This, dear reader, is a pound of Kopi Luwak Arabica coffee, for sale here:

You can buy a pound of this gourmet coffee for just $180. If you’re on a budget, you can get 2 ounces for $40.

Now, you may be wondering, is it worth it? Should I spend so much for coffee? Luwakcoffee.com believes that it is:

Yes, the coffee is expensive, but so are all of the better things in life. You have to pay more for quality or uniqueness. This is a class issue: part of what you are paying for is exclusiveness, the knowledge that not everyone can afford a Chanel bag or Christian Louboutin shoes or Kopi Luwak coffee. Its inaccessibility to the masses is part of how you know it is worth having. And from this perspective, Kopi Luwak is quite desirable: at most 1,000 pounds or so make it to market each year, which makes it so expensive. It’s so desirable, it was included in the 2006 Emmy Awards gift bags for celebrities!

Now, at this point an ignorant but aspiring gourmand might ask, “What, pray tell, is so special about Kopi Luwak coffee? What is this ‘unusual phenomenon’? I’m so anxious to know!”

Why, my dear, the beans for your coffee were eaten by a civet and then handpicked out of its crap to be brewed into coffee for you! It’s terribly adventurous, isn’t it?

What, don’t believe me? Here is your Kopi Luwak coffee, pre-handpicking (image found here):

Delicious! If you’d prefer to buy it in this form (called “natural” coffee), you can buy it that way too. [For the record: I will never be able to eat a Payday candy bar again.]

In researching this topic for you, Reader, I found many properties ascribed to Kopi Luwak coffee. It is supposedly lower in caffeine than regular coffee because the civet’s stomach acids digest some of the caffeine. Or something. It’s supposedly less bitter and has less of some protein or other, and that’s why it tastes so much better. One researcher said it is “earthy, musty, syrupy, smooth and rich with jungle and chocolate undertones,” although I question how much better it can taste since “[though] certified blinded human tasters could find little difference in the overall flavour and aroma of the beans, an electronic nose machine could detect that the aroma of the civet coffee beans is also affected.” I’m glad a machine thinks they smell fantastic.

Why did I decide to post this on Soc Images? Well, one, the pure absurdity of it. However, there are some sociologically useful things you could use it for. One might be to discuss food and our cultural taboos on food. My guess is if you had students make lists of things they’d never, ever eat, no matter what, and then made them slowly pare them down based on the assumption that they were starving, people might give in and say, “Ok, I’d eat a slug,” but few people would say “Fine, I’d eat poop if I had to.” I could be wrong, but I think most people would see eating another animal’s fecal matter as beyond disgusting. And yet here we have an example of people doing it under no duress (that I can see) and considering it a delicacy.

I suspect that students would then express horror and shock at the idea of drinking such coffee, but you might then point out that many of them probably eat the product of an animal’s digestive tract somewhat regularly: honey. Bees digest pollen to turn it into honey. It could lead to a nice discussion of how we come to think of foods as normal or disgusting, and why we might continue to eat honey and think it’s just fine, since we’re used to it, but think people who eat beans picked out of civet poop are gross.

Of course, you could also use it as an example of how, if it is sufficiently expensive and difficult to find, anything can be labeled a delicacy and sold to upper-middle-class yuppies. Even wild cat* crap.

*Not really a cat, though it’s called the civet cat.

I have seen lots of graphs showing rates of immigration to the U.S. over time, but I just found this graph showing the rates of emigration from Mexico from 2006 to early summer of 2008 (from the Migration Information Source website; this is all emigrants, regardless of destination, though of course the vast majority will be to the U.S.):

A quick note on the data: Since it required someone from a family to be left in Mexico to be asked about family emigration patters, it doesn’t include those situations where an entire family left all at once; however, my understanding of immigration patterns is that this type of immigration is a minority of all movements, since most families prefer to send one or two family members to get a foothold in the host country.

As we see, there’s a general overall downward trend during that time period, which isn’t surprising given the downturn in the U.S. economy, especially the construction industry. The Mexican government reports that remittances sent back to Mexico are down this year as well.

 There is also a seasonal pattern, with the period from August to February of each year being the lowpoint and then picking up again in the spring. My first thought, since I study agriculture, was that this might have something to do with the growing season and when agricultural workers are needed in the U.S., but of course it’s a stereotype that most Mexican immigrants are field workers, so that’s probably not it.

Any thoughts on what might explain that pattern?

Tessa G.S. sent in a link to the online game Miss Bimbo. Here are some images from the game:

Tessa says,

In this case, you build a “bimbo” by placing your character on diets, getting plastic surgery, shopping for clothes, attending a-list parties, dating handsome men— all with the aim of becoming the most popular bimbo in the game…[According to the website] MissBimbo is an educational tool, a social meeting place and a hot pot of bimboism. It is free to enjoy bimboland.

An educational tool? Really?

According to CNN, parents have expressed concern that pre-teen girls are playing a game that encourages them to have their characters get breast implants and facelifts, as well as go on diets.

The game also reinforces the idea that girls are always rivals, whether competing for popularity or men (or the perfect wedding, as the movie “Bride Wars” shows).

While we’re on the topic of video games (sort of), Burk M. told me about Sexy Beach 3. In the game, you get to pick a female character, what she’s wearing, which of several beach-related activities she’s involved in (playing tag, “playful floating,” limbo, etc.), the location (beach, reef, waterfall, and so on) and the time of day. And then you can take the role of a disembodied hand that rubs various parts of her body while her nipples get hard and she moans in delight and eventually appears to orgasm. Here’s an example (Not Safe for Work):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB7mdLRziYo[/youtube]

As another example of video games that socialize girls into gender roles, Ryan pointed out the video game Imagine Babyz (image found here; it’s sometimes spelled “Babies” instead):

A description of the game (from Play.com):

Entertain the babies – Play with them and their toys, play music to make them dance and take them into the garden to play on swings and other garden toys.
Exchange information, photos and clothing with other players through Wi-Fi.
Keep the house clean – Use fun mini-games to create a welcoming home for the babies: wash up, clean and vacuum, paint the walls, mow the grass, trim hedges and drive away spiders!
Make the house to your own taste – Use the money you earn and the vouchers you receive in succeeding in your missions – buy items at the shops to decorate the house

…

Embody a young student who visits her grandmother’s house for the summer. Your grandmother leaves to go on holiday and leaves you in charge of her house. During her absence you will have to maintain the house and even decorate it to your taste. In order to do this you will need to earn money by taking care of all your neighbour’s babies, where you will find your vocation – babysitting!

Matt K. told us about the game My World, My Way, which centers around a female character who is spoiled and bratty and gets her way by using “pout points” and being selfish. The object of the game is to get a boyfriend, of course.

“Change the world to get what you want. Selfishness is your power!”

Nice.

NEW! (Mar. ’10): Joe F. sent in a short video showing some scenes from the video game Mass Effect. He points out that in the game the romantic/sexual options include a heterosexual couple or a lesbian option, but not one for gay men. One scene allows the male protagonist to bring a woman back to his room, where among other things you can make her perform a sexy dance while you, the player, look at her basically through the eyes of the male character. There is no option for the male character to dance for her.

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

Jo B. sent us a link to Icebreaker, a New Zealand clothing company. One of their products is wool underwear. As she pointed out, there are some distinct differences in how the men’s and women’s underwear lines are depicted.

The men’s line is called beast. When you go to the site, there’s a little intro part. The following phrase shows up on the banner at the top:

As Jo says,

The overall idea seems to be that men have some kind of innate, primordial aggression (thought I’m not sure how this is supposed to relate to woollen underwear).

Indeed, socialization “cages” men’s true nature, but just barely–its hold is “frail and fragile” and, I presume, could burst forth if you aren’t really careful. I don’t quite follow how the city “brings the beast alive,” or how reconnecting with nature “balances” the beast; since the beast is supposedly men’s real nature, I think reconnecting them with nature would bring out the beast, but whatever. I’m clearly applying too stringent a level of logic. Also, for the record, if all it takes to reconnect with nature is a natural material (made from a domesticated source), then cotton, angora, and mohair would work just as well.

The women’s line is called Nature. When you go to its site there’s also an intro, but without any useful summary of what women are like to compare to the Beast.

Again from Jo:

The female models are slim, delicate, and tend to pose in a way that suggests passivity (static poses, arms held behind body…) and instability (balancing on her toes).  The images in the female range focus more on being attractive, while the men’s range is about being active and aggressive.

The marketing campaign also reinforces the difference in the way we talk about men and women and their association with nature. When we connect men to nature, it’s in an aggressive, predatory sense (the beast). When women are associated with nature, it’s often in a way that implies harmony, an appreciation for the natural world, perhaps some intuitive sense that women have (or, you know, their connection to the moon and stuff because of menstrual cycles). The background is part of this; the grey background of the men’s line doesn’t look nearly as peaceful as the serene white background for the female models.

Thanks, Jo!

FYI:  Jo sent an email to the company complaining and this was their response:

Hi Josephine,

Apologies for the delayed reply. I am writing on behalf of Jeremy Moon to thank you for taking the time to give us your views about Icebreaker’s marketing of its underwear lines for men (Beast) and women (Nature). We understand your concerns, and we really appreciate the level of thought you have put into sharing them with us.

Gender representations are a sensitive issue in marketing, and Icebreaker certainly had no intention of promoting negative or damaging images of men or women in our Winter 08 campaign.

In most of our collections, our marketing approaches to men and women are almost identical. We aim to make Icebreaker garments as stylish as possible, but our clothes are based on performance above all – regardless of the gender of the wearer.

In our Bodyfit, Icebreaker_GT and Superfine collections, for example, women are photographed in exactly the same way as men – pushing their physical boundaries in the outdoors. Our marketing for the garments in these core collections centre on photographs of athletic-looking women skiing, hiking and climbing mountains. None of the images are of women in a passive or decorative role: they’re of women who are confident, independent, adventurous and strong.

We chose a different approach for our underwear ranges. For obvious reasons, we couldn’t adopt our usual approach of showing women taking part in outdoor sports – clearly they wouldn’t play sport in their underwear alone. The other factor we took into consideration is that Nature and Beast, although both underwear collections, are very different ranges.

Men tend to buy underwear for its practical benefits. Our aim was to position Beast as a premium range that has the same performance factors (such as breathability, a critical benefit for underwear) as Icebreaker’s outdoor clothing and yet is sufficiently stylish to be worn at work. Our marketing approach refers not to aggression, but to energy – the same energy (or performance benefits) that works equally well in both outdoor and urban environments. You’ll notice our marketing refers to “creative energy” and also the “harmoniousness” of nature.

The Nature range is our most feminine range by far, and much of our marketing focuses on the way it looks – its styles and its nature-inspired designs. Nature is made from the lightest, most luxurious grade of 100% pure merino, as we understand customers’ concerns against wearing traditional wool (rather than merino) against their skin, so our marketing talks about concepts like “100% pure”. While the photography for the rest of our collections is based around the outdoors, Nature images are designed to show off the styling and softness of the garments.

Our campaigns are designed to be edgy, and we’re very sorry if in this instance you feel our approach conveyed the wrong messages. Please be assured this was not our intention. Thank you for writing, and be assured we will bear your concerns in mind when planning future campaigns. I hope this email helps lesson your disappointment with our brand,

Regards
Alice

Arrive Alive is an anti-drunk driving organization. As part of one educational campaign, they designed these…stickers? posters? stick-ons? I’m not sure what you call them, but things to stick on the wall of public bathrooms to make people think before driving drunk. Here are two examples (found at copyranter):

I don’t quite know what to make of these. I mean, they definitely get your attention. But I also question the outfit they chose to show her in–what’s with sexing her up so much? With fishnet thigh-highs, a visible g-string, and stilettos, no less. And as copyranter points out, for the type of guys (and I know this is a specific group–this isn’t referring to men in general) who look for drunk women to have sex with, I think that top image might have a totally different effect than the organization is getting at. Maybe that’s part of the point–to scare women with the threat of making bad sexual choices (or being forced into sexual activities) while drunk. But then why put it in the men’s bathroom? I’m kind of stumped, really. Readers?

Just a side note, I’m thinking the poster at the top, next to the urinal, is just going to get peed on a lot (after all, there are already lots of urinals shaped like women), while the bottom one is likely to get puked on now and then.

This just strikes me as another example of a PSA that manages to be creepy without necessarily being effective.

Here’s a somewhat similar example. These ads are for Feed SA, a New Zealand-based organization to provide food to people in South Africa. They paid some supermarkets to put these ads in shopping baskets (images posted by copyranter at Animal New York):

I guess part of the point here is to make people feel uncomfortable while they’re filling their baskets with lots of food, in the hopes that they’ll go home and make a donation. And that, in and of itself, doesn’t surprise me; I used to foster dogs for a dog rescue, and let me tell you, we weren’t above occasionally using guilt or desperate appeals if we were in dire shape, and I think it’s a fairly standard (though not necessarily effective) practice among charity organizations. I’m not entirely certain why I find them disconcerting. Maybe there’s no good reason for it.

Readers, what do you think?

Last year the British Heart Foundation released this ad (found at the Mail Online) encouraging people to get a half hour of exercise each day:

It sparked some complaints, presumably because it says sex so openly and has a naked man in it. But it’s kinda neat to see an ad that shows middle-aged people with bodies that don’t necessarily fit our cultural beauty ideals, and acknowledging that they have sex. Of course we know people in their 40s and 50s have sex, but the images we get of women in those age groups being sexual usually depicts them as MILFs, not average women. I think many people are comfortable with the idea that men would be having sex later in life, but we often see them paired with much younger, hot women, not women their own age.

I went to BHF’s website. There is a page called Sex and Heart Disease. They also have a DVD available about sex and recovering from heart disease.

You might use these for a discussion of older couples and sexality, and how uncomfortable we are thinking about older people having sex in our culture. It would be a good topic to tie in to myths about sexual activity among older people. According to this Washington Post article, about 75% of people aged 57-85 who have partners are sexually active. About half of those aged 75-85 who are sexually active report having sex 2-3 times per month, and nearly a quarter have sex at least once a week. And yet our cultural images are generally that either older people don’t have sex at all, or that when they do, it’s gross. We also often assume that all older men have problems with impotence; certainly many do, but it’s not universal and often occurs much later in life that we might expect.

The American Psychological Association has a bibliography of journal articles related to older people and sexuality available here. Although they’re all from a psych perspective, they might be useful for gathering some basic data about the topic.

And, as I tell my students when we talk about aging and sex, I wouldn’t enter Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom without knocking.

See also this post about a company that used stories of happily sexual older couples to sell mortgages.

Josh M., Christine F., and Eric Q. brought my attention to the Medal of Honor series of video games. As far as I know, this is every version of the game currently on the market (that’s twelve total; all images found at this Medal of Honor website). In the game, you are a U.S. soldier fighting in World War II. Notice anything? In every version of the game, thus far, a white man is featured on the cover. I suppose it’s possible that some of the people in the far background in a couple of the games might be non-White, but I don’t think so. The image here is that World War II was an all-White war (or that gamers will only identify with a White soldier).

It is true that during most of WWII, Black soldiers were segregated in their own units. Initially they were not allowed to fight on the front lines, but that policy changed.  According to this National Geographic article, Eisenhower desegregated the army for a while toward the end of the war out of desperation for more soldiers on the front lines. Tuskegee Airmen pilots also flew with White pilots on missions. Voice of America says that over a million Black soldiers served in WWII (about half a million were in Europe).

There were also 22 Asian American soldiers fighting for the U.S., according to this New York Times article. Medals of Honor were belatedly awarded to several in 2000 (though at least some had received Medals at the time of the war, unlike African American soldiers). And the Department of Veteran’s Affairs estimates that up to half a million Hispanic soldiers served (the exact number is unknown because the government did not keep track of “Hispanic” ethnicity in the Armed Forces at that time). Finally, 44,000 American Indian soldiers joined the war effort (and according to the Department of Defense, that was out of a population of only 350,000 at the time).

Ok, so it’s a video game. Fine, whatever. It’s probably not a place to look for accurate depictions of anything. And of course there were more White soldiers in the war (though minorities were over-represented compared to their percentage of the overall U.S. population). But not even one non-White soldier on any of the covers? Really?

On the other hand, no African American soldiers were given the Medal of Honor for service during WWII due to racial discrimination. In 1993 the Army commissioned a study on racial disparities in rates of medal awards and concluded that 7 Black soldiers would be given the Medal of Honor, which they received in 1996. So I guess maybe it’s fitting that they’re missing from the Medal of Honor games.

Thanks to Josh, Christine, and Eric!

MissCegenation (see her take over at Reciprocal Crap Exchange), Miguel E. (of El Forastero), Breck C. (also of Reciprocal Crap Exchange), Rachel N., Laura M.D., and Z. (of It’s the Thought that Counts) all sent in links to Burger King’s “Whopper Virgins” viral video campaign (we’ve never had so many people send in the same thing; clearly it touched a nerve):

There are several interesting things going on here. One is the exoticization of the “whopper virgins.” The taste tests were conducted in Thailand, Romania, and Greenland. We’re clearly supposed to find it charmingly cute that they’re unfamiliar with hamburgers. They don’t even know how to eat them! We get to see people taking their “first bite of a hamburger,” and wonder at their unfamiliarity with how to pick one up and eat it. This short video about the Thailand taste tests illustrates this with the dramatic voiceover about people who have “never even seen a burger. Who don’t even have a word for burger.”

There’s also a certain level of ethnocentrism here; note the comment that these are people who “really live outside of things.” That all depends on what you mean by “things,” which here seems to be defined by exposure to TV and hamburgers. The implicit understanding, of course, is that these are people who live in a backward, “traditional” culture, which is fascinating to outsiders but, ultimately, very bizarre. However, I am sure that if asked these people would feel they live “inside of” many things, just not the things considered important to this marketing team.

You might also use this to talk about the pervasiveness of advertising. As the video makes clear, they went to Thailand, Romania, and Greenland in hopes of finding people who hadn’t been exposed to Burger King or McDonald’s advertising, since it would be “impossible” to find such people in the U.S.

I also think the documentary element to the video is fascinating. I’m assuming the teams did travel to these areas, and the video claims they are all “real people,” not actors (who are, apparently, imaginary). But I have a suspicion that some elements were staged. Of course the taste-tests were staged, but I notice that almost everyone in the videos is wearing “traditional” clothing. I might be wrong, but it doesn’t strike me as the type of clothing people would wear every day–they seem like pretty fancy clothes that you’d wear for special occasions, but maybe I’m wrong. If anybody knows more about how people in these areas usually dress, let me know. Of course, it’s entirely possible that people dressed up in their fancier clothes entirely on their own because they wanted to look nice when being filmed. But I wonder if they were encouraged to dress in clothing that would make them seem more exotic, rather than showing up in a t-shirt (which is, by now, fairly universal, though I’m certain there are still groups who have not adopted t-shirts).

The second half of the video, where the Burger Team goes to villages in each country and makes them Whoppers, is also interesting in the way it portrays the team as philanthropists giving these communities a unique cultural experience. I mean, I guess they are, and I don’t want to fall into the trap of romanticizing “traditional” groups and implying that they should be shielded from “modern” innovations because it would ruin their culture. And it doesn’t seem like the marketing team is really trying to build brand loyalty, since it’s unlikely they’re going to be opening stores in any of these areas (although they do make sure to wrap the burgers in Burger King wrappers). It does, on the other hand, make the video seem more like a documentary and less obviously like a commercial, which adds to its effectiveness as a viral ad. I dunno. Maybe this is just an example of a corporation doing something nice, and I can’t get over my general distrust of marketers.

Another interesting angle you might bring up in discussion is the spread of fast-food culture and standardized, relatively cheap production processes in general, often referred to as “McDonaldization.” There’s also an entire book on the subject of McDonald’s in Asia, called Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (edited by James L. Watson). I sometimes assign the chapter “McDonald’s in Hong Kong: Consumerism, Dietary Change, and the Rise of a Children’s Culture” in my intro classes to talk about cultural change; it’s fascinating how McDonald’s is to some degree undermining parental authority by appealing directly to children and empowering them to demand their favorite meals.

Laura sent us a link to a story about criticism of the campaign, found here.

And just an aside here: What’s the difference between a “village” and a “small town”? The word village seems to bring up certain assumptions about both quaintness and backwardness (and cultural isolation). I grew up in a town of slightly less than 300 people. Nobody ever called it a village. Is it a village if you don’t have paved roads, and a small town if you do? I’m just askin’.

Thanks to everybody who sent the video in!