A new submission from Rucha S. inspires me to bring back our 4-year-old boob products post.  Hers is added last, so enjoy the scroll!

Sent in by Jessica F. and found at Trend de la Creme. Boob hot water bottles:

Boob ice cubes:

A boob/rocket-shaped “stress toy”:

The boob glasses don’t even make sense:

Taylor S. sent us this picture of “boob stress relievers” sold at a flea market:

Pitseleh S. found these boob clogs at boinkology.  You can also get these clogs with piercings or tattoos.

In comments to another post, Tim pointed us to this ad:

Many, many more after the jump.

These desserts, sent in by Breck C., are for sale in Japan:

You open the flaps on that image to see this next one–get it? It’s like a bra!

They provide several different girls, I guess to suit various tastes. The one on the left here is apparently for those who like their boobs square-ish. The one on the right is presumably for those who like prefer their women to be bored/irritated.

Laura L. sent this one:

I found these here thanks to a hint from Stumblng Tumblr.

Boob blindfolds:

I stole the next set from Shakesville. Believe it or not, there are even more there.

Shower dispenser:

Boob pillows:

Also boob pillows:

Boob lamp:

Boob beanbag:

Indeed, a boob bong:

Breck C. sent in this image:

Over at Jezebel, they offered this photo essay of a tit-shaped milk “carton”:

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a boob scarf for sale at etsy.com.  Basiorana notes that:

The boob scarf is made by Heather Cushman-Dowdee, a lactation activist, as a way to bring awareness to the non-sexual nature of breasts. She wishes them to be used to distract people from mothers who are nursing in public, and to bring awareness to the ridiculousness of anti-breastfeeding laws. Unlike the rest of the items in [this] post, her scarves are explicitly NOT intended to be sexual, and her intended audience is fellow nursing activists who wish to desexualize breasts.

She has a couple comics explaining their intent on her website, mama-is.com

Finally, Rucha S. sent along these Boobzie’s, can cozies to keep your beer warm:

Earlier this month, Lisa posted about the objectification of female beach volleyball players at the Olympics, discussing the types of photos and poses that are used when reporting on different types of sports, including gendered differences.

Autumn B. sent in another over-the-top example of the objectification of female athletes. The commercial is for RoadID, a company that sells “identification gear.” Autumn saw it while watching the Tour de France; she found this shortened version online, which she says actually features less objectification than the original did.

The main focus of the ad is a slow investigation of various aspects of cyclist Jenny Fletcher’s body. The camera travels slowly up her leg, then shows her full profile before zooming in on her breasts as she zips up her shirt:

Jenny Fletcher has no dialogue. She exists as a body to be broken down into eroticized parts for the consumption of the viewer. As Autumn put it, it’s frustrating that, a fan of the “the male-centric Tour de France,” that “when they do FINALLY feature a female cyclist, it is as a sexual object.”

For other posts on this topic, see Serena Williams’ patriarchal bargain, Sports Illustrated covers, feminizing female athletes, Serena Williams in ESPN magazine, and media portrayals of female athletes.

Today is Labor Day in the U.S. Though many think of it mostly as a last long weekend for recreation and shopping before the symbolic end of summer, the federal holiday, officially established in 1894, celebrates the contributions of labor.

Here are some Soc Images posts on a range of issues related to workers, from the history of the labor movement to current workplace conditions to the impacts of the changing economy on workers’ pay:

• What have unions ever done for us?
• Footage of strikes and protests
• “Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?”
• Target’s anti-union video for new employees
• Unemployment and support for unions
• Child labor, 1908-1912
• Mike Rowe defends blue-collar manual labor
• Jon Stewart on class warfare
• César Chávez and the fight for farmworkers’ rights (pictured)
• Hiring non-union workers to staff picket lines
• “A woman’s place is in her union!”
• Historical look at changes in types of work
• The “precariat”: The new working class
• The exploitation of worker productivity
• Luxury and the consumption of labor
• Can the minimum wage cover average housing costs?
• First-time mothers and access to paid work leave
• International comparison of workplace leave policies
• Discrimination against the long-term unemployed
• What kinds of jobs are we gaining in the slow recovery?
• Devaluing hospitality workers

The recession is over in the U.S.. We’re now in the recovery period.

This would be more comforting if the pace of the recovery weren’t glacial. If you pay attention to weekly unemployment numbers or monthly economic reports, you’ve gotten used to the word “disappointing.” Yes, the economy is gaining jobs, but slowly. At this rate, it would take years to climb out of the hole the recession left us in.

But the slow pace of growth isn’t the only concern. The New York Times discusses the types of new jobs being created. While the majority of the jobs lost were midwage jobs, so far most of the new jobs are low-wage:

We’re not gaining new jobs very quickly. And when we do, it’s hard to find a job that provides a solidly middle-class income among those that are being added, continuing the trend of job polarization that economists have shown is reinforced during economic downturns.

The Pew Research Center has released the results of a poll of 2,508 adults about social class and life experiences.

An important caveat to start with: the poll asked people to categorize themselves as upper (2% of respondents), upper-middle (15%), middle (49%), lower-middle (25%), or lower class (7%). We know that there’s a tendency among people in the U.S. to identify as middle class, even when their actual income falls far below or above what could reasonably be considered middle class, and the survey didn’t ask about incomes or assets to compare to individuals’ self-identification. There’s likely to be some overlap between the categories if we actually looked at the income/wealth of participants. The graphs below combine those who defined themselves as upper or upper-middle class together into the “upper class” category, while those who said lower-middle are assigned to the “lower class” group.

Not surprisingly, there were large differences by social class in a number of quality-of-life areas. The higher one’s class, the more likely they were to say they were better off than they were 10 years ago and were happy with life and rarely experience stress (though apparently we’re generally pretty stressed overall):

The lower class is much more likely than the other groups to say they are in worse shape than they were before the recession, indicating that they continue to suffer disproportionately from the effects of the economic meltdown and the slow recovery:

Those defined as lower class were much less satisfied with family life, their level of education, and their housing situation:

They were also much more likely to report specific difficulties in the past year, including trouble paying rent/mortgage and other bills, losing a job, and problems paying for medical care:

The results show a consistent, unsurprising pattern: the rich are weathering the slow recovery relatively well, while the poor suffer disproportionately. Check out the full report for information on participants’ perceptions of the wealthy, the fairness of the tax burden across classes, and which political party best represents each group.

[Note: The last item on this page might be NSFW in some workplaces; it’s behind a jump, but if you came to the post directly, be careful about scrolling down past the raincoats.]

Seven readers — Aneesa D., mouskatel, Brandi B., Lisa B., Jared B., Tom Megginson (of Work that Matters), and sociologist Michael Kimmel — all let us know about the attention Bic’s “for Her” pens have been getting, so I thought it was a good day for another round-up of the many items we have decided must be differentiated into versions for men and women. We’ve featured pens like this before; Bic’s are designed just for us ladies and our special pen needs, which apparently include the colors pink and purple and “easy glide” and “smoothness”:

The pens are for sale on Amazon in the UK, and they’ve inspired a lot of push-back over the gendering, with people writing reviews mocking the product and its packaging. Buzzfeed featured a number of the reviews, which highlight the way that internet marketing certainly helps companies, but also opens up more avenues for the public to complain about or ridicule products in a very direct, immediate way that can quickly attract others to do the same — a much faster form of complaint than the days when you had to write a letter to a company’s headquarters:

But don’t worry, guys! There are products just for you, too! J.V. is happy to report that there’s now a hair dryer for men, called the Man Groomer. After all these years of wishing you had some way to quickly dry your hair the way women can, a solution is at hand:

And Sean discovered that Planters is helpfully now selling cans of mixed nuts that are specifically chosen to support men’s health. Obviously women may eat almonds, peanuts, and pistachios separately, but when combined, these form a magical Man Food that addresses men’s unique needs for protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber:

UPDATE: Reader Kat says,

The Men’s Health on the can of nuts is because they are a product the editors of the magazine Men’s Health felt were a healthy option…The can of nuts aren’t gender specific they are just boasting their “award” of being well liked by the editors of this particular magazine. No different than when any other product has the label “recognized by *fill in the blank* magazine.”

In other gendered products news, Jessie L. noticed these face masks for sale in Taiwan. They are different sizes, but instead of simply presenting them as Medium and Large, for whoever might need those sizes, those size differences are clearly connected to expectations about gender. They’re differentiated by color, by the person shown wearing each one, and the pink package even has a heart-shaped hole that lets you feel the mask.

Similarly, Joonas L. saw his-and-hers versions of disposable raincoats for sale in Helsinki, Finland, and couldn’t see anything different about them except the color and the use of language (miesten = men’s, naisten=women’s) to explicitly gender them:

Finally, Megan C. pointed out an example of gendered personal lubricant. The exact same product it “Tush Eze” when it’s pink and features a woman, but “Anal Eze” in the blue bottle featuring a man. I’m putting it after the jump, just in case it’s not safe for some workplaces:

Last year I posted about a map several geographers put together showing the distribution of last names across the U.S. Historical immigration and internal settlement patterns are reflected in the concentrations of names across the country.

Now one of the geographers involved in that project, James Cheshire, has done the same for London. Using 2001 electoral rolls, Cheshire plotted the 15 most common surnames in 983 separate London districts. Here’s a section of the map of the most common name:

The size of the font is scaled to represent the number of people with each name. They’re color-coded by place or origin (though since many immigrants have Anglicized names, origin of a name may not reflect a person’s ancestry).

As Cheshire points out, a few names fill the top slot throughout most of London. As you go a bit further down the list, London’s diversity becomes more apparent. Here’s a small slice of the map of the 10th most common surnames:

Those of you with more knowledge of London, what noteworthy patterns do you see?

Trulia Trends has posted interactive graphs that let you look at crime by time of day in various cities in the U.S. Using data from SpotCrime (which largely relies on police reports to track crime), they plotted the commission of different types of crime. If you scroll over a city you can get details of the types of crime occurring at a specific time of day:

You can also choose types of crime, then get information on what percent of all crimes in each city fall into that category as well as its distribution throughout the day:

The graphs are useful for visually showing that, though violent crimes (shootings, assaults, robberies) understandably get more attention, the vast majority of crime is property crime.

I haven’t had time to go through and look for clear patterns or differences between cities or types of crime. Notice anything interesting?

Via Information Is Beautiful.