Readers’ minds think alike, sometimes, and the changing advertising campaign for the “empire building” video game Evony caught the attention of fds, torenc, Assaf N., Elisabeth R., Sabriel, Nicole O., and Liz B. (images found at Gawker and Coding Horror, and hope I didn’t miss anyone who sent it in). Online ads for the game started out like this:

Then they added a woman with a little boob showing:

In case people weren’t noticing the cleavage, the ad evolved into one where the boobs are pointed out a bit more explicitly:

Moving on to a slightly more realistic look:

Christina W. sent us one with a woman actively disrobing and saying “Come play, my Lord”:

Mick H. found a close-up version similar to the one above:

D.R.S. sent us another:

And then they realized they could just dispense with all subtlety and get to the important part:

If that didn’t work, why not straight up near-nudity.  Dan J. found this one here:

This ad submitted by both Alex B. and Kim H. seems to be taking the advertising to a whole new level.  No longer content with boobs, they seem to be moving towards implied female masturbation:

Wtfcats sent this one in:

NEW (Dec. ’09)! Tom R. sent in this next one with a nice “we’re lesbian, but just for you” flair.  Using the term “discreetly”  to imply porn, it reads “join the fun”:

NEW (Jan. ’10)! Thanks to Chris M., Tinpantithesis, and Ryan, we now know that there is an Evony ad that doesn’t say anything about the game at all.  You simply see this image and are invited to click on her boobs, butt, or lips to turn her into the “ideal woman”:

When you click, you are taken to this site, which asks you to sign up for the game because “obvious[ly],” “it makes you feel like King!”

Or sometimes apparently you get this view:

Presumably some players will be disappointed that there isn’t a female “queen” to be saved or oogled in the game at all–the women were invented only for the purpose of adding boobs to the ads. Jeff A. from Coding Horror says,

Evony, thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom … then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth. I’ve always wondered what that would be like. I guess now I know.

ALSO NEW (Dec. ’09)! Apparently the Evony ads have become such a thing that other games are referencing them to advertise themselves.  Timm F. sent along the ad below making fun of the Evony ads.  It reads, “She is actually in our game, my lord”:

Elizabeth M. and Toban B. sent in a clip from the British TV show “That Mitchell and Webb Look” that has a humorous take on how advertisers target men and women:

Laura A., of Border Thinking on Migration, Trafficking and Commercial Sex, has an interesting post about the film Zinda Laash: Bollywood’s Norms for Dhandewalis that explores portrayals of sex workers in some Indian films.

Various journalists and scholars have pointed out over the years that movies and TV shows often portray as romantic behavior that is fairly indistinguishable from stalking. A good example of this is There’s Something about Mary, in which three men engage in some really sketchy behavior–in one case literally spying on her with binoculars. And while we’re supposed to find them crazy and obsessed, this doesn’t preclude her from getting together with one of them. This type of thing shows up often–one character (usually a guy, though not always) follows another character (who has rejected previous advances) around or sleeps on her lawn or declares he’s in love at first sight or does something else that is supposed to be evidence of deep and abiding love.

But of course, there’s a more disturbing way to interpret that behavior. I once had to contact security and have a man removed from campus when one of my female students anxiously told me that a man she had a restraining order against for stalking (and who wasn’t a student) was outside the classroom. She thought she had escaped him when she moved to college and was very scared that he’d shown up, hours away from their hometown. She didn’t find the behavior romantic or cute; it didn’t make her eventually think she should give him a chance in return for his persistence. It made her feel truly frightened.

Anyway, that’s an overly-long introduction to a video (found here) sent in by Matt W. The creator, Jonathan McIntosh of Rebellious Pixels, edited together scenes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with scenes of Edward Cullen from the movie Twilight to show how behavior that is depicted as protective and romantic in the film (and book) could also be seen as disturbing:

McIntosh says,

Seen through Buffy’s eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21st century.

I think it’s a great conversation starter (and I’m always happy for an excuse to talk about Buffy).

Nanette D. informed us about the site Books that Make You Dumb, which uses a questionable methodology to correlate SAT scores at various colleges and universities with the books Facebook users from those schools list as their favorites, taking the 10 most popular from each school (there’s an explanation of the methodology at the website; the width of the bubble the names are in indicate the standard deviation in SAT scores). By seeing which books are listed by people at schools with higher overall SATs, we supposedly find out which books make people smarter or dumber:

So Their Eyes Were Watching God, by the fabulous Zora Neale Hurston, makes you dumber than Gone with the Wind or A Million Little Pieces? Really?

Nanette says,

I think it reinforces a lot of ugly stereotypes about what type of person reads what type of literature, and the inherent “quality” of particular genres.

It’s a good point. There’s something interesting about designating certain types of books as “genre fiction,” which seems to be kind of a negative label, in general. Isn’t all literature technically part of a genre?

It’s all very Bourdieuian, really. To a great extent, what we read is a reflection of our class and our class is the number one predictor of our SAT score. So what is being measured (if anything) the way that class determines both our “taste” in literature and (or by way of) our educational achievements.

Aside from those issues, you could definitely have some fun talking about meaningless statistics and methodological issues with this graph. Just because you can find some statistics to correlate doesn’t mean they’re actually useful.

[Note: For the record, yes, I get it that the author was being kind of silly, and that he didn’t make up the genre classifications. The reason I find it interesting is that I think it reflects to some degree what a lot of people think–that certain types of books are inherently indicators of bad taste. I have friends who read fantasy and science fiction and get annoyed that it’s considered “genre fiction,” which they feel carries a negative connotation. Black authors have similarly complained about their books automatically going into the “African American literature” section at some bookstores rather than the mainstream “regular” fiction section. So mostly the image was a jumping off point for me thinking about how we often judge people by the types of books they read. And believe me, I’m not immune to this. When a relative gave me a set of three romance novels for Christmas a couple of years ago because I “like books,” I was perplexed. Though part of my confusion came from the fact that they were romance novels set among the Amish, and the concept of Amish romance novels had never in my life occurred to me. And then it turned out the relative didn’t know what they were; she had looked at the cover, saw a woman in the bonnet, and thought they were Little House on the Prairie books, which then left me with the question of why you would buy the Little House books for a 33 year old. But, you know, the thought that counts, etc. etc.]

I found this graph illustrating levels of migration to several countries from 1960-65 to 2000-05 at the Migration Policy Institute:

Keep in mind, these are total numbers, not weighted by the size of the population of each country, so a country with a relatively small number of migrants compared to other countries may have a much larger percent of the population made up of migrants. But it is interesting to see the increases and decreases of migration over time in each country. The large increase in immigration to Spain especially caught my attention; see also our post on Spain’s voluntary return policy.

Other posts on immigration: the “Muslim demographic threat”, immigration and spouses, volunteer U.S. border guards, the “Battle for Britain”, refugees, immigration streams to the U.S., a horrid Border Patrol video game, Asian Americans and marriage, refugees in the U.S., anti-Puerto Rican statehood movement, pro-environment anti-immigration video, early German assimilation in the U.S., do immigrants work harder?, Muslims in Europe, world stats, and emigration from Mexico.

Nicole D. pointed out an interesting post on boingboing about plagiarism and status. Somehow or another someone noticed that large parts of the dissertation written by William Meehan, president of Jacksonville State University, were lifted word-for-word from an earlier dissertation by Carl Boehning; both men got their Ph.D.s from the University of Alabama. Here is an image indicating the extent of the copying–all the highlighted sections are exact replications of Boehning’s words (this does not include passages that were paraphrased without citation from his dissertation):

You can get a look at the actual documents if you’d like: Boening’s work, Meehan’s dissertation, and an index of the plagiarized sections.

Michael Leddy of Orange Crate Art says,

Neither the University of Alabama (which granted Boening and Meehan their doctorates) nor Jacksonville State University, where Meehan is president, has chosen to take up the obvious questions about plagiarism that Meehan’s dissertation presents. As another recent story suggests, plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer’s status rises.

The “recent story” he mentions is about how a paragraph from Talking Points Memo ended up in a Maureen Dowd column, uncited and without quotation marks.

I find this beyond infuriating. I am, admittedly, hardcore about plagiarizing. I check every paper for it and I immediately give a 0 on any assignment where I find plagiarizing for a first offense; if it’s a second offense, I fail them in the course (I’d really prefer to fail them for the first offense, but we aren’t allowed to do that). I also turn in every instance to the college student ethics committee so the record will be on file. But, as Leddy says, apparently if you can rise high enough, then later discovery of your plagiarism–of the document on which a person’s entire Ph.D. is based, no less–won’t be held against you (though it did dim Joe Biden’s career for a while when he, or his writers, plagiarized part of a speech years ago).

Given that universities increasingly make statements about the importance of academic honesty, it’s an interesting position for JSU to be in–how do you tell your students they can’t plagiarize but admit that the president’s dissertation was largely copied? Perhaps they are using it as an illustration to students of how status, power, and privilege combine to protect some people more than others.

I know I’ve been negligent in my posting for a few days. I was grading and busy watching old Michael Jackson videos and performances on YouTube and feeling unexpectedly sad about everything his life represented, and also the realization that people I idolized as a kid are now in their 50s.

Anyway, Sarah N. sent in a link to a story at the Mail Online about how women’s perceived attractiveness plays a part in deciding which matches will be played on the main court at Wimbledon. The organizers of Wimbledon don’t try to hide the fact that the appearance of the competitors is taken into account when scheduling matches:

…the All England Club admitted that physical attractiveness is taken into consideration. Spokesman Johnny Perkins said: ‘Good looks are a factor.’

Some women who were scheduled to play on Center Court, the main area, and their world rankings:

World No. 45 (unseeded) Gisela Dulko

World No. 59 (unseeded) Maria Kirilenko

No. 28 seed Sorana Cirstea

Women who played on the other courts, with their rankings:

No. 5 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova

No. 2 seed Serena Williams:

Attractiveness doesn’t seem to play such a factor in scheduling the men’s matches:

In the men’s tournament, five-times winner Roger Federer and British hope Andy Murray invariably play on Centre.

The scheduling of women by perceived attractiveness may have something to do with attracting television viewers. A comment from a BBC television employee:

But obviously it’s advantageous to us if there are good-looking women players on Centre Court…Our preference would always be a Brit or a babe as this always delivers high viewing figures.

Of course, it’s nothing new that female athletes are judged on their appearances as well as their athletic abilities. Female athletes have often felt pressure to meet conventional standards of beauty. This isn’t just about looks; it’s also about doing heterosexual femininity. Female athletes have long been suspected of being lesbians, particularly if they did not seem to actively seek male sexual approval. In fact, WNBA players have been encouraged to wear make-up and jewelry, have their hair long, and bring up their boyfriends, husbands, and/or children to prove their heterosexuality. Thus, in the end women’s appearances, and willingness to play up their gender in an approved way, often trumps their athletic accomplishments in a way that male athletes don’t usually face.

Other posts about female athletes and attractiveness are here, here, here, here (watch the second video), here, and here.