Archive: Mar 2010

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

…Good Morning America interviewed Cynthia Shackelford, who won $9 million in a lawsuit against her husband’s mistress last week. When asked what she’d like to tell cheating spouses, Shackelford puts all the blame on other women:

My main message is to all those women out there who might have their eyes on some guy that is married to not come between anybody… Lay off… It’s not good to go in there. It hurts the children. My children are devastated. I’m devastated.

Hear that ladies? Stop targeting happily married men, drugging them, and forcing them to have sex with you. Think of the children!

But wait — is it possible mistress Anne Lundquist isn’t the only one to blame for Shackelford’s divorce? A jury in North Carolina, one of only seven states to allow “alienation of affection” lawsuits, certainly thinks she’s at fault, but Allan Shackelford posted a statement (in the third person, no less!) on the Greensboro News & Record website. Note the twist at the end!

Allan Shackelford and Cynthia Shackelford had significant problems in their marriage for years, including three rounds of marital counseling that failed. Allan Shackelford had been involved in numerous affairs going back to the first two years of their marriage. Cynthia Shackelford told Allan Shackelford that she wanted to divorce him at least two years before he began a relationship with Anne Lundquist. Their marriage did not break-up because of Anne Lundquist. It ended because of the problems that Allan Shackelford and Cynthia Shackelford created for themselves. But, Cynthia Shackelford was never prepared to look in the mirror and take responsibility for her own mistakes. I know, because I am Allan Shackelford.

When asked about her husband’s statement, Shackelford said she, “Had absolutely no knowledge of any of these other affairs. We had a great marriage. He was very affectionate. We have two wonderful children. I mean, this is all a shock to me.”

What happened to Shackelford is horrible, and she probably is in shock and isn’t thinking clearly. But just because she thinks the marriage was “great” doesn’t make it so — it just means her husband was a really good liar. Sleeping with a man you know is married is a shitty thing to do, but someone needs to explain to Shackelford that her husband, not his mistress, is the one who broke a vow to be faithful.

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Wife’s $9M Message to Mistresses: ‘Lay Off’ [ABC News]
Spurned Spouse Gets Her Due [Greensboro News-Record]

Send an email to Margaret Hartmann, the author of this post, at margaret@jezebel.com.

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.

When American figure skater Evan Lysacek won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, he was the only man on the podium who had not attempted a quadruple jump in either of his two skating programs. The silver medalist, 2006 Olympic Champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia, was quick to point out that “a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn’t do a quad, well I don’t know… Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing.” Plushenko’s website later proclaimed (though the claim was soon redacted) that his superior performance had earned him a “platinum” medal. Figure skaters and others who heard his comment understood this wasn’t just sour grapes; by questioning Lysacek’s jumping ability, Plushenko was also questioning his manhood.

As Daniel, a former singles and pairs skater, knows from personal experience, when you look below the surface of figure skating, a coded gendering of the sport emerges. Figure skating has both athletic and artistic components, and traditionally these have been apportioned to men and women, respectively. Men are expected to be able to land enormous jumps. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to grab one of their feet and pull it up behind their heads, sometimes while spinning fast enough to set off a nose-bleed, as Mirai Nagasu did in Vancouver. Women’s programs also emphasize a great deal of emotion when they skate, while men are expected to display their athletic strength and power.

This is not to say that women are not expected to jump or that men can be soulless automata, but there are lower expectations for each in the other gender’s territory. A male skater who doesn’t emote passionately can be forgiven if he has a fantastic triple axel, and a woman can even win the Olympics with jumps that aren’t fully rotated. Artistry and flexibility are where women are expected to excel, while boys strive to jump higher and rotate more. To this day, only one woman (Japan’s Miki Ando) has landed a clean quadruple jump in competition, while it has become a mainstay of men’s event. This video shows Ando’s jump, at a 2002 competition:

In the aftermath of his silver platinum silver medal finish in Vancouver, Plushenko questioned the qualifications of Evan Lysacek to win gold without a quad. Aside from being poor sportsmanship, his approach highlighted the deep association of jumps with male figure skating. Though, in the women’s event, Mao Asada completed the technically difficult triple axel on three separate occasions, no fuss was made over her second-place finish behind the ethereal Kim Yu-Na. Kim has strong jumps, to be sure, but what sets her apart from her competitors is that she skates in a way that is graceful, balletic and undeniably feminine.

Ironically, one of the most promising things about a young Evgeni Plushenko when he arrived on the international skating scene in 1997 was his blending of artistry and athleticism. His style was avant-garde and overwrought, and his jumps were magnificent; he had, in skating parlance,”the whole package.” It might seem excessive to map gender onto his performances, but he is famous for being one of the only men to perform the Biellmann spin, in which the skater grabs the blade of one skate and pulls it up behind the top of his or her head.

This was a clear and unabashed case of gender-bending, as the spin had previously been the province of women. The figure skating world, after being sufficiently impressed by the flexibility of his hips, shrugged and moved on. No one thought any less of him for doing a “girly” spin.

Compare this to the skating world’s reaction to two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, who was often said to skate “like a man.” Witt had big jumps (and big thighs to go with them), and skated to the soundtracks of epic movies, a practice that was usually reserved for men, while other women tended to skate to classical ballet suites. Witt’s artistic style was also not typical of women skaters: while her competitors demonstrated flowing, balletic arm movements to match their floaty chiffon skating dresses, Witt opted for stronger, cleaner arm movements and famously skated in leggings and a tunic in a program set to music from Robin Hood. She also skated with a stoic bearing that was similar to that of Canadian Elvis Stojko, who won the silver medal in Lillehammer in 1994.

Despite the popular perception of figure skating as a uniformly “girly” sport, there exists within the figure skating world a unique and nuanced code for constructing and understanding gender. In the figure skating world, as in the rest of our culture, that code changes over time, with different representations of masculinity and femininity being rewarded, marked down, or phased out entirely as the sport evolves. And as Plushenko’s comments about Lysacek demonstrated, figure skating’s coding of gender can be invoked by skaters trash-talking their rivals in subtle, but complicated, ways. As yet, Plushenko has made no comment on Lysacek’s upcoming appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it’s not hard to imagine what he might have to say.

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Chloe Angyal is a Contributor at Feministing.com, where she writes about gender in popular culture. She is also a failed figure skater. Daniel Eison is a former nationally-ranked pairs and singles skater who retired in 2005. He is not a failed feminist.

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Gender differences in figure skating are also institutionalized in the form of costume requirements. Women are required to wear dresses, while men are not allowed to wear leggings or sleeveless outfits.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff says,

This isn’t true anymore; “this rule was repealed in 2004, allowing women to wear tights, trousers, or unitards” [1] ([1] http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/faq/rules.shtml)

Thanks for the correction!

Related posts: Johnny Weir and Canadian skating gets tough.

Crossposted at Jezebel.

All my life my Grandfather has used the phrase “cotton pickin'” as a slur, as in “wait a cotton pickin’ minute!” and, if he was mad at you (or the dog), “You cotton pickin’…!”

It is debated as to whether the phrase refers to the act of cotton picking, which is tedious and painful work (because the edges of cotton bolls are prickly and sharp), or the people who picked cotton (highly disadvantaged groups, especially black slaves in the American south).

In light of this, it is fascinating that the cotton industry has decided to try and revamp its image by focusing on the act of cotton picking (as opposed to trying to make it invisible).  In this recent Cotton USA ad campaign, sent in by Katrin, cotton picking is full-on romanticized: beautiful people in beautiful clothes decorated in cotton pick cotton in cottony cotton fields:

The image suggests that cotton is beautiful, natural, relaxing, comforting, and comfortable. Indeed, the new tagline for the campaign was: “Soft, sensual, and sustainable.  It’s Cotton USA!” (source).

Interestingly, the U.K. has banned the language of this campaign, arguing that cotton is a highly destructive crop because it is both insecticide- and pesticide-intensive (i.e., not sustainable at all).

In any case, it’s interesting for me, as an American, to see a company try to romanticize an activity so closely linked with slavery.  The Great Grandmother of my co-blogger, Gwen, picked cotton and she said that it was an absolutely miserable job.  The cotton boll itself was prickly and sharp and she had to put her hand inside of the boll and pull the cotton out, such that it would leave both her hands ripped up.  The harvested cotton was carried on her back under a beating sun.  Agricultural labor is punishing, not pastoral.

Today, of course, most cotton in the U.S. is picked by machine, not beautiful 20-somethings (or Great Grandmas).  Most of us would have no knowledge with which to challenge this images so, I suppose, that’s how Cotton USA gets away with such a ludicrous campaign.

See also romanticizing colonialism and our post on how mommies and daddies are baking Goldfish crackers in their comfy kitchens just for you!

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.

The American Anthropological Association website on race has a great collection of the racial and ethnic categories included on Censuses throughout the world, showing how different countries formalize different racial categories.  They illustrate just how diverse ideas about race are and challenge the notion that there is one “correct” question or set of questions.

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.

Rob D. sent along a commercial, made by the non-profit organization Iranians Be Counted, aimed at encouraging Iranian Americans filling out the U.S. Census to check “Other” and write in “Iranian.” It features a famous Iranian commedian doing a bunch of outrageous personalities, but in between the schtick is an argument that there is power in numbers and, therefore, a benefit to being identified as specifically Iranian:

This type of effort is really interesting and taps into a larger debate about Census categories.  How do we divide up the categories that we count?  Iranians are a much smaller group than, say, Arab American Persian (which is currently not an option on the U.S. Census).  If there is power in numbers, then wouldn’t it be better to write in “Arab American” “Persian”?  But, if you write in Arab Persian instead of Iranian, the resources to be gained from being counted may not benefit your community specifically. [As two commenters have pointed out, Iranian Americans are not Arab, except for a small minority. Iranians are Persian and most speak Farsi, not Arabic.  My mistake.]

The Asian American community in the U.S. is a good example of this conundrum.  “Asian” is a social construction; it is an umbrella label that includes very, very different groups.  There is great power in the social construction because it gives “Asians” a presence in American politics that, for example, the Hmong or the Vietnamese alone could never have.  But counting Asians as a group also means obscuring some very important differences among them.

For example, Asians outearn Whites in income surveys, suggesting that Asians should be excluded from programs trying to help groups escape poverty.  But, in reality, the groups we categorize as Asian vary tremendously in their average socioeconomic status.  Some Asian groups (e.g., the Japanese) outearn Whites; other Asian groups (e.g., the Hmong) have very high poverty rates.  When we look at the data broken out by smaller groups, we see more need, but the group itself is small enough that it can be ignored by politicians.

UPDATE: Roshan, in the comments, corrects me further:

Not all Iranians are Persians… Persians compose only 51 percent of the population. Other groups include the Azeris (24 percent), Gilaki and Mazandaranis (eight percent), Kurds (seven percent), Arabs (three percent), Lurs (two percent), Baluchs (two percent), and Turkmens (two percent) (Hakimzadeh, 2006).

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.

Christina W. sent in this 1969 video imagining, basically, the internet:

I found it hysterical. I mean, they were sort of bizarrely accurate in their general predictions. The gender roles also cracked me up.

And since we’re on the topic of the internet, the BBC recently conducted an international poll about the internet and David F. sent us a link to it. The methodology:

The finding that has gotten the most attention is that half of people strongly agree, and another 29% somewhat agree, that internet access should be a “fundamental right of all people”:

Concerns about the internet:

Of those who use the internet, beliefs about several topics:

The fact that 45% of respondents said they couldn’t cope without the internet has also gotten quite a bit of attention. However, it turns out that answers vary quite a bit by country; 79% of respondents in the Philippines and Pakistan said they could cope without it, while on the other end, 84% of Japanese respondents said they couldn’t:

I have to say, I find that question and the responses to it odd. You couldn’t cope without access to the internet? What does that mean, exactly? You’d be depressed and miserable without it? Suffer a mental breakdown? Become suicidal? I am a very heavy internet user–my computer is open with email displayed most of the time, even if I’m doing something else, and I spend enormous amounts of time every day actively using the internet. I get anxious when I can’t get access to it. But would I say I couldn’t cope without it? I would be very unhappy, but I wouldn’t, you know, become entirely incapable of functioning and give up the will to live, I don’t think. So I don’t know what to make of that.

Anyway. Hours spent online per week:

And finally, Michael C. sent us this video of a “skeptic’s take” on Google, including consolidation and privacy issues:

It’s interesting given Google’s recent decision to stop censoring internet access in China due to concerns that human rights activists’ emails were being tracked, as well as accusations of privacy issues with Buzz. A friend and I were talking recently about how normally we’re concerned about corporate concentration and control, and yet we both have entirely enmeshed ourselves with Google–using gmail, storing things on Google Docs and Notebook, tracking websites through Google Reader, using YouTube, getting directions from Google Maps…basically my entire online life is routed through Google services (I tried Chrome but didn’t like it, but if I had, even my browser would have been a Google product).

We’re not sure what to make of this — that it’s easier to lull people into a sense of complacency about corporate control if you provide them really nifty stuff they like using? That we aren’t yet really taking concerns about internet privacy seriously? The way these services are set up, it’s simply easier to use all of them than to insist on using a cloud server, reader, email, and so on separately just so we wouldn’t be supporting the concentration of internet services, and this undoubtedly plays a role in reducing our resistance. And our reliance on Google slowly grew over time so that neither of us really noticed how much we used the company’s products until we were actively talking about it (which we were only doing because of the events in China).

What do you think? Do you worry a lot about control over the internet, and particularly Google’s reach into so many aspects of internet usage? Do you really worry about how internet privacy issues affect you personally?

College admissions is a competitive business with colleges competing for the smartest, richest, and otherwise most desirable frosh each year.  Administrators have come to realize that “extras” —  e.g., the quality of the gym, the luxuriousness of the living quarters, and the availability of extra-curriculars — now heavily influence the decision making of prospective students.  Among academics and administrators, this is called the “amenities arms race.”  A set of representative images can be found at a slide show about college dorms sent in by Dmitriy T.M. They nicely illustrate the proliferation.

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.

Liz C. sent in the video for the song “A Kiss with a Fist (Is Better Than None)” by Florence and the Machine. She analyzes it nicely:

The lyrics seem to condone domestic violence, and the video seems to trivialize it, in the sense that the lead singer prances and jumps around while singing about getting punched in the face, having her leg broken, and having plates broken over her head by her partner, while she, in turn, hits and slaps him, breaks his jaw, and refers to “The Burning Bed” by setting fire to their bed.

The lyrics:

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

My black eye casts no shadow
Your red eye sees nothing
Your slap don’t stick
Your kicks don’t hit
So we remain the same
Love sticks
Sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit

A kick to the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better then none

A kiss with a fist is better then none

I broke your jaw once before
I spilled your blood upon the floor
You broke my leg in return
So sit back and watch the bed burn
Love sticks
Sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit

A kick to the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better then none

A kiss with a fist is better then none

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

UPDATE: Reader Kyle pointed out another example, Chester French’s video for the song “She Loves Everybody.” He asks whether we can imagine seeing this video if the gender roles were reversed:

And commenter Dave gave us a link to a recent discussion of this topic at Jezebel.
Also see our post on sexualized violence in Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” video.