root of all evil (though one could also make a good case for apathy). Here’s how the sins are measured (and here’s a good view of the maps):
By looking at sin at the aggregate level, what they’re doing here is examining sin as a social fact, as opposed to an individual trait. This would be a good extension of a lesson on Durkheim and suicide as a social fact. This study really shows why we really can’t truly measure concepts such as this across space and time, since the meaning of these individual acts will vary. Are the same acts categorized and labeled as rape in Montana as they are in New York? How violent does a person need to be before they are arrested for assault, and does that differ by region? Are we really measuring rates of STDs, or rates at which people get treatment for them? If my measure of gluttony is different than yours, can I apply my measure to your actions and call you gluttonous? Or should I be using your measures to evaluate your actions? Is this aggregate data showing different rates of sin, or is it just an effect of different meanings attached to the concepts?
This would also be useful in showing how we can’t extrapolate individual characteristics from aggregate data. For example, I live in Indiana (but teach in Kentucky). This region is low in envy, lust, wrath, and pride; average in gluttony, sloth, and greed; and not particularly high in any of the sins. Apparently I live in one of the more virtuous parts of the country.
I guess I can cancel that fire and brimstone insurance.
But does this aggregate data also indicate that I, Anomie, have greater odds of being virtuous? NO. The fact that I am virtuous in every way is merely a coincidence. You see, their data is not measuring individual sinful behavior. Rather, it’s measuring social facts, and structural conditions, that they hypothesize to be correlated with individual sinful behavior (but I take issue with some of the measures). For example:
Now, excuse me while I get back to my slothful appreciation of art.
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Angie Andriot, also known as Wicked Anomie, maintains the (mostly) sociology blog Wicked Anomie: Sociology Run Amok. On occasion, she likes to toss off her cape, hop offline, and play the role of Angie Andriot: Grad Student Extraordinaire – deftly juggling the writing of her dazzling dissertation at Purdue University with the imparting of wisdom to her lovely students at University of Louisville. She is particularly fond of symbolic interactionism. And cheese.
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We have, of course, posted a number of examples of toys that socialize girls into motherhood and housework (for instance). But this 1960s commercial for the Suzy Homemaker line of toys, sent in by Monica B., is the most comprehensive example I’ve ever seen, including everything from cooking, doing laundry, vacuuming, to looking pretty:
I’m not quite sure why, but I find this commercial really creepy. Maybe it’s the underlying message that you should do housework and be pretty at the same time if you want to be “queen of your home” and, presumably, the housewife everyone else admires and envies.
