Archive: Jan 2011

G.M. Cairney pointed out a set of photos at Time that highlights the scrutiny women’s bodies are under, the expectation that we constantly work to make our bodies look smaller, and a general cultural fat phobia, while making me wonder, again, why does this merit a slideshow? The article (which features only women) focuses on celebrities’ outfits at the Golden Globes on Sunday and makes it very clear what the main criterion for success is: could it possibly, in any way, from any angle, make these celebrities, most of whom are tiny, look even slightly larger than they are?

Here’s one of the offending garments, on Jennifer Lopez:

I don’t know that I particularly like the dress, but does it make her look fat? The author assures us, though, that this is a disaster: “White is a fright on an ample derriere, or on anyone who is not a size 0.” That’s right: if you’re over a size 0, the entire color white is off-limits to you.

Christina Aguilera’s dress commits the sin of making her look “buxom” and “hippy,” and she is rather oddly compared to Mae West as though that’s a bad thing:

Jennifer Love Hewitt’s dress is described as a “high-calorie confection,” reinforcing the association with fat.

All of these criticisms rest on the central assumption that there is an ideal body type that we should all be aspiring to, and that the role of fashion is to “camouflage” any areas that don’t conform. Any outfit that doesn’t do this has, by definition, failed, no matter how it actually looks on the person. Yes, the specific dress is supposed to be unique, individual, unlike anything else there, but the body inside it isn’t.

As Lisa once asked, wouldn’t it be something if instead we thought the point of fashion was to emphasize whatever shape we have, to  make our bodies look different from one another? Crazy thought, I know.

Everyone says that Barbie has unrealistic proportions, but have you seen them? Denise Winterman at the BBC decided to make a visual, borrowing one Barbie doll, one real human woman, Libby, and the wonders of photoshop.

First, Barbie’s measurements:

• bust 4.6ins (11.6cm)
• waist 3.5ins (8.9cm)
• hips 5ins (12.7cm)

Second, the transformation:

Writes Winterman:

If Libby’s waist size of 28ins (71.1cm) were to remain unchanged, then applying Barbie’s proportions to her would mean Libby shoots up in height, to an Amazonian at 7ft 6ins (2.28m) tall. That’s just two inches shorter than the world’s tallest woman, Yao Defen. She would also have hips measuring 40ins (101.6cm) and a bust of 37ins (83.9cm).

But what if, instead, Libby’s height of 5ft 6ins (1.68m) was to remain unchanged. Doing the maths, Libby would have an extraordinarily tight waist of just 20ins (50.8cm), while her bust would be 27ins (68.5cm) and her hips 29ins (73.6cm).  Even the famously slight Victoria Beckham reportedly only has a 23ins (58.4cm) waist. But neither are they unheard of — Brigitte Bardot was famous for her 20ins (50.8cm) waist.

Citing scholarship, Winterman reports that “the likelihood of a woman having Barbie’s body shape is one in 100,000. So not impossible, but extremely rare.”

Via Jezebel.

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.

Cross-posted at Love Isn’t Enough.

Brandy B. let us know about an interesting article by Isis the Scientist at Science Blogs on the apparent whitening of a children’s cartoon character for the Christmas toy market. PBS’s cartoon, “Super Why!”, includes a female character, Princess Presto, who has the power to spell. Here’s what she looks like:

Yet the plush doll version of Princess Presto (who is supposed to have one White and one African American parent) looks significantly different:

I found another Princess Presto doll online as well:

I did find one set where she looks more like the original:

Isis the Scientists says that in comments to an article on the topic at the Orlando Sentinel, someone claiming to represent the company says the plush doll looks more like the original in person than the pictures online and says the following:

…The hair on the doll is more purple than black and this was an aesthetic choice…The placement of the facial features was intentionally tweaked to make the embroidered beanies look cute, so there is a slight difference from the onscreen character. The alterations were similarly made across all characters in the line, not just Princess Presto. There are almost always slight differences when translating the onscreen characters to off-air product especially with regard to colors because we have to use PMS or CMYK color choices for products.

Isis says BS — that having seen an actual version of the plush toy, it looks like it does in the photo, with very light skin, and that aside from that, other manufacturers seem to be able to make African American dolls just fine. And saying you changed things for “aesthetic” purposes doesn’t explain why you thought her existing characteristics were insufficiently aesthetically pleasing. Of course, we also don’t know for sure the person writing the comment was from PBS.

I tend to side with Isis here: the idea that technical limitations prevent making a more accurate representation of a dark-skinned doll is…sketchy, to say the least, and makes me think PBS needs to partner with a better toy design firm. And the choices about what the Princess Presto doll should look like in doll form put PBS in the position of appearing to think that a mixed-race character needs to be whitened to sell. PBS’s dolls exist in a marketplace where we’ve seen controversies about African American dolls being literally valued less than White dolls, and whatever their supposed reasons, it’s hard to get around the fact that all of the choices made in the name of aesthetics added up to a doll that looks awfully White.

Many Americans are familiar with “female genital mutilation.”  The term is typically applied to practices occurring in some parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but not to genital cutting practices that happen in the U.S. and other Western societies (including cosmetic surgeries on the genitals, surgeries on children with ambiguous genitalia, and transsexual surgery) and, by definition, not to genital cutting practices that happen to men in both Western and non-Western countries (male circumcision and other rare but more extreme practices).  “Female genital mutilation” elsewhere, then, is widely condemned by Americans, but rarely condemned in light of these other genital cutting practices, nor America’s own history of genital cutting.  In fact, it was not unusual to subject women in the U.S. to proper circumcision (removal of the clitoral prepuce, or foreskin) until the 1960s and these procedures remained legal until 1996 (though, as far as I’m concerned, their legality is still up in the air).

In any case, RabbitWrite gives us a glimpse into this era in American history. Reading from a Playgirl published in 1973, she recounts the confessions of a woman who chose to be circumcised and offers a short critique.

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.

Nils G. drew my attention to a fascinating now-abandoned America educational practice that nicely illustrates how ideas about ideal parenting shift over time.  Between 1919 and 1969, the Home Economics departments of about 50 colleges and universities served as foster homes for orphans. Writes Emily Anthes at Wonderland:

During this time, homemaking… was considered to be something that could be conquered by science. Running a home based on instinct was considered to be woefully old-fashioned; the idea that raising a child and maintaining a home could be optimized by following a set of scientific rules was gaining currency.

Accordingly, getting a degree in Home Economics included a labratory set up exactly like a home: “practice apartments.”  And what better to fill these homes with than “practice babies!”  Students would practice applying the latest science-endorsed parenting techniques on orphans.  An article published in the Journal of Home Economics in 1920, by Elizabeth Vermilye, explained the rotation of care:

Each girl, in rotation, carried the work of “baby manager” for one week… The “baby manager” assumed the entire responsibility for the care of the child during her period. She herself did the actual work of caring for him between the hours of 6.00 to 8.00 a.m. and from 4.30 to 6.00 p.m. During the day the child was in the care of three or four other students during the time they were not in class, the manager making the program for this care, giving instructions regarding food and other matters needing attention. The baby manager did the baby’s laundry work.

A student taking care of a practice baby:

Far from being exploited, it was believed that these babies would get not just excellent, attentive care, but the best, most scientifically-valid care.  Vermilye claims that the examining physician was highly impressed with the children’s development during their stay with the students.  She quotes him saying, “The improvement in the condition of these children speaks highly for your cooperative motherhood.”

These pictures of orphan and practice baby Bobby Domecon (surnamed after his role in the Domestic Economics department) reveal his chubbification.

A skinny 6 pounds at 2 months old:

Perking up at age 10 months:

Nice and chubby 5 months later:

Because these children were believed to be benefiting from the latest science of parenting, they were highly adoptable; many couples were eager to get their hands on a child that had such a good start in life (source).

Eventually, however, ideas about mothering began to change.  In particular, scholars began to talk about Attachment Disorder and argue that a child’s development required that it strongly bond to one unique person.  In 1954, a short Time magazine article on the subject included experts suggesting that the program was harmful.  Starting with the Superintendent of the Illinois State Child Welfare Division, the author writes:

“It is not a normal family setting,” said he. “There are just too many persons involved in the handling of that child.”  Heaven only knows, added the superintendent, how many neuroses little David might develop. Other officials seemed to agree. “Imagine.” cried Mrs. Babette Penner, director of the Women’s Services Division of United Charities, “what anxieties there are in a child who is given a bottle in twelve or more pairs of arms.”

The scientific consensus eventually changed and, as a result, by 1969, then, “practice babies” were a thing of the past.

In this video from ABC Doris Mitchell, Cornell University graduate and Home Economics major, sweetly remembers her experience helping raise a practice baby at Cornell University:

For another fantastic example of historic management of children without parents, see our post on the Orphan Trains.

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.

Jacqueline S. told us about a post at DarrenBarefoot comparing the words that appears most frequently on the covers of Cosmo and Maxim. Darren typed a list of every word that appeared on the covers for three years (2007-2010 for Cosmo, 2005-2008 for Maxim; he doesn’t explain why he chose different time periods) and then made word clouds to illustrate frequency. The results for Maxim:

And Cosmo:

So in both cases, sex rules, followed by a reference to the category of people you’re supposedly interested in having sex with (since both magazines pretty much exclusively assume heterosexual relationships). The word “sex” or “sexy” appeared at least once on ever single Cosmo cover in the 3-year span, and most Maxim covers as well.

But notice how much more the language on Cosmo covers focuses on sex and relationships than Maxim‘s does, with more frequent use of words that explicitly refer to men and/or sex. Of course, those familiar with Cosmo, or most other women’s magazines, know that its headlines about sex make it clear what the point is: various ways to please your man, which translates into increasing your own pleasure. Maxim, on the other hand, focuses less attention on relationships (or health/fitness) and more on money, travel, and pop culture (sports, TV, movies).

To highlight how dominant sex is on Cosmo covers, Darren made a 15-second video of them in rapid succession, back and forth:

I doubt any of you are shocked by his findings, but it’s a nice illustration of the way magazines aimed at women reinforce the idea that our primary goal should be finding, pleasing, and keeping a heterosexual partner to a degree not usually found in men’s magazines.

The term “food desert” was coined to draw attention to the fact that some people live far from a source of healthy, affordable food.  For these people, compared to those with easier access, consistently eating fresh fruit and vegetables and avoiding convenience store and restaurant food is more difficult.  Food deserts are more often found in poor neighborhoods, which is part of why the poor are more likely than people of other socioeconomic classes to be overweight and obese.

Over 2 percent of U.S. households, 2.3 million, live at least one mile from a grocery store and do not have a car (USDA).  The map below depicts the percent of such households by county.  In the darkest counties, over 10 percent of the households are isolated in a food desert:

See also Satter’s Hierarchy of Food Needs and the Last Sideshow Fat Man.

Via Slate.

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.

A new Pew Research Center report reveals the rising use of the Internet as a news source in the U.S.:

The Internet is the most frequently reported source of news for adults under 30, but it’s relevance is rising in all categories:

In addition to younger people, people who are more educated, have higher incomes, and live in the West are also more likely to use Internet as a source of news. See the full press release here.

Via Flowing Data.

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.