Archive: Jun 2011

It’s almost Father’s Day, which means it is time for the greeting card business to make tons of money. It also means it’s time for us to visually see the standard narrative about gender, masculinity, and fatherhood. Looking at mass commercial products like greeting cards is an especially useful venue: the greeting card companies, wanting to make money like good capitalists, will sell products that have the greatest widespread appeal. Thus, they will sell the most popular representations of gender, masculinity, and fatherhood.

From a brief perusal of a NYC chain store greeting card aisle, I found plenty of cards that shed light on these representations. I want to focus, though, on two: middle-aged masculinity and the different representations of daughters and sons.

There were plenty of cards like this one, that capture many of the stereotypical narratives about fatherhood, and middle-aged masculinity more broadly:

(Apologies for the poor picture quality, a nearby employee didn’t seem thrilled with my picture-taking).

Here, we see man/father as: head of the household (twice, and once as dictator – king): cooks, but only on the grill; lawn mowing expert; controller of the remote/TV watcher; and “big guy.” What’s not on there? Anything about love for children, caring, affection, equitable distribution of household duties (if part of a couple), etc.

Almost all of the love and affection, though, was saved for cards specifically marketed as ‘Dad from daughter.” Most of the cards in this picture were love-centric and labeled as such:

There were a few rare cards simply marked as ‘Dad’ that include themes of love and/or affection, such as this one:

The cards marked ‘Dad from son,’ however, mostly consisted of attempts at humor involving sports (especially golf), building things (or the lack of ability to do so), and, well, farts:

Obviously, we can’t draw too much from the greeting cards in one store, but in this store, at least, there was only one card explicitly marked for sons that primarily communicated feelings of love and affection; all of these were either marked for daughters to give or did not specify what gender should give them. Pairing this with the kinds of fatherly masculinity represented by the cards, Father’s Day cards are sold through the use of traditional gender representations.

Note: all photos licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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John McMahon is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where he also participates in the Women’s Studies Certificate Program. He is interested in post-structuralism, issues relating to men and feminism, gendered practices in international relations, gender and political theory, and questions of American state identity. John blogs at Facile Gestures, where this post originally appeared.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Celebrate Father’s Day this year with the weird American habit of gendering food!

(source)

Let us not forget that steak = manfood.  Like catfood and dogfood, manfood must be carefully produced so as to cater to man’s natural diet.  His ancestors hunted the wild baked potato, the shy ale, and the feisty tenderloin.  Today, Manfood Inc. scientifically calibrates each and every Father’s Day dinner to man’s instinctual stomach, so you can treat your man to the best.  We call it a MENu.

For more, see this vintage Campbell’s ad marketing meat for men, the gendered menu at Brick House, this ad campaign warning of sissified dogs, and this extensive collection of gendered and sexualized food.  See also this counter-example: a vintage ad arguing that vegetables make you tough and strong.

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.

Please enjoy these posts from Father’s Days past:

Stereotyping Men on Dad’s Day

• Feed Them Meat!
• Buy Them Non-Emasculating Cooking Supplies!

Also…

• Are You Coming on to me Daughter?
• Including Daughters in Father’s Day

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.

Dolores R. sent in a story at about a recently-released internet campaign ad in the CA-36 special election that Talking Points Memo has called “Willie Horton on steroids,” referring to the infamous racial-fear-mongering ad released by George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign. The CA-36 ad was released by a new super-PAC (able to raise unlimited funds), Turn Right USA. (The guy who produced it also produced a striking ad for a candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner in 2010.) It attacks Democratic candidate Janice Hahn over her support for gang intervention programs. And it’s a doozy. It is definitely NSFW:

Aside from the just over-the-top racist and sexist nature of the ad, it’s also interesting because of the issues it brings up about technology and democratization of ad campaign materials. Turn Right USA isn’t directly linked to or affiliated with the campaign of Hahn’s Republican rival in the race, Craig Huey. Huey’s campaign has reacted with dismay, condemning the content and distancing themselves from it. They clearly fear a backlash that will hurt Huey’s chances (and he’s already the underdog in the race). And yet, they didn’t create the ad, there’s no evidence that I’ve seen that they worked with Turn Right USA, and they don’t have any ability to take it down or symbolically fire the producer to show how little they think of it. We saw a similar situation recently in Florida, with a mailer apparently intended to discredit a candidate who had nothing to do with it.

While non-campaign-funded attack ads clearly helps candidates in a lot of situations (for instance, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads against John Kerry in 2004), they can also hurt the candidate they’re meant to help. Campaigns can’t control their content and they can’t retract them if they sense a public backlash. Voters may blame candidates for content they didn’t approve and can’t fix. And the increasing number of third-party advocacy groups, combined with the ability to distribute materials widely over the internet instead of buying TV time, seems likely to increase the danger to campaigns of these types of ads ostensibly meant to “support” them.

In a capitalist economy, one way for an entrepreneur to succeed is by creating an insecurity and offering a product to address it.  I’m going to call “need creation” on You Go Girl, sent in by Clare.  The marketing for You Go Girl revolves around the “plume” released by your toilet.  Beware, it says, while you attempt to flush it your urine is actually rising from the toilet to descend on your toothbrush and your boyfriend’s nostrils.

The commercial suggests that you should use the product both for our health and because we should be embarrassed if someone can tell we’ve urinated.  Only women, however, who are stereotyped as being both cleaner and more concerned with hiding bodily functions, are targeted (note the name of the product).

This isn’t the only product aimed at reducing the odor associated with urination.  Fresh Drop Bathroom Odor Preventer is another option for those of us worried about our urine clouds, and this one is for men too!

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 few weeks back, Forbes named Pittsburgh as the most livable city in the U.S. The description of the city talks about its “art scene, job prospects, safety and affordability,” and presents a picture of Pittsburgh as a city that has rebounded from both its industrial past and the current economic crisis to become a cultural and intellectual hotspot:

Forbes ranked cities based on unemployment, rates of income growth in the past 5 years, crime rates, cost of living, and cultural/artistic opportunities (according to Sperling’s Best Places Arts & Leisure Index). The final score is an average of the different elements, each of which are weighted equally, though I can’t help but think a lot of people might think some of those factors are more important in how they evaluate a location than others. Also, I have some reservations about rankings from Sperling’s Best Places, as they have a “manliest cities” ranking commissioned by Combos snacks that includes “sales of salty snacks/crackers” and deductions for “emasculating” criteria like sushi restaurants.

But I digress. As it turns out, this glowing report is only part of the story of Pittsburgh. The city also tops the charts in terms of African American poverty. African Americans in the region haven’t benefited from the economic turnaround Forbes discussed.

In light of this fact, Jasiri X, a rapper from Pittsburgh, wrote “America’s Most Livable City.” In the song (lyrics here) and video he questions who, exactly, the city is livable for, contrasting the image portrayed in the Forbes article with the region’s neglected and under-developed African American neighborhoods:

There are also three videos featuring Jasiri X interviewing residents of poor neighborhoods. All are worth a watch, but I think the best is the 2nd segment. A local resident discusses how what he sees as exaggerated media reports of the crime and danger in some areas — some created by well-meaning people trying to bring attention to the needs of the community by, he believes, playing up the bad aspects — served to justify abandoning Black neighborhoods in desperate need of economic opportunities:

For another discussion of very different experiences of economic crisis and recovery, see our guest post about Forbes ranking Stockton, CA, as the most miserable city in the U.S.

Thanks to Abby Kinchy for the link.

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

People who design men’s rooms seem to have the working assumption that men are sexist pigs.  Those urinals that seem to mimic sex (in Lisa’s pimp-my-urinal post here) illustrate the sexist part – ideas that are important mostly outside the men’s room.  But inside the men’s room, it’s the pig half of the phrase that’s important.  Men can be slobs, especially at the urinal.

At airports, for example, jet lagged travelers, men at least, tended to be, how shall we put it, careless? aimless?

What to do?

Americans tend to frame problems in moralistic terms. If something is wrong, drug use for example, punish the wrongdoers.  And if that doesn’t work, make the penalties even harsher.  Applied to the problem of spillage and splash in the men’s room, we might expect to see signs warning: “No Spillage or Spraying.  Penalty up to $500 fine.”

The Dutch have a more practical approach, more focused on solving a problem than on punishing evil.  The Dutch also have a reputation for cleanliness.  Years ago, when the men’s rooms at the Amsterdam airport were looking and smelling like, well, like men’s rooms, Schilpol Schiphol, the company that runs the Amsterdam airport, looked into the problem. And the problem was  that most men weren’t looking.  They simply didn’t watch where they were going.  So Schiphol came up with a simple and non-punitive solution: a fly to draw the user’s attention.

The idea was that men would aim for the fly – the stream would go from one fly to another (I’m sure this pun doesn’t work in Dutch) – and the men’s room would stay cleaner.

It worked.  A study by Schiphol’s social science team found that fly urinals had an 80% reduction in spillage.  Some years after that, JFK hired Schiphol to run the International Arrivals Building there.  So now at JFK too, the urinals have the target flies.  At the Newark airport, I saw urinals with a cartoon-like bee (a realistic bee might have might have triggered a counterproductive startle and flinch).

More recently, urinal targets have gotten even more playful.  For the Europeans, there’s soccer.

Good, clean fun.

Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Earlier this week I posted about the Badminton World Federation’s attempts to change the dress code to require women to wear skirts or dresses as an effort to give a more “attractive appearance.” The changes emphasized certain standards of femininity over concerns about how the clothing changes might impact players’ performance. Rodeo queen competitions illustrate this tendency to value feminine appearance over the skill or physical prowess the women are ostensibly there to perform.  A rodeo queen competition is sort of an amalgam of a beauty pageant and rodeo or riding competition; the winners serve as ambassadors, promoting rodeo, riding in parades, and so on. Though the events usually have many of the trappings of a standard beauty pageant — appearance and personality are both judged — the riding elements (which may include barrel racing, reining demonstrations, etc.) provide a sense that this isn’t just about meeting standards of femininity, but also athletic ability.

But a video Lisa sent me about a recent rodeo queen competition in Utah New Mexico makes it clear where the emphasis lies. If you don’t care greatly about horse-related things, you may not know that there has been an outbreak of equine herpes in the western U.S., which is extremely contagious, may be fatal, and spreads through nose-to-nose contact. As a result, many horse-related competitions have been canceled or postponed. But the Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest in Farmington, Utah, found a way to continue with the competition — they had the contestants ride stick horses around the arena, something I can’t imagine being done with, say, roping competitions and other male-dominated rodeo events that could be altered to create a horseless version:

Some images from the story at KSL:

I can’t help but feel this undermines efforts to separate rodeo queen competitions from beauty contests. In fact, the Miss Rodeo USA site says that appearance and personality make up 80% of the competition, and riding skills only 20% — and personality and appearance count when judging the riding, too. And while having women ride children’s toys around an arena may still test the women’s knowledge of the patterns, and requires them to show physical stamina, it also seems infantilizing and silly. It makes it clear that rodeo queen competitions have little to do with horse riding skills, which are entirely dispensable in a pinch.

UPDATE: Well, I stand corrected. Reader Zula did find a video of another competition (cutting) in which the men used stick horses due to a 2001 equine herpes outbreak, with a lot more falling in the dirt than in the clip above:

UPDATE 2: Reader Megan says,

I have zero experience with rodeo, but I do ride hunters and foxhunters on the East coast. I know that there are a lot of technical points that could easily be demonstrated while on a stick horse. Obviously, completing certain movements is a lot easy when you have direct control over your legs rather than asking a 1000 pound animal to step to the side with a careful nudge. Despite the “challenge” being removed, these contestants can still demonstrate a large amount of knowledge and understanding on stick horses. I watch lots of kids playing “horse” when they can’t be riding: cantering around, changing leads, and jumping jumps. Those kids take turns and critique each other’s forms, working on learning cadence, balance, timing, and adjustability.When I was a kid, I did the same thing.

So, I absolutely must state that I understand the idea behind the substitution and it didn’t entirely degrade the competition.

UPDATE 3: Alexandra Hinton wrote a humorous reply over at Fem Pop that’s worth a look.