Chicho sent in a link to an interesting ad campaign from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Ad Council. The campaign’s tagline is Real Men Wear Gowns:

According to the website, “Real Men Know the Facts” about heart disease.”

As Chicho points out, it’s one of those rare examples we see of ads trying to undermine stereotypical masculinity rather than play it up: there’s still the idea of being a “real man,” but instead of associating that with rugged individualism or risk-taking (or eating high-fat bacon burgers while drinking a beer as you sit in your Dodge truck), here being a real man means taking care of yourself, going to the doctor regularly, and taking care of your family by staying healthy.

Thanks, Chicho!

Singapore Airlines  is known for its “Singapore girls.” Here is a video that shows lots of images of how pretty Asian women, there to serve others, have been used in their advertising (the creator of the video claims to be a Singapore girl):

Apparently the Singapore Girl is such a phenomenon, she’s a figure at Madame Tussaud’s:

I had no idea that when most people think of Singapore, they think of this “pretty, smiling…girl.”

Anyway, I think it’s an interesting example of the way non-White women are often portrayed as exotic (the Singapore girls have become a symbol of Singapore itself) and also of what sociologists refer to as emotion work. The Singapore girls aren’t there just to bring us drinks and make sure we’re buckled in; there’s there to make us feel pampered and to warm our hearts–to do the type of emotion work (constantly smiling, being extremely attentive, being at the passengers’ service and making it seem like a joy) that makes customers feel cared-for and special…and thus willing to pay high prices for those business seats. And clearly these women are part of the decor–pretty, polite, accommodating women for passengers to enjoy while they fly.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight posted this graph showing Americans’ faith in various institutions (from the 2008 General Social Survey):

Burk sent in several Miller beer ads, all directed by Errol Morris, which contain some interesting messages about modern masculinity. Specifically, real men drink beer and don’t worry about stupid things like their diet or health:

This one connects drinking Miller to pro-American patriotism and the value of manpower (and it really means MANpower):

Real men know how to back up Suburbans pulling boats:

Clearly, we’ve lost an important element of manhood when men can no longer do this. Of course, driving a Suburban pulling a boat seems to contradict the whole patriotic non-use of gas element of manhood, but let’s not get into details.

And finally, real men have to restrain themselves while they listen to women:

It’s such a pain to have to interact with gals!

You can find even more here.

UPDATE: In a comment, Chuk says,

In these ads, with the exception of the cyclist, none of the men’s faces are ever fully shown. What if this was a series of adds with images of women? How would the regular poster and commentators normally react to this kind of framing? What would it mean in that context? Does that analysis apply to this context?

I think that’s a good question. One criticism people often make of ads is the way women’s faces are often obscured; this is pointed out as a way of objectifying them, turning them into bodies rather than full people with faces, voices, etc. I certainly think it’s possible to objectify men as well, although it’s also possible to show part of a body because the viewer is supposed to take on the viewpoint of the person in the ad, in which case you can’t, obviously, see the face or head, since you’re supposed to be the face/head. I found the bacon and butter burger ads creepy overall, as well as another one of the Morris ads where a (generally faceless) grandma is cooking for a bunch of men whose faces we never see.

Thanks for the comment, chuk!

Andrew over at FiveThirtyEight posted three maps that show which candidate would have carried each state if only members of one social class voted (in case it’s not obvious, blue = Obama and red = McCain):

For the purposes of the estimate, “rich” was defined as a household income of $150,000+, “middle-income” was $40,000-75,000, and “poor” was $0-20,000. [Note: for the point of illustration, he just made maps showing the lowest, middle, and upper 20% of households by income, which is why the groups between $20,000-39,000 and $76,000-150,000 don’t show up here–he just made the 3 maps to illustrate the point.]

So what we seem to see here is that poor voters were more consistently partisan than rich voters, at least in the 2008 election. Whether this is a general pattern or something unique to 2008 I don’t know.

Brady sent me a link to a story in the Times Online about a poster put out by the British National Party, a right-wing anti-immigrant political party. Here’s the poster (found at the BNP website):

They’re clearly trying to connect efforts to defend Britain during World War II to the idea of a modern “battle for Britain,” which this time is against immigrants. However, they missed a detail when the chose the image for their poster, according to the Times story:

[The plane] could be clearly identified by its RF marking as belonging to 303 Squadron, an expatriate Polish unit, even though the BNP campaigns against immigration from Eastern Europe.

The BNP claims they knew it all along and did it on purpose; others believe they’re just trying to cover an incident that they find embarrassing.

Regardless, it brings up interesting questions about nationhood and definitions of who can be included in a country’s idea of its history. In the imagining of the BNP, would immigrants’ contributions be erased? Would they be acknowledged, but only as something that was appropriate and welcome in the past? After all, one of the very groups they’re vilifying played a role in defending Britain during the exact era that the BNP is trying to symbolically connect itself to. I suspect they might try to make an argument that the ex-pat Polish fighters were involuntary and temporary refugees that were being protected by Britain during a time of warfare and were in fact fighting to retake their own country, which is different than permanent immigrants who take British jobs and mess up the culture and whatnot, but that’s just a guess.

Of course, this isn’t something unique to the BNP; nativist groups everywhere face the problem of having to erase or explain away the contributions of groups they’re trying to exclude from citizenship.

Thanks for the tip, Brady!

In Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, Joane Nagel talks about the role that the intersections between ethnicity and sexuality play in nationalist projects–that is, how they are used as groups define who is and isn’t part of the entity defined as “the nation.” Those who are part of the nation are part of “us,” and those outside it are the Other. She brings up the example of Nazi Germany. Clearly ethnicity played a huge part in definitions of nationhood as the Nazis saw it. But as Nagel points out, it went beyond that; individuals were also included or excluded from membership based on other characteristics, including sexuality. Specifically, homosexuals were marked as unworthy of inclusion and were also sent to concentration camps.

This image, found at The Pink Triangle, illustrates the intersection ethnicity and various categories, including sexuality. It shows the various markers Nazis used to identify prisoners.

The bottom row of seven triangles clearly represents different categories of Jews. The fifth column of triangles (they look tan but they were pink) identified homosexuals. The third column (blue) was for immigrants. I believe the first column (red) was for political dissenters, but I’m not certain. We see other specified groups of Jews in the three partly-yellow triangles at the bottom, as well as triangles for Poles and Czechs. I don’t know enough German to figure the others out.

It’s a great example of a nationalist project: we can visibly see here the clear effort to define some groups as Others and the way that both ethnicity and sexuality (and the intersections) can be an important part of that, and even mark individuals as multiply stigmatized.

UPDATE: In comments philoserine and xac offered translations. Here’s xac’s:

[Columns]
red: political
green: professional criminal
blue: emigrant
purple: Jehovah’s Witnesses
pink: homosexual
black: work-shy Reich (not 100% sure wether the meaning here is “rich” or “member of the Third Reich” – more likely the last one though)
black: work-shy
[I thought I read somewhere that black might stand for antisocial, so maybe work-shy was how they defined that?]
[Rows]
1. row (triangles) base colour
2. row: label for reoffenders
3. row: penal camp
4. row: jews
5. row:
yellow triangle/black bordered triangle: jewish race desecrator
red circle with white border: under suspicion to escape
grey ring: ?? prisoner
6. row: left: Example: political jew, reoffender, penal camp
middle: special campaign Wehrmacht (?)
7. row: Pole
Czech

Thanks!

And Zeitzeuge says that “Special campaign Wehrmacht is a deserter from the Wehrmacht.”

Toban B. sent in a link to UkraineDate, a website that lets men find hot Ukrainian women. Two images:

Of course, the site could be targeting men in any part of the world. However, it seems likely that it aims at men in wealthier nations in the West, particularly western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Incidentally, these are the same regions that are the source of the vast majority of male sex tourists. Immigration from the Ukraine to the U.S. has also increased in the past decade; Ukraine is now in the top 10 nations of origin for immigrants to the U.S., with nearly 23,000 immigrants in 2005. And here in Vegas, the number of women from the Ukraine and Russia found to have been trafficked into the country and forced into prostitution (as well as those who came willingly to work in a range of jobs) is increasing. That’s a bit of rambling, but the point is, women from the former Soviet Union are marketed to men in the West in a number of ways.

As Toban points out, the dating site plays on the exotic qualities often attributed to Ukrainian and Russian women. Toban says, “the Ukranian women are presented as sex objects — and in accordance with certain standards of sex and beauty.” Certainly the site makes it clear that men aren’t supposed to to be interested in these women because of their intellect, personalities, or anything other than their beauty.

It’s a good example of the way that certain nationalities, races, ethnic groups, etc., are exoticized and portrayed as particularly attractive and sexual. In some cases, as with Asian women, part of the attraction is the stereotype that they are submissive and undemanding. I’m not certain, but I don’t think that particular stereotype is applied to Ukrainian and Russian women–in fact, I’ve seen them portrayed as high-maintenance and materialistic…but worth it because they’re hot.

Thanks, Toban!

NEW! Elizabeth C. let us know about a protest against sex tourism in Ukraine, which included slogans such as “Ukraine is not a brothel.”

They did so, however, by adopting PETA’s infamous tactic of using scantily-clad women, which may or may not have helped make their point.