Archive: Feb 2011

Cross-Posted at BagNewsNotes.

We have posted in the past about how airlines use images of female flight attendants in ads to appeal to customers with promises of caretaking, eye candy, flirtation, and emotion work. Katrin sent in another example. This Cathay Pacific ad, which appeared in the U.K.,  presents Karina Yau, a flight attendant, to customers as the perfect caretaking woman — one who just wants to listen to you, not talk:

Notice also the passive stance — arms pulled into the body, her face turned away and eyes averted, hand fiddling with her coat sleeve. The text reads:

Karina went from fashion model to flight attendant — and still doesn’t think that life has had any real ups and downs. You can meet her and other members of the Cathay Pacific team at www.cathaypacific.co.uk. And while you’re there, check out our great fares to over 110 destinations worldwide. If you see Karina on your next flight, you might recommend a favourite book — she loves to read.

A post on the Cathay Pacific blog about Yau describes her as “modest.” At Cathay’s website you can “meet the team who go the extra mile to make you feel special.” It includes photos and bios of some employees, and I found Yau’s. The text they chose to highlight reinforces the emotion work she engages in for customers — “of course” she “smiled and apologised immediately.”

The ad and the features present customers with the promise of more than just a flight attendant who will do her job well. This flight attendant is the ideal of femininity: she’s beautiful (a former model), she’s submissive (apologizes immediately!), and she’s interested in you — your thoughts, your taste in books — whoever you are.

I wonder to what degree this draws on a specifically racialized femininity — the stereotypical depiction of Asian women as particularly submissive and docile. But since this ad ran in the U.K., I don’t know if that stereotype is as relevant. Readers, what say you?

If you are alive these days, and not already part of the undead masses yourself, you probably have noticed a staggering increase of zombie references in film, television, pop culture, videogames and the internet.

For instance, the big screen and small screen have both hosted a plethora of zombie films, e.g., 28 Days Later (2002), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and I Am Legend (2007). On television, we have seen the recent success of AMC’s The Walking Dead. And if you are on a college campus, you have probably seen undergraduates playing “Zombies Vs. Humans,” a game of tag in which “human” players must defend against the horde of “zombie” players by “stunning” them with Nerf weapons and tube socks. In videogames, we have seen the success of the Resident Evil franchise, Left 4 Dead, and Dead Rising. Finally, the internet is awash with zombie culture. From viral videos of penitentiary inmates dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” to post-apocalyptic zombie societies, fansites, and blogs.

But what is the zombie and where does it come from?

What makes the zombie unique from other movie monsters is its unique place of origin. Whereas Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolfman all have ties to the Gothic literary tradition, the zombie stands apart in having a relatively recent (and proximal) origin. Theorists of zombie culture (such as Kyle Bishop or Jamie Russell), attribute the origin of the zombie to Haitian folklore and the hybrid religion of voodoo. But the zombie didn’t make its away into American culture until the 1920s and 30s, when sensationalist travel narratives were popular with Western readers. Specifically, W.B. Seabrook’s book The Magic Island, is often credited as the first popular text to describe the Haitian zombie. Additionally, the work of Zora Neale Hurston (specifically her 1937 book Tell My Horse) explores the folklore surrounding the zombie in Haitian mythology.

(Still from I Walked with a Zombie, 1943)

With the development of the motion picture, the zombie became a staple of horror, and a popular movie monster. The zombies of White Zombie (1932), Revolt of the Zombies (1936), King of the Zombies (1941), and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), however, were not the cannibalistic creatures we now know. These zombies were people put under a spell, the spell of voodoo and mystical tradition. In these films, the true terror is not be being killed by zombies, but of becoming a zombie oneself.

Bela Lugosi as ‘Murder’ Legendre, the mad scientist and his zombie slave:

What all these films have in common is their depiction of Voodoo and Haitian culture more generally as dangerous, menacing, and superstitious. Those who study colonial history note that the messages contained in these films present stereotyped versions of Haitian culture aimed largely at satisfying a predominantly white audience. Many of these films also contain an all white cast, with several members in blackface serving as comedic relief for the more “serious” scenes.

It’s interesting to see how the zombie has morphed into the cannibalistic creatures we now know. While the original zombie is a powerful metaphor for fears of the non-white Other and reverse colonization, the contemporary zombie largely reflects contemporary fears of loss of individuality, the excesses of consumer capitalism, environmental degradation, the excesses of science and technology, and fears of global terrorism (especially more recent renditions of the zombie post-9/11).

For instance, George A. Romero’s famous Night of the Living Dead (1968), the first film to feature the flesh-eating zombie, is often remarked as a not-so-subtle allegory to the Civil Rights Era and the militant violence perpetuated by Southern states against the Black protestors, as well as a critique of the Vietnam War. Romero himself has stated that he wanted to draw attention to the war through the images of violence contained in the film.

Cannibal zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968):

Similarly, the Italian zombie horror film Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974) reflects fears of environmental degradation and pollution. In this film, the zombie epidemic is caused by an experimental pest-control machine, which sends radio waves into the ground. Although it solves the local pest problem for farmers, it also reanimates the dead in a nearby cemetery.

Zombie consumers in Romero’s second zombie flick Dawn of the Dead (1978):

Later zombies are used to symbolize the excesses of capitalism and militarism, respectively.  For example, in 28 Weeks Later (2007), we see the decay of social structures across the globe, as institutions that are supposed to protect us inevitably fail to do their job.  In this scene, protagonists attempt to escape the city just before the military firebombs it:

As we can see, the zombie has a unique cultural history and serves as a powerful metaphor for social anxieties. This movie monster might have come out of the Caribbean, but it became a powerful representation of modern fears when it met the silver screen. Perhaps the current failure of global social structures (global terrorism, environmental catastrophes, and the current economic downturn) has prompted the most recent “Zombie Renaissance.” Or maybe we are just gluttons for the “everyman” tales contained in each rendition of the zombie apocalypse, a point made by SocProf several months back. I do not know what the future holds, but one thing is certain: the zombie will continue to haunt us from beyond the grave.

David Paul Strohecker is getting his PhD in Sociology at the University of Maryland. He studies cultural sociology, theory, and intersectionality. He is currently working on a larger project about the cultural history of the zombie in film.

I enjoy opportunities to link back to my dog person/cat person rant.  In it, I point out how pet ownership can be gendered.  In this case, owning a dog is masculine and owning a cat is feminine. Anna sent in an image demonstrating just this, noting that the dog products at her vet are blue and the cat products pink:

More, and importantly, because we also tend to value men and masculinity over women and femininity, it is somehow “cool” to own a dog, especially a big dog.  This is true for both men and women.  But it isn’t really cool to own a cat.  We accept it in women because cats enhance her femininity (for better or worse), but when men do it.  Well, as I say in my previous post on the topic, “we think men with cats are a little femmy or, at minimum, sweeter than most… even, maybe, gay.”

This was not lost on the folks at Much Love Animal Rescue.  Visiting the site, Squee noticed that they had a page aimed at men that attempted to convince them that owning a cat could be manly indeed. Their commercials feature extra-super-manly-men with grease ‘n stuff talking about punching things and loving their cat. This is nice in that it challenges the social construction that owning cats is feminine, but notice that it leaves intact the idea that men-should-be-men and avoid all things feminine.

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.

Thelittlepecan let us know that the World Health Organization has out a new report about global alcohol consumption, as well as the consequences of that consumption. Overall consumption varies significantly, with the highest levels in Russia and much of Europe and the lowest in northern Africa through Asia (the consumption figures exclude tourists):

There are also clear differences in the most-consumed type of alcoholic drinks:

The report also looks at what proportion of all male deaths are related to alcohol consumption, broken down by region, age, and sex. Globally, alcohol-related problems are the leading cause of death for males aged 15-59. For the regions, AFR = Africa, AMR = Americas, EMR = Eastern Mediterranean, EUR = Europe, SEAR = South East Asia, and WPR = Western Pacific:

Clearly the Americas and Europe stand out, though this is  likely because those regions have lower death rates from many sources that are still prevalent in many parts of the world and, thus, alcohol-related ones show up more prominently.

Differences in blood-alcohol limits for drivers:

If you’re interested in more details, you can also get profiles of individual countries in each region at the WHO website.

Many of us are familiar with the female blue-collar workers that took jobs in factories during World War II. It turns out, however, that women were also employed as mathematicians and computers (that’s “compute-ers”). In this photo, Jean Jennings Bartik and Frances Bilas Spence get ready to present an early computer to military officials in 1946:

Women operating a “differential analyzer,” often checking the machine’s work by doing the math by hand:

Jean Jennings Bartik in 1946 with an early computer and Arthur Burks:

Their work was top-secret and so they weren’t part of the “Rosie the Riveter”-style propaganda at the time. Post-World War II disinterest in women’s accomplishments allowed their stories to remain untold.

A new documentary, forwarded to us by Jordan G. and Dmitriy T.M., reveals these high-tech Rosies:

Via BoingBoing, photos from CNN.

See also our post on the feminist mythology surrounding the iconic “Rosie the Riveter” image (hint: it was about class, not gender).  And you can buy Jean Jennings Bartik book, Pioneer Programmer, here.

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 Ms.

Kelly V. suggested that I check out the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us), by Tom Vanderbilt. The book is fascinating, covering everything from individual-level psychological and perceptual factors that affect our driving to system-level issues like why building additional roads often simply creates more traffic rather than alleviating it.

Among other things, it turns out that there are clear gender patterns in our driving; in particular, women do more driving as part of their family responsibilities. As Alan Pisarski, a traffic policy consultant, explains,

If you look at trip rates by male versus female, and look at that by size of family…the women’s trip rates vary tremendously by size of family. Men’s trip rates look as if they didn’t even know they had a family. The men’s trip rates are almost independent of family size. What it obviously says is that the mother’s the one doing all the hauling. (p. 135)

Nancy McGuckin and Yukiko Nakamoto looked at “trip chaining,” or making short stops on the way to or from work. They report that women tend to work closer to home (measured “as the crow flies,” or the great circle distance — GCD) than men in the same occupational categories (McGuckin and Nakamoto, p. 51)):

Research suggests a couple of possibilities for this pattern. Women, taking into account their family responsibilities, may look for closer jobs than men do so it will be easier to balance work and home life. It may also be that the types of jobs women are more likely to hold are more decentralized than men’s jobs and so more likely to be found closer to residential neighborhoods (although the graph above is broken down by occupational category, we see significant gender segregation in jobs within those broad categories).

Overall, men drive more total miles, and spend more time driving, per day, but women make more trips, particularly once they have children (p. 51):

Women are more likely to engage in trip chaining, and men and women differ in the types of stops they make. Men and women both stop to grab meals or coffee for themselves (in fact, the increase in these types of stops by men is so striking it earned a name, the “Starbucks effect”). However, more of the stops women make are to “serve passengers” — that is, going somewhere only because the passenger needs to, such as dropping a child off at school or childcare — or to complete shopping or family errands (p. 54):

Overall, 2.7 million men and 4.3 million women pick up or drop off (or both) a child during their work commute, according to federal data. Among households with two working parents who commute, women make 66% of the trips for drop offs/pick ups (p. 53)

This next graph isn’t related, but I’m throwing it in as a bonus. Sirkku Laapotti found that in both 1978 and 2001, men rated their own driving skills higher, on average, than women rated theirs…but both sexes thought they were way better drivers than people in 1978 did:

[Both papers are from Research on Women’s Issues in Transportation — Report of a Conference. Volume 2: Technical Papers. Conference Proceedings 35 (2005). Washington, D.C.: Transportation Research Board. The McGuckin and Nakamoto paper, “Differences in Trip Chaining by Men and Women,” is found on p. 49-56. Laapotti’s paper, “What Are Young Female Drivers Made Of? Differences in Driving Behavior and Attitudes of Young Women and Men in Finland,” is on p. 148-154.]

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Last year in a post about the truism “sex sells,” I asked:

But whose sex is sold?  And to who?

“If it was simply that sex sold,” I continued…

…we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture.  Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men.  So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”?

I argued that what was really being sold was men’s (presumably heterosexual) sexual subjectivity, the experience of being a person in the world who was presented with images that were for his titillation. Women do not live in the world this way. They are not exposed everyday to images that legitimize their lust; instead, the images teach women that they are the object of that lust.

In light of this, Sociologist Beth Eck did a series of interviews attempting to tap into what it felt like for men and women to look at male and female nudes.  Her findings were pretty fascinating.

First, she asked men and women to look at naked images of women, including this one of Cindy Crawford:

Women viewing images of female nudes almost inevitably compared themselves to the figure and felt inadequate.   Said one women:

…the portrayal of these thin models and I just get depressed… I’m very hard on myself, wanting to be that way.

Women ended up feeling bad whether the model conformed to conventional norms of attractiveness or not.  When looking at a heavy set woman, they often responded like this:

I am disgusted by it because she is fat, but I’m also… I need to lose about 10 pounds.

I don’t necessarily find her body that attractive… Her stomach looks like mine.

Men, in contrast, clearly felt pandered to as holders of a heterosexual male gaze.  They knew that the image was for them and offered praise (for a job well done) or criticism (for failure to live up to their expectations).  About Crawford they said:

Personally I think she is attractive.

I like that.

Both men and women, then, knew exactly how to respond to female nudes: women had internalized their object status and men had internalized their subject status.

Eck then showed them male nudes, including this one of Sylvester Stallone:

Interestingly, both men and women felt uncomfortable looking at male nudes.

Men responded by either expressing extreme disinterest, re-asserting their heterosexuality, or both.  They did not compare themselves to the male nudes (like women did with female nudes), except to say that they were both male and, therefore, there was “nothing to see.”  Meanwhile, because men have been trained to be a lustful sexual subject, seeing male nudity tended to raise the specter of homosexuality.  They couldn’t see the bodies as anything but sexual objects for them to gaze upon.

In contrast, the specter of homosexuality didn’t arise for women because they weren’t used to being positioned as lustful.  Eck explains:

When women view the seductive pose of the female nude, they do not believe she is ‘coming on to’ them.  They know she is there to arouse men.  Thus, they do not have to work at rejecting an unwanted advance.  It is not for them.

Many women also did not feel lustful when looking at male nudes and those that did often experienced lust mixed with guilt or shame.  Eck suggest that this may be, in part, a reaction to taking on the active, consuming, masculine role, something they’re not supposed to do.

Summarizing responses to the male nudes, she writes:

Men, over and over again, reject the seductive advance [of a male nude].  While some women welcome the advance, most feel a combination of shame, guilt, or repulsion in interacting with the image…

This is what it means to live in a world in which desire is structured by a gendered sexual subject/object binary.  It’s not just “out there,” it’s “in us” too.

Source: Eck, Beth. 2003. Men are Much Harder: Gendered Viewing of Nude Images.  Gender & Society 17, 5: 691-710.

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.

Valentine’s Day cards reflect the cultural context at the time and, in times of racism, cards punned and joked with racial stereotypes.  We’ve collected examples featuring American Indians and Asians, here’s our selection of racist cards with Africans and African Americans.  Trigger warning for grotesque caricature and violence.

Cards via Hearts Atwirl and Buzzfeed.

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.