A familiar trope: draping the object of sale on a naked woman. This time it’s pasta from a home machine.

Picture via Serious Eats via Erin Doland

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town put up these nice images comparing Australian women’s and men’s athletic uniforms:

As tigtog mentions in another post, if these skimpy uniforms were really about performance, men would be wearing them too.  But that, of course, would look ridiculous:

Tigtog also points out that this degree of sexualization is new.  Here are pictures comparing the men’s and women’s runners uniforms at the 1984 Olympics:

This sign was posted in sight of the customer at the Days Inn (where I stayed when I failed to get out of Logan airport after the American Sociological Association meetings in August of 2008).  I have incuded three observations after the image and text.

Text:

At Days Inns…

We Promise…
“Service with a smile, a cheerful greeting, a pleasant Hello.”

We Mean It When We Say…
“It’s no trouble at all.”

We Want To Know…
“If you enjoyed your stay.”

Because At Days Inn…
“We look forward to seeing you again.”

That’s our promise to you from every member of the Days Inn family.

(1) It is a nice example of the kind of emotional work that employees are required to do.  It’s not just about getting customers into rooms efficiently and politely, it’s about a putting on a shit-eating grin and kissing their asses.  Or else you’re fired.

(2)  It’s also an example of a for-profit company calling itself a “family.”  You are supposed to do things selflessly for your family, but you work at a job for money.  Comparing a company to a family, I suspect, is one way to get employees to give to the company out of kinship-like duty instead of on contractual terms for money.  This, of course, and ironically, lines the pockets of executives quite nicely.

(3) The logic behind their use of quotation marks eludes me.

NEW: I took these picture in a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Hollywood in October 2008.  Close-ups and remarks below.

Like in the Days Inn example, employees at Kaiser are to do more than simply do their job effectively, they must do it “pleasant[ly]” and with “care.”  It is one thing to be instructed to “gather information with consideration for confidentiality,” and quite another to be asked to “convey trust and confidence.”  Scholars of emotion work note that the emotional part of jobs is (1) rarely seen as a skill or (2) a toll that makes your job trying and is, therefore, (3) undercompensated.  Yet, the ability to “convey trust and confidence” in strangers is certainly a special one and the health insurance employee that can do that is certainly valuable.  Unfortunately, like with other type of care work (i.e., nursing, teaching), that “value” is mostly lipservice and rarely translates into anything with exchange value (i.e., CASH).

For another example of emotion work, this one a sneak look behind the counter, click here.

You’re either having a scotch at the Red Carpet Club or you’re downin’ cheap coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts:

This picture, which I happen to find hilarious, was taken by me during an unsuccessful attempt to get out of Logan Airport after the American Sociological Association meetings in Boston.  I ended up being treated very nicely at the Days Inn.

Real Americans are white people and we shouldn’t forget it. 

Fox News Anchor Jane Skinner called a woman on the U.S. Olympic softball team a “great representative” because she was “blonde” and “blue-eyed.”  See it here. 

Thanks to Caroline H. for the link!

Found at the Onion thanks to Caroline H.!

Parents, feminists, and cultural critics often express dismay at Barbie, Bratz, and similar fashion-type dolls for girls that are often sexualized and have extremely unrealistic body proportions, leading many to argue that they provide bad models for children and may promote negative body image among girls.

As a result, every so often “anti-Barbie”-type dolls come out. They often have more realistic body proportions and aim to provide a wider range of images of women and girls in terms of activities, dress, and/or careers. One example of this was the Get Real Girl line that came out around 2001 in the U.S. (images found here):

Here’s a description from this website:

While other dolls teeter on feet formed for high-heels, Get Real Girls stand on their own two feet, have posable, fully-articulated bodies and display physical tone and definition for full-action play. The Girls’ faces have soft natural features and are dressed in authentic sports clothing.

And yet, as with so many of these types of dolls, as far as I can tell, these were short-lived. The website is basically defunct–you can go to it, but there are no working links to the supposedly interactive features. I couldn’t find any websites currently selling the dolls.

This brings up some interesting issues, particularly the fact that what parents want their kids to want and what kids actually want often do not coincide. As I’ve discussed before, kids often have their own ideas about toys and how to play with them and may reject the non-traditional toys their parents think they ought to be crazy about. They may shy away from these toys because they aren’t like the ones their friends are playing with or that they see on TV. Or they may come up against one major problem with creating new types of dolls for girls: if they have more realistic body proportions, they don’t fit into the wide array of clothing and shoes designed for dolls with Barbie’s proportions. There’s an inertia in the toy industry because of this–new, differently-shaped dolls don’t fit the clothes and accessories kids may already own and the range of outfits available to put on them is limited because the market for them is so new and small. However, this problem can apparently be overcome, since according to this website Barbie is bigger than the Bratz dolls and so can’t really wear clothing designed for them (the site also helpfully warns against over-brushing Bratz dolls’ hair), and yet they became wildly popular (to the dismay of many parents).

I just thought these might be interesting for a discussion of the toy industry generally, efforts to provide alternatives to Barbie-type dolls, and the difficulties of doing so due to the fact that kids just might not like them.

It might be useful to compare and contrast this ad to more modern versions of anti-drug campaigns, such as this one.

Found here via Copyranter.