Ed at Gin and Tacos offered up the figure below comparing the minimum wage (adjusted to inflation) and the poverty line for a family (he doesn’t specify how many children).  It reveals that, as Ed puts it: “not once in its 80-year history has the minimum wage, if earned 40 hours weekly, hit the Federal poverty line for a family.”  That is, a dedicated full time worker earning minimum wage does not earn, and has never earned, enough to keep a family out of poverty.

So, if you are a single parent, you’re screwed.  (And, frankly, if you aren’t, you’re still screwed because child care will likely wipe out, if not exceed one person’s entire income.  Subsidized day care only serves a fraction of the children that are qualified.)

Ed notes that, given this, the rational choice for a parent is to go on welfare.  Welfare doesn’t get you above the poverty line either, and you’re still likely to be miserable, but at least you’ll be miserable while parenting your children instead of miserable while flipping burgers.

Some argue that, if people choose to go on welfare instead of work, then welfare must be too generous.  Lower welfare payments and people will choose to work.  Ed, however, suggests that the real problem revealed by this figure is the insufficiency of the minimum wage.  Raise the minimum wage and people will choose to work.  Only one of these solutions actually mitigates human suffering.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Liz C. sent us a link to a segment of The Daily Show featuring Kristen Schaal and John Stewart (aired July 1st).  They discuss Sarkozy’s ban on burkas and, in doing so, question whether the burka is truly oppressive and whether American fashion is, in contrast, oh-so-liberating.

We covered Heelarious here.

See also this confessionechoing Stewart and Schaal’s conversation.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Usually when we get submissions about ejaculation imagery we add them to our existing post on the topic. But I felt this was worth its own post. The Huffington Post has a link to this lovely Dutch commercial:

Often when we see ejaculation imagery, it’s at least somewhat subtle, or anyway not so blatant–the fluid isn’t white, or it comes out of a bottle instead of appearing to so clearly be associated with, or near, an actual penis.

In another example of ejaculation imagery, Dangger and Dmitriy both sent in a supposed German Sprite ad making the rounds…but for the record, AdFreak says it’s fake. [I also did quite a bit of googling about the Dutch ad, just to be safe, but didn’t find anything indicating it’s not real.]

UPDATE: Reader Jody B. says, “The Dutch commercial is real; I lived in Amsterdam from almost 4 years and saw it on daytime television.” Thanks for letting us know!

You do if your eyelashes are “inadequate.”

And what woman feels eyelash-adequate after decades of mascara commercials?

Well, now there’s a medical solution to hypotrichosis: Latisse.

Do you love the mascara-commercial-genre of music?

What is amazing to me is how perfectly this commercial for prescription medication for inadequate eyelashes mimics mascara commercials. Consider this random example from youtube:

The line between health care and capitalist profiting off of instilled human insecurities: officially blurred.

Via Gin and Tacos.

UPDATE!  In the comments thread, Nadine told this story:

Just got back from escorting my 86 yr old father to see a dermatologist.  Every single female staffer was wearing a button that read “ask me about my lashes.”  Evidently they’re giving freebies to staff to promote Latisse.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

I read Naomi’s Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth when it was first published in 1991. As an undergrad growing into my own version of a third-wave feminist identity in beauty-centric southern California, her words rang so true. If knowledge is power, then I and other feminists were certain that soon the tide would turn — girls and women would stop buying into this myth, stop buying magazines that promoted body-loathing, and we would rebel against unrealistic and unhealthy social norms.

Sadly, it’s 18 years later, and her message still resonates with undergrad women (and men) today. As a professor, I had the privilege of meeting Naomi when she came to speak at my campus, California Lutheran University, to present “The Beauty Myth.” As you watch this clip of her new DVD, I encourage you to ask yourself (1) How many girls and women do I know who believe in this myth? (2) Which corporations are profiting from their misery?, and (3) What am I doing to reject the myth and help others reject it?

Personally, I think make-up/hair products/push-up bras are okay as long as you don’t feel like you cannot leave the house without them — costumes can be fun as long as you love and accept yourself when you are ‘un-costumed.’  Eating healthy and moderate exercise are good goals, as long as your self-image and self-worth are not defined by your weight/size. For this post, I won’t weigh in on cosmetic surgery…that’s a whole post unto itself. But, as the mom of a 5-year-old daughter, I make sure to never criticize my appearance in front of her (though, I’m still working on not being critical in my own head), and I aim to de-emphasize physical beauty as a value in my interactions with her. Here’s wishing that Wolf’s The Beauty Myth will strike future generations of college students as truly mythical – outdated, outlandish, and out of touch with their generation…

Adina’s book, Damaged Goods?  Women Living with Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases came out in 2008.  You can see an earlier post of hers, about sexually transmitted disease and stigma, here.

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Adina Nack is an associate professor of Sociology at California Lutheran University specializing in medical sociology with a focus on gender inequality and sexual health.  You can visit Adina online here.  We are pleased to feature a post she wrote for us reflecting on a talk by Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth.

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

Cole S.H. sent in “…a set of screenshots of Google’s autocomplete feature, which is based on number of searches of a given phrase,” with comments in red written in by the creator (originally found on reddit, link to original here):

It provides some interesting insights into popular conceptions of men, women, and relationships.

Some of the search terms related to men/husbands/boyfriends: attracted to breasts, jerks, afraid of commitment, abusive, mean, selfish, grumpy. Search terms related to women/wives/girlfriends: emotional, difficult, complicated, attracted to bad boys, crazy, always mad, better than men.

Apparently both men and women are considered mean and stupid, so there is some equality. I do think it’s interesting that one of the popular search terms about women is why they are “better than men”; it’s weird to me that there’s a whole genre of jokes about women being smarter/better than men, and that I know people who tell them or find them funny who would be offended at a similar joke about men being smarter than women.

Reader SB has some similar images at The Sexual Buzz.

Also check out our post on Amazon’s gendered gift-giving suggestions.

NOTE: There’s been some confusion about what I meant about this giving “insights” about gender conceptions–I’m not saying most people think negative things about the other sex, or that this is scientific data. I just think it’s interesting that when people are searching for information about perceived negative aspects of men or women, they frame it in different ways–men are “grumpy” or “abusive,” while women are “always mad,” and men are “selfish” while women are “crazy.” Those fit in pretty well with who we associate with various emotions or behaviors. That’s all I was getting at.

Elizabeth H. sent in the trailer for the movie Precious (based on the novel Push), which should be released later this year:

As Elizabeth says,

It seems to reinforce…negative associations [of] underclass or working class African-Americans: poor education, single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, abuse, child obesity, etc.

The trailer brings up some interesting issues about skin color as well. Precious’s desire for a light-skinned boyfriend highlights the emphasis placed on skin color as a measure of attractiveness: a light-skinned boyfriend would indicate her own success in the world, just as fame and wealth would. Elizabeth points out that all the “good” adult characters are light-skinned (and thin) as well.

Also see our posts on kids’ perceptions of skin color and attractiveness, an ad for skin lightener, a club letting light-skinned girls in for free, Malaysian anti-racism parody of skin lightening cream ad, and an ad that shows darker skin as more exciting.

Penny R. sent in this picture from c1943.  In it, two women model newly designed safety gear for working women.  The woman on the right is wearing a plastic bra designed to protect her breasts from “occupational accidents.”  Don’t worry fellas, the “girls” will be safe!

From commenter, Sanguinity, who seems to know what s/he is talking about:

I couldn’t say, not without knowing what the job in question was, what the job’s hazards, why the employer went for protective equipment instead of changing the job, nor when (or if!) breast protectors were required (as opposed to being requested by the employees).

(And frankly, those answers would only help me judge whether were useful from today’s perspective. The methods of occupational safety have changed hugely since the 1940s; quite a lot of what was common safety practice in the ’40s would be unacceptable today. Even if breast protectors for a given job wouldn’t pass muster today, they might very well have been useful then, within the context of acceptable safety practices of the day.)

No, what’s unusual about this photo to me, as a safety professional, is that they were willing to consider issuing sex-specific safety equipment at all. Nowadays, creating and maintaining sex-specific safety regs looks very much like sexual discrimination, and can easily cross the line into outright discrimination if you’re not thinking about it very carefully. (Not to mention: who’s going to check under these women’s coveralls to make sure they’re wearing their required protective equipment, assuming breast protectors are required?) Nah, even if initial analysis indicated that breast protectors would be reasonable/useful for a given job, any contemporary safety pro worth his or her salt is gonna work pretty hard to find another way to do things.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.