Archive: Mar 2013

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has released several research reports detailing gender inequalities in Hollywood, both in front of and behind the camera.

To get a sense of how men and women are portrayed on the large and small screen, researchers analyzed 11,927 speaking parts from three sources: 129 top-grossing family films (rated PG-13 or lower) released from 2006 to 2011, 275 prime-time programs from 2012 (from 10 broadcast and cable channels), and 36 kids’ programs that aired on PBS, Nickelodeon, or Disney in 2011. The analysis indicated that women are underrepresented as characters in speaking roles, as well as narrators:

However, gender differences in representation aren’t just about who is on the screen; it matters how they’re depicted, too. Female characters in the sample were more likely to be sexualized, including factors such as sexy clothing, exposed skin, and having their attractiveness specifically referenced by another character:

Men and women were also depicted differently in the workplace. In the sample, few female characters were presented in high-level positions within their occupations:

What about behind the scenes? Researchers associated with the institute looked at the gender breakdown of those employed in behind-the-scenes jobs (writers, directors, producers, etc.) in Hollywood as well. Unsurprisingly, the results indicate that women remain significantly underrepresented in these positions.

According to their analysis of the 250 highest-grossing films in the U.S. in 2012, women held just 18% of these positions. In fact, women’s representation in these behind-the-scenes roles has been basically stagnant for over a decade:

There’s significant variation behind the scenes as well. Women made up a quarter of producers and one in five editors, but only 9% of directors and 2% of cinematographers:

Women hold a larger proportion of behind-the-scenes roles in broadcast television than in the film industry. Looking at a randomly-selected episode of every drama, comedy, or reality show that aired during prime time in the 2011-2012 season, 26% of these roles went to women:

Again we see wide variation in the different behind-the-scenes jobs. Women are much more likely to be producers than directors in the sampled episodes, and only 4% of directors of photography were women. And while the percent of female creators and writers for prime time TV shows jumped in 2011-2012, less than a third of either position was held by women:

For more on representations in Hollywood, see our earlier posts on race and gender in films and Anita Sarkeesian applying the Bechdel test to the 2012 Oscar Best Picture nominees.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Yesterday two juvenile men were convicted of rape, one was convicted of distributing a nude photo of a minor (NPR). The response by a segment of society reflects rape culture: “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture” (source).  Below are a series of concrete examples. Trigger warning for rape apologists and victim blaming.

CNN coverage of the verdict spends six minutes on how sad the conviction is for the rapists:

It was incredibly emotional… to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as, as they believed their life fell apart.

MsCongeniality:

A selection of tweets collected by Public Shaming:

A selection of tweets collected by Mommyish:

A selection of tweets collected by Persephone Magazine:

Tweets collected by The Inquisitr:

Ms. Foundation for Women:

Great coverage from around the web:

• Elizabeth Plank at PolicyMic: Why Does CNN Think Watching Rapists Get Convicted is “Difficult to Watch”
• Mia McKenzie at Black Girl Dangerous: On Rape, Cages, and the Steubenville Verdict
• Laurie Penny at the New Statesman: This is Rape Culture’s Abu Ghraib Moment
• Anisha Ahuja at Feminspire: Why Does America Pretend It Doesn’t Hate Women?
• Doug Barry at Jezebel: The Egregious, Awful and Downright Wrong Reactions to the Steubenville Rape Trial Verdict
• Ann Theriault at The Bell Jar: I Am Not Your Wife, Sister, or Daughter. I Am a Person.
• Alyx Andra at Radical Notions: “They didn’t get caught because when they raped her there was an audience; they raped her because there was an audience.”
• Amanda Marcotte at Slate: Why Did Two Girls Threaten the Steubenville Victim?
• Thomas Millar at YesMeansYes: Humiliation was the Point of the Exercise

Finally, a satire from The Onion, from two years ago: College Basketball Star Heroically Overcomes Tragic Rape He Committed

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 Montclair SocioBlog.

Jeb Bush told CPAC that the Republican party had an image problem.

Way too many people believe that Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker.

People have good reason to believe those things.  But the “way too many” suggests that the GOP’s problem is not image or brand, it’s demography.  For five years or longer, the Republican faithful have been complaining that “their” country was being taken away from them, and they were going to take it back (e.g., see my “Repo Men” post).

They were right.  Their country, a country dominated by older white men, is fading in the demographic tide.  The groups whose numbers in the electorate are on the rise don’t look like them.  Andrew Gelman (here) recently published these graphs as an update to his 2009 Red State, Blue State.  They reveal the tendency for different groups to vote more Democratic (blue) and Republican (red):

(The exit poll the data are based on sampled only in the 30 most competitive state. Texas and Georgia are large, and they have significant non-White populations. But demographic changes there are unlikely to have much effect on which party gets their electoral votes.)

Unfortunately for the GOP, the non-White proportion of the electorate will continue to grow. The female proportion may also increase, especially as education levels of women rise (more educated people are more likely to vote than are the less educated).

The key factor is party loyalty.  And, at least in presidential elections, people do remain loyal. I think I once read, “If you can get them for two consecutive elections, you’ve got them for life.”  Or words to that effect.  If that’s true, the age patterns of the last two elections should be what the Republicans are worrying about.

Trying to make themselves more attractive to younger people will not be easy.  Oldsmobile tried it not so long ago (a post on that campaign is here).  “This is not your father’s GOP” might have similar lack of success.  But insisting that this is still your father’s GOP (or more accurately, some white dude’s father’s GOP) seems like a formula for failure.

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 Racialicious.The Harlem Shake is a syncopated dance form that first appeared on the New York hip-hop scene in the early 1980s. In 2012 music producer Baueer created an electronic dance tune, unfortunately calling it The Harlem Shake. Baueer’s song inspired an Internet meme in which people rhythmlessly shake their upper bodies and grind their hips in a tasteless perversion of the original dance.

This fake Harlem Shake meme has become so ubiquitous that it has been “performed” by the English National Ballet, and gone further globally with a video from the Norwegian army, and in Tunisia and Egypt, where the song and imitation dance has become a protest anthem.

The irony of an African-American cultural relic being white-washed to the point where other people of color perform its bastardized version is not lost, and this takes on a whole new level as teams with majority African-American members such as the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets add to the fake Shake canon.

A major problematic of this meme is that it takes an already marginalized group in America, one whose history and culture has often been appropriated and co-opted in fetishistic ways by the white majority, and makes a mockery of not just them, but an entire dance tradition.  This is not lost on residents of Harlem, many of whom recognize cultural appropriation and malrepresentation when they see it:

In spite of a number of calls online from African-American writers, artists, scholars and supporters like myself to bring attention to the real Harlem Shake, every day there is instead a new group adding to the misappropriated dance. When you Google “The Harlem Shake” you must scroll through pages before you reach any posts about the actual hip-hop tradition.

This literal erasure of black culture and its replacement with an absurdist movement and meme needs to be considered in light of African-American oppression and institutionalized racism in the United States. Supplanting the sinuous artistry of the Harlem Shake with frenetic styleless arm flailing and hip thrusting is yet another brick in a grand wall of symbolic and structural violence that further relegates an entire culture to the margins, both on and offline.

As the Harlem residents said in response to the meme: “Stop that shit.”

P.S. Here’s how to actually do the Harlem Shake. 

Sezin Koehler is a half-American half-Sri Lankan informal ethnographer and novelist living in Lighthouse Point, Florida.

Originally posted in 2009. Re-posted in honor of Women’s History Month.

Larry Harnisch, of the Los Angeles Times blog The Daily Mirror, sent in this image, published in The Mirror in 1959, that illustrated how women’s bodies were judged in the Miss Universe contest:

Text:

ALL FIGURED OUT–This chart is used by judges as [a] guide in picking Miss Universe. First six show figure flaws, seventh is perfectly proportioned. (1) Shoulders too square. (2) Shoulders too sloping. (3) Hips too wide. (4) Shoulder bones too pronounced. (5) Shoulders and back hunched. (6) Legs irregular, with spaces at calves, knees, thighs. (7) The form divine, needs only a beautiful face.

(I had no idea that I have irregular legs until I saw figure 6. My self esteem is taking quite the hit. I can’t tell if there’s anything wrong with my shoulders, though–I’ll have to ask someone else for an opinion.)

Two points:

First, some people like to suggest that men are programmed by evolution to find a particular body shape attractive.  Clearly, if judging women’s bodies requires this much instruction, either (1) nature has left us incompetent or (2) cultural norms defining beauty overwhelm any biological predisposition to be attracted to specific body types.

Second, the chart reveals the level of scrutiny women faced in 1959 (and I’d argue it’s not so different today).   It made me think of my years in 4-H. I was a farm kid and I showed steers for several years and also took part in livestock and meat judging competitions. I was good at it, just so you know. Anyway, what the beauty pageant image brought to mind was the handouts we’d look at to learn how to judge livestock. Here are some examples, from Kansas State University’s 4-H judging guide (pdf here):

This poor pig has a low-set tail–how dreadful:

It’s almost as if, like superior livestock, beautiful women are a desired cultural product in which we should all invest and be invested. You might compare these to some of the images in our post about sexualizing food that come from Carol Adams’s website.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Chilling video taken at a high school party in Steubenville, Ohio in which attendees laugh and joke about an unconscious 16-year-old allegedly raped and sodomized by members of the football team, propelled the case into the national spotlight earlier this winter.

The deeply disturbing video focuses on Steubenville High School alum Michael Nodianos as he holds court with a grim comedy show, cracking up to quips such as, “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!” and “They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team!” Those with the stomach to endure the entire 12-minute video hear the victim repeatedly referred to as “dead,” offering ugly details including, “They peed on her! That’s how you know she’s dead because someone pissed on her.” The death motif is so amusing to those involved that it leads to a litany of references to her being “deader than” everyone from Caylee Anthony to Trayvon Martin.

Trigger warning:

The video combined with other digital remains of the attack mined from Twitter and Instagram stirred public outrage at the accused perpetrators, at the bystanders who failed to intervene, and at adults — coaches, police, prosecutor, and parents — perceived as having been complicit in covering up the assault, preferring to sweep the violence under the rug to protect the football team and the young men on it. Protests sprouted around the courthouse and are expected to resume on Wednesday as the trial begins.

This video and other digital souvenirs of violence, such as the photos taken and circulated of Savannah Deitrich while she was sexually assaulted, may or may not have significant legal consequences. Yet their cultural legacy — the opportunity they have to undermine our most resilient rape myths — has the potential to be even weightier.

Read the rest of this article at WBUR’s Cognoscenti.

Last week many media outlets were busy celebrating the Dow Jones record high, suggesting that it was indicative of the United States’ recovery from the greatest economic downturn since The Great Depression.  The graph below comes from a New York Times story with the headline “As Fears Recede, Dow Industrial Hits a Milestone.”

However, another story buried in the Business section of the New York Times, titled “Recovery in U.S. Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs,” contains a graph illustrating how the supposed economic recovery is bitter-sweet at best:

The second graph uses data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to highlight the fact that corporate profits and stock prices are at record highs, but the share of profits workers have taken home has steadily dropped since the early 1980s.  Some of the steepest declines have come during the last few years, or during the supposed “recovery.”

These two graphs illustrate that while ”The Market” is probably considered the go-to indicator of economic well-being, stock indexes are not always indicative of the economic reality experienced by non-investors.  If businesses and corporations were increasing their stock value by investing to expand productivity, thereby creating good-paying jobs and opportunities for workers, rising markets would be a sign good of economic times for all.  But this data suggests that is not what is happening; instead, as the twin charts show, rising corporate profits are at least partly the result of wage suppression.

Jason Eastman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Coastal Carolina University who researches how culture and identity influence social inequalities.

In case you’ve ever wondered, “Is there anything we won’t pointlessly gender?”, Katrin sent in evidence that there really, really isn’t:

Via Marginal Christianity.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.