I’ve suggested that the fact that men do not feel compelled to wear make-up is a “triumph of gender ideology over capitalism” (see here).  Companies that sell make-up, after all, have halved their profits by giving up on selling to men.  We should expect, then, a tug-of-war between the profit motive and a gender ideology that suggests that men and women are opposite.   On the one hand, if men and women are opposites, then the requirement that women primp and preen (with the help of dozens of products) would imply that men do not.  On the other hand, if they accept this gender binary, companies lose half their customers.

Accordingly, Gwen and I were shocked to see an ad at Jezebel, sent in by Frank D., overtly marketing scrotum shaving.

We have seen this a bit with products aimed at men and their hair already (see here, here, and here), but I’m still surprised to see this.  I can’t imagine anything harder to shave on anyone’s body, male or female.

So how are they trying to convince men to do it?

They are using the same tactics that they use against women.  They are either (1) shaming men into thinking that they are disgusting and no woman (or man) will have them unless they alter their body (see here, here, and here) or (2) naturalizing shaving such that it is just a fun thing that all men inevitably participate in (see here, here, here, and here).

Check out the second paragraph in this screen shot of the Norelco-Phillips website:

Text:

Did you know that women like men who shave down there? Having silky smooth balls is a lot nicer than finding a huge bush or choking on your pubes!   Today’s trend is to have it clean or at least trimmed.  This helps both aesthetically and hygienic wise as well.

They are also using a gendered logic.  We’ve seen this with other examples of companies trying to sell self-maintenance to men.  They hyper-masculinizing the product.  For examples, see our posts on hair product for men (with “stand tough” hair gel), make-up for men ( with “blo-job bronzing powder”).  We see this with other feminized products and activities too (for example, ice skating and chocolate).  In this case, they don’t say, “If you don’t shave your balls, you won’t be pretty.”  They say, “When there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller.”

Yeah, no.  I’m not paraphrasing:

One thing we might discuss is whether this this represents a “female gaze” that matches the “male gaze” that requires women to always be a pleasurable object for others to view… or that, alternatively, this is just the male gaze being applied to men.  Some of the marketing for men’s body shaving appears to be clearly marketed towards gay men (see this website, especially here).

Another interesting thing to consider is the extent to which the social invisibility of the pubic area facilitates marketer manipulation.  If you’re straight, unless you’re willing to ask a partner, you have to trust the advertisers to tell you what “today’s trend” is.  What a great deal for the companies.

Oh, and, I’m wondering which you think is going to win this tug-of-war: the companies with their profit motive or gender ideology and a resistance to the feminization of men?

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.

In response to Gwen’s post on butts, I offer you crotches.  We’re being super highbrow today.

The following not-safe-for-work ads place a product (or copy) at a woman’s crotch.  Are they promising sexual access?  Just trying to draw attention?  Using shock tactics?  I don’t know.

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Taylor D. (of Thanks for Participating) sent in a link to The Assimilated Negro’s post of ads that use women’s ass-cracks prominently. Not safe for work, so after the jump:

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“Pink is for Girls” (found at Vintage Ads):

Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink.

That is all.

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.

Thomas Sander at the Social Capital Blog writes: “Obviously the $1,000,000 question is whether these behavioral changes are likely to continue beyond the Obama candidacy.” I think the answer to this, at least as far as racial composition goes, is yes. What we see here is a two decade long trend, not a blip inspired by Obama.

Data compiled by the the Pew Research Center, via Thick Culture.

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.

Michael G., Sarahjane C., and Marlow sent us this commercial, designed for a small market, advertising a furniture store called The Red House. It was produced by Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal. It is a real commercial, though it was designed to self-consciously spoof the many poorly-produced and weirdly-sloganed commercials that we’ve all seen advertising local small businesses on late night television. Word on the street is that the commercial has been maligned as racist. What do you think?

McLaughlin and Neal felt obliged to respond to the accusations of racism in another video. In it, they make a distinction between “racist” and “racial” and suggest that the video only seems racist if any and all talk that acknowledges race is considered bad.

This is an example of how the internet operates as a public sphere and can facilitate discussion about difficult topics. Without youtube, attention to this commercial would have remained local and/or restricted to a two minute discussion on the nightly news. Instead, the commercial has been viewed over 1.2 millions times and the response has been viewed over 50,000 times (as of today). Blogs all over the internet have picked up on the controversy and people are chiming in. I wouldn’t say that the discussion is all that sophisticated, but it is really interesting to see so many Americans discussing racism at all.

Then again, maybe the commercial has gotten so much attention because most people conclude that it is not racist. That is, are race and racism more likely to be widely discussed when the collective conclusion is “not racism”? Do we see such wide discussion of clearly racist material?

What do you think? Is this an example of the revolutionary power of the internet? Or just business as usual?

American workers have lost power relative to their employers since the heyday of unionization during the industrial era. One way in which employees gained was through the extension of benefits to full-time workers: salary, relative job security, health insurance, sick pay, paid vacation, parental leave, etc.  Full-time jobs, however, are being replaced by part-time jobs, and with them have gone much of the power and most of the benefits that workers were able to gain through unionization.

You would think, though, that jobs that require a high level of education and training might be immune from these trends. Perhaps not.

The American Federation of Teachers released a report that included data on the percentage of employees at U.S. colleges and universities that are full-time tenure-track professors, full-time non-tenure track, adjunct (part-time) professors, and graduate students.  As you can see, the percentage of full-time tenure-track professors is decreasing and we are being replaced by other types of employees who cost the institution much less (graphs borrowed from MontClair SocioBlog).

This is a problem from a labor perspective in that it strips power away from employees, putting it squarely back into the hands of employers.  It may also be a problem in terms of the quality of education.  Adjunct professors are often terrific, but anyone who is overworked and underpaid is likely to invest less in their product.  I wonder, too, if this impacts the rate of scientific research (fewer full-time tenure- track professors= less research).  Any other thoughts on this trend?

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’m not from a military family so Memorial Day has mostly been about a three day weekend, grilling, and maybe giving a tiny bit of thought to members of the military who have fought in various U.S. wars. But, in the last couple of years, Memorial Day has taken on so much more significance for me, and it seems rather fitting that this weekend I’m working on my dissertation– writing about the mothers of current U.S. service members who have been deployed in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Mothers, and all members of a service person’s family, often refer to themselves as “the silent ranks.” And they are a key part of the “ranks” of the military in many ways. Next to the troops, family members shoulder the majority of this particular war. Unlike previous U.S. wars (WWI and WWII), the public has not been asked to do much– we are not planting victory gardens, living with rations, working in factories, or collecting scrap metal and even lard for the manufacturing of weapons and supplies.

The military knows how important the families of service members are– for both recruitment and deployment support. You may have noticed the Army recruitment commercials specifically target parents. The Army knows they need parental support to enlist new Soldiers. Often these commercials focus on Army service as an opportunity for training, for an education, for a career, while also telling parents how strong their children will become when they join. Thus the motto “You made them strong: We’ll make them Army Strong.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8MBbaz61kU[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TUbnGXqI1s[/youtube]

Despite the fact that the military is changing, and more women are joining, homefront support remains largely gendered. The video below “Army Families = Army Strong” is one that the Army put together as a tribute to the work these silent ranks do during wartime.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5RIHo5rh3c[/youtube]

What is striking (but not surprising) to me about this video tribute is how gendered the home front is. With a few exceptions (a few female Soldiers), this video mostly depicts wives left at home taking care of young children. These families (women and children) need to be strong to deal with the stress and anxiety of having a loved one deployed, and to carry on their day to day lives. The military also needs them to be strong– to hold down the home front, send supportive packages and emails to deployed Soldiers, and to be there for Soldiers to come home to. As the voice over says “they wear a different uniform… theirs is a uniform of strength… the strength of courage, integrity, and sacrifice.” Even if they aren’t deployed to a war zone, families are enlisted to military service along with the Soldiers.

For my dissertation I interviewed 60+ mothers of service members (and hundreds more in online support groups) who also describe themselves as part of these “silent ranks.” I would love to be able to share their incredible stories here, but I only have their permission to write about the for research purposes. So instead I’ll write about what I’ve learned from them about how complicated home front war support is for mothers.

Like other military family members, the mothers of service members also see themselves as members of the military– even when they are more removed from receiving the kinds of benefits a military wife (or husband) would receive. Here are some of the slogans mothers use to identify themselves as a strong, tough, part of the military:

Usually when we think about the mothers of service members, the most publicly active (and anti-war) ones come to mind. Like Cindy Sheehan:

While many mothers of service members take the same war stance as Cindy Sheehan, most have widely different, and often contradictory relationships to war (just as other military family members do, I imagine). My research is about these contradictions. Some mothers disagree with the war, but publicly support their child’s mission– and want the war to succeed. Others disagree with the war but would never say so publicly for fear of being seen as unpatriotic. Some just want the troops to come home safely. Others support the war fully, and some who support the war fully see anti-war mothers like Cindy Sheehan as degrading to the job their children are doing.

Mothers of service members may have opposing ideas about war, but they all feel unbelievable anxiety for their deployed child. They cry in the grocery store when they see their son’s favorite food. They panic every time an unknown car pulls into the driveway, fearing that dress uniforms will show up at their door. And they all feel a duty to their deployed child (to send care packages, buy their child supplies etc.), and feel a sense duty to all the troops and military families– taking part in efforts to make sure the troops and their families feel supported.

Here are some images of different mothers supporting the troops in different ways (these images are all public domain, and none are mothers in my study):

Finally, take a few minutes to watch this video interview with Vicki Castro, whose son was killed in Iraq (“life as you know it stops…”). I can’t embed the video here, but it is worth clicking on and watching.