Archive: 2011

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

According to The Guttmacher institute, 90% of all abortions occur in the first trimester. According to WebMD, a 12-week old fetus is 2.5 inches long and the typical woman will have gained three to five pounds. Most of these women’s pregnancies are essentially undetectable to an observer.

Most news stories about abortion, however, illustrate their article with an image of a woman with an unambiguously pregnant belly.  The disconnect between the reality (90% of abortions occur in the 1st trimester) and the imagery (of women who are in their 3rd) implies that many abortions are occurring much later than they are.

A reader, Richard, brought our attention to a tumblr blog highlighting this mis-illustration. Preggobelly collects screenshots of abortion stories illustrated by heavily pregnant bellies. Here is a sample:

For another fascinating post on imagery and abortion, see our post on the initiation of fetus imagery.

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.

Captain Crab sent us an article by David Johnston in the Willamette Week that looks at changes in income inequality in the U.S. since 1950.Based on an analysis of research by Saez and Piketty (2007, with updated 2008 data available at Saez’s website–the first entry under “Income and Wealth Inequality”), Johnston calculated changes in income for various income percentiles in the U.S. Between 1950 and 1980, the bottom 90% of income earners saw their incomes increase by 75% (a gain of $13,222), a rate higher than or comparable to the highest income groups. However, between 1980 and 2008, incomes of the bottom 90% has largely stagnated, while the incomes of the super rich have soared (all data in constant 2008 dollars, adjusted for inflation):

As a result the difference between the median wage and the mean wage has widened (data from the Social Security Medicare Database):

Johnston also includes data on changes in corporate income tax rates, based on IRS data. The actual tax rate — how much corporations pay after various loopholes and tax breaks — fell between 2000 and 2008:

On a similar topic, Deeb K. sent in a link to images at Think Progress showing the actual tax rate of the 400 richest Americans between 1995 and 2007, based on IRS data. During that period, the effective tax rate of this group fell by 13 percentage points:

Their incomes, on the other hand, jumped significantly:

Also see my recent post on various illustrations of inequality in the U.S.

Said Mary Wollstonecraft:

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

Inspired, perhaps, by Wollstonecraft’s words, Katie Makkai fights back against the word “pretty.”  After a childhood subject to its tyranny, she imagines telling her own daughter to reject its pull, beginning with “The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be!”  Thanks to Jake Lundwall for the tip.

(Transcript after the jump.)

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Sangyoub Park, who teaches sociology at Washburn University, sent us an interesting article posted by NPR on various aspects of unemployment. The overall official unemployment rate of 8.8 percent (as of March 2011) hides a lot of variation. For instance, the unemployment rate during this recession has been consistently worse for men than for women:

Nearly half of people have been out of work for at least 6 months:

The unemployment rate for those with a college education is under 5%, while for those who didn’t graduate high school, it’s nearly 10 percentage points higher:

Check out the NPR story for more discussion and a few more graphs.

The NPR article doesn’t include data on race, but Sangyoub found some racial data at the BLS website. As of March 2011, the unemployment rate for Whites was 7.9%, while for Blacks it was 15.5%.

Racialicious and Hermes’ Journeys featured a clip of stand-up comedian Gary Owens comparing black and white churches, joking about how long and loud black services are compared to white services.  Two things are happening in the clip.  First, Owens is commenting on two different styles of worship.  This is really interesting sociologically because it shows that how one worships is a cultural phenomenon that varies.  We’ve seen this powerfully illustrated by children recently in the viral videos Baby Preacher and Baby Worshipper.

Second, though, Owens is racializing these different forms of worship.  In consultation with Gwen, she reminded me that what he’s really talking about is “the difference between more mainline churches vs. the charismatic evangelical ones.”  At the latter churches yelling out and hours-long services are common, no matter the racial makeup of the congregation.

So, the clip is a good example of both a sociological principle (socialization) and a sociological mistake (racialization):

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.

Last week we received ten requests* to discuss the furor over a J. Crew ad featuring a 5-year-old boy in pink toenails, with his mom, Jenna Lyons, the President and Creative Director of J. Crew.

Fox News, Media Research Network Center (MRNC), and One Million Moms criticized the ad for supporting a liberal agenda aimed at mainstreaming gender-bending behavior and causing this particular child to be confused about his gender or sexual orientation.  Their criticism was picked up by mainstream news outlets, including ABCNews, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the Los Angeles Times, who mostly just posed the question as to whether they were correct, while balancing opposing views in support of the idea that painting a son’s toenails pink was consequence-less.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of this “furor” (as I called it).  On the one hand, the criticism of the ad is a cautionary tale to all companies and a lesson to us all.  Here at SocImages, we frequently criticize companies that portray and assert rigid gender roles, especially for boys.  But look what happens when a company dares to do something different?  Outrage!  Accusations! Perhaps we’re short-sighted to imagine that companies can just tell whatever cultural story they want to tell.

On the other hand, perhaps this isn’t a story about advertising, perhaps it’s a story about media more generally.  It’s true that there were objections to the ad.  But I didn’t find many of them; just a few high-profile examples.  Perhaps what really happened was what is sometimes colloquially referred to as a “slow news day.”  Only the choir would have been preached to if the criticisms weren’t picked up and highlighted by many more media outlets.  And those outlets, as I did above, beg audiences to pay attention to the “furor.”  A furor that might have been largely of their own making.  Say “hello” to ratings.

These are my thoughts. Yours?

*  Many thanks to Katrin, Zoe S., Jeff H., Prof. Mary Reiter, Sara P., Andrew Slater, p.j., Brian K., Ben Y., and Dmitriy T.M. for the submissions!

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.

Yvette, Kari B., and Yet Another Girl all sent in links to articles about Dove Ultimate Go Sleeveless deodorant. The campaign for the deodorant focuses on the fact that it supposedly makes your armpits look better. Here’s one commercial (via The Consumerist; it’s not the best illustration of how much Dove is pushing the attractiveness angle, but it’s the only commercial from this ad campaign I could find):

According to research cited on Dove’s website, 93% of women think their underarms are unattractive and thus may refuse to wear sleeveless clothing.

Libby Copeland at Slate sums up what’s going on here:

Dove’s empowerment-via-shame marketing approach for Go Sleeveless has its roots in advertising techniques that gained popularity in the 1920s: a) pinpoint a problem, perhaps one consumers didn’t even know they had; b) exacerbate anxiety around the problem; c) sell the cure.

Ladies, it’s not enough to shave and deodorize your underarms. They need even more prettification than they’ve been getting. How this deodorant does that, I don’t know. But it does. You’re welcome.

Stephen Colbert discussed Dove and advertising based on insecurities recently:

In the center of this picture is my Great Grandmother, Adalene. I was quite young when she died, but I do remember her, frail and white-haired, threatening to spank me. I didn’t believe her, and was duly surprised at what came next.

This picture pleases me.  It reminds me that women always had heart and spunk.  That we’re all young once.  That we’re not so “advanced” today; women were always awesome.

This is why the title of Buzzfeed‘s framing of a photographs of women basketball teams from the 1900s is so disappointing:

Liz Babiarz, who sent in the link, asks what’s so funny.  I have to agree.  They aren’t “strangely funny”; they’re awesomely awesome!

Many more at 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.