Archive: Nov 2013

New Tumblr Page!

Our Tumblr is now one month old!   We think we’re getting the hang of it, including the daily SocImages posts, highlighting the best stuff from our archives, and adding compelling quotes and links.  Please feel free to join us there!  And thanks to our intern, Javier Quiroz, for doing the bulk of the work!

Five thousand posts!

We reached quite the milestone this month.  This is our 5,016th!  Thanks to Gwen Sharp, our contributors, and our many, many guest bloggers.

New Pinterest:

I put together a new Pinterest board featuring commercials and ads that co-opt the idea of women’s liberation for marketing purposes.   Peruse examples at Marketing Feminism. Here’s a sample:

Your Favorite Posts this Month:

• Men and Women! They Talk Like People! (13,000+ likes)
• U.S. Corporations are Hoarding Wealth at Highest Rate Since 1971 (1,500+ likes)
• When Jews Dominated Professional Basketball (700+ likes)
• Doing Gender with Wallets and Purses (500+ likes)
• The Re-Victimization of Homosexual Targets of the Nazi Regime (400+ likes)
• Hannukah and Social Privilege (almost 200 comments)

Plus, the most popular post on Tumblr this month:

• Black and White Twins and the Social Construction of Race (50+ notes)

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and Pinterest.  I’m on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisawade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, and @jaylivingston.

Finally…

Shout out to my dance team, choreographers Steve and Chanzie, photographer Kyle Ellison, and director Pascal de Maria.  We danced the lindy hop to Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On all up and down that bowling alley!  Can’t wait to see the video!

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.

• Demystifying Commodities
• Ritualized Consumption Dances
• The Economy of Christmas (pictured)
• EBay Transactions on Black Friday 2009
• Discourse and “Doorbuster” Sales

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.

This lady is apparently going as Sexy Leaf Pile.  What would you go as?

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.

• The Happiest Day of the Year!
• Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner Up in 2011

Theorizing Thanksgiving:

• Emile Durkheim on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (pictured)

Some Fun History:

• Thanksgiving: The First TV Dinner
• For a “Wholesome” Thanksgiving, Choose Seagrams
• Suffragettes Delay Thanksgiving Dinner

Cigarette Advertising, on this Holiday:

• The Traditionalization of Tobacco
• Smoke Camels, for your Health, on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, Race, and Gender:

• Holding Women Responsible for Holidays
• Thanksgiving Poca-Hotness

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.

Privilege comes in many forms: class privilege, white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege and so on.  Being privileged means that you “fit” in the society in which you live and reap rewards by virtue of just being.

Recognizing privilege isn’t just a matter of being thoughtful or empathetic, it usually involves sacrificing something.  Sometimes it’s something big (like the belief that your success is due entirely to your talents and hard work) and sometimes it’s something small.

The person who sent this confession to PostSecret is admitting to feeling frustrated by giving up one of those small benefits that come with privilege:

Originally posted in 2009.

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 study has discovered that 48% of the nation’s 50 million public school students are in poverty, as measured by whether they qualify for free or reduced-priced lunches.  In 17 states, the majority of schoolchildren are poor.  Poverty rates are led by Mississippi, where 71% of children are in poverty.

These data represent a startling rise since 2000:

While the statistics are the worst for states in the South and the West, the percent increase in poor children was the highest in the Midwest (up 40% since 2001, compared to 33% in the South, 31% in the West, and 21% in the Northeast).  All, of course, extraordinary increases.

h/t @Miel_Machetes.  Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.

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.

Kids growing up in dense, urban environments often turn to basketball as their sport of choice.  This is partly because it fits, in a physical sense.  All things being equal, a basketball court takes up a lot less room than a football or soccer field.  For the economically disadvantaged, it’s also relatively cheap to play.  If you have a court available, you only need a pair of shoes and a ball.  For this reason, whatever population finds itself in this type of environment tends to take up basketball.

That’s why the sport was dominated by Jews in the first half of the 1900s.  Just like many African-Americans today, at that time many immigrant Jewish families found themselves isolated in inner cities.  Basketball seemed like a way out.  “It was absolutely a way out of the ghetto,” explained retired ball player Dave Dabrow.  Basketball scholarships were one of the few ways low income urban Jews could afford college.

Jewish basketball team (1921-22):

Today we refer to stereotypes about Black men to explain why they dominate basketball, but this is an after-the-fact justification.  At the time, very different characteristics — stereotypes associated with Jews — were used to explain why they dominated professional teams. Paul Gallico, sports editor of the NY Daily News in the 1930s, explained that “the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness.”  All stereotypes about Jews.  Moreover, he argued, Jews were rather short and so had “God-given better balance and speed.”  Yep.  There was a time when we thought being short was an advantage in the sport of basketball.

Never underestimate the power of institutions and how much things can change.

New York Knicks (1946-1947):

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.

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.

We’ve highlighted the ways in which society portrays men as people and women as women many times over.  So many times, in fact, that we started a Pinterest collection.  There are two scenarios in which men are the default person: (1) masculine spaces, like the workplace and politics, and (2) neutral spaces that aren’t associated with men or women, like museums and the internet.

When something is distinctly feminized, however, things flip.  @jessimckenzi and @freedenoeur forwarded us a pointed example: a brand of lotion called “everyone.”  Everyone lotion comes in two types: everyone lotion “for everyone and every body” and everyone lotion for men:

This practice reminds us who belongs where by making one gender or the other the neutral participant and then adding a modifier in order to selectively include the other sex. Another example of this phenomenon is the masculinizing of feminine products in order to sell them to men and the feminizing of masculine products to sell them to women. Together these practices affirm and naturalize gender-based segregation in our social spaces and activities.

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.