[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck14LKBI9GM[/youtube]

Make what you will of this. The sexual availability of the female…um…wildlife, all of whom are sexy and sexualized and dancing with the one male, the bottles of Orangina erupting from between the female zebras’ legs, and the female octopus squeezing Orangina out of her boobs…there’s a lot to work with.

Gah.

Christine B. sent in a link to set of Orangina ads on Flickr:

There are quite a few others, but I’m sure you get the idea.

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

This is an interesting example of the way in which powerful media companies control what gets out there. MTV refused to show ads, made by the Media Foundation to promote Buy Nothing Day, on its station. They stated that the ad “goes further than we are willing to accept on our channels.”

The ads are here. Thanks to AdBusters for this tip.

I LOVE this image. It’s a fashion spread.

Question:
Who’s taking care of those little tow-headed boys behind the white picket fence when both mommy and daddy go to work?

I use this picture to talk about the way in which middle- and upper-class women are “getting equal” with men by transferring their caretaking responsibilities to less privileged women… who are, as in this ad, invisible.

One of my favorite questions to ask in (especially) Introduction to Sociology classes is: In an ideal world, for what reason does the U.S. government exist? That is, what is a state for? For protection from other states? To protect private property? To maximize happiness? To pool and then redistribute resources for the collective good? It’s something most of them have never thought about. After a discussion, I show them this:

This is where our federal tax dollars go. Students are horrified by the military spending, but completely stumped by the interest on the debt. Most of them have no idea that our debt has any consequences at all.

The pie chart is from http://www.nationalpriorities.org/. You can go every year and update your chart here.

I’m sort of obsessed with the recent escalation in the standards for “good” teeth. I saw a film from the 80s the other day where Keifer Sutherland had yellow teeth. Yellow teeth! I am so well-adjusted to the new bleaching practices that I was genuinely disgusted. I’m not proud. Adding to all this bleaching are new technologies like veneers and invisible braces and whoknowswhat. As each becomes more and more common, it becomes more and more unusual to have less-than-perfect teeth and the pressure to undergo these cosmetic procedures becomes less about being extraordinary and more about being ordinary. Anyway, I found this in the New York Times (see source in image):

Any guesses as to who it is in society that is disproportionately cavity-stricken?

Or… anyone interested in critiquing the line graphs? That is a really rapid change between ’99-’02 and ’03-’04 and there are a lot of years strangely lumped together. Could it be an artifact of bundling?

This “delightful” quiz in Us magazine asks viewers, segregated by sex, to judge women’s breasts and what they do with them. Don’t miss the fact that 56% of men and 31% of women prefer Heidi Montag with breast implants.

What, exactly, a reader is supposed to do with this information is a mystery to me. But there must be a use for this in some class somewhere.

As a result of my dissertation research, I receive a lot of military emails and mail. Today I got an email called “shock and awe” with this text:

Raw photos and movies of explosions, fierce battles, inspirational footage and more, uploaded by members and military personnel.

I don’t think this website needs a lot of commentary. Note the “miltary.com: enterainment” logo in the upper left and the various kinds of entertainment offered– tattoos, video games, books etc.

And take a look at the most popular videos: “Iraqi Cadets Can’t Do Jumping Jacks” with the tag line “Oh boy we’re going to be in Iraq for a while…” and “the BN Disciplinator” (with a lot going on race and gender wise). The “Disciplinator” is hard to watch but really, you have to at least get through the first couple minutes.

The Dodge La Femme (1955 and 1956):

Here are some pictures of some restored La Femme’s:

Pink rosebud patterned upholstery:

It even came with matching accessories!

An umbrella and raincoat:

A compact:

A coin purse:

I think showing this car would be interesting in comparison with the contemporary marketing of feminine guns (see Gwen’s post here). The guns look surprisingly like the car.

It would also be interesting, I think, to do a discussion about whether and how they market cars to women today. They do, of course, but the ideal femininity has changed and so, therefore, have the cars. Women, though, haven’t changed very much. One of the reasons that the La Femme didn’t sell was because women were, frankly, offended.

NEW (Jan. ’09)!  I found this effort to market cars to women from 1969, the “women-winning” Barracuda with “pop prints” and “gals in mind”!

NEW! (Nov. ’09): Tim McC. sent in this trailer for a Volvo concept car specifically for women. It’s really interesting to compare the marketing of a car to women in the 1950s versus today.

Notice that while beauty is still important, today there’s also an emphasis on the car being tough–but not too tough, not brutal.

Tim adds,

YCC has some fairly significant design decisions (some arguably limitations) that seems to imply certain things about the intended market. For example, the car has no hood that can be opened by the owner. Instead, the car must be taken to the shop for engine maintenance and oil changes. The tires are also run-flat, meaning that the tires will continue to work after a flat, again so that the car can be taken to a garage for the tire change. This seems to imply that the company assumes that women are too ignorant or too afraid to fix their own mechanical problems. This also implies that DIY work on engines or really any technological product is a male pursuit. Keeping women from working on engines seems to say that women shouldn’t have to even consider working with technology. It also features automated parallel parking (a feature common on luxury cars, but prominently emphasized in the materials), which may carry sexist undertones å la the “woman driver” stereotype. The drive train is hybrid-electric, which implies that environmentalism is a feminine concept.