Arielle S. sent in an image of an ad for a Christmas party two years ago at a nightclub in Miami. The ad says it’s a “bad Christmas sweaters party,” but as it turns out, that’s only if you’re a guy. For ladies, it’s apparently a sexy outfit party:

Because even at a party expressly about looking silly in ugly clothes, women aren’t allowed to not be sexy.

Similarly, Save S. saw these ads for GNC at the mall that make it clear what characteristics men and women are supposed to aspire to have:

So apparently  men aren’t worried about being sexy. And women want to look…radiant? I’m not sure what product at GNC would make you radiant, but I can’t imagine it’s good for you.

Jessica B. sent in a link to a really great post over at Pigtail Pals. The author, Melissa, analyzed the contents of a number of holiday-season catalogs advertising toys. She tabulated how many girls and boys appear in each, how many are shown doing gender-stereotypical vs. non-stereotypical activities, and the main themes of the toys.

Here are the results for Toys ‘R’ Us:

Images from the catalog:

Wal-Mart:

Target:

It’s particularly striking to me how few images there are of girls and boys playing together, a predictable outcome, I suppose, of our insistence that boys and girls need different toys — since, if must play with different toys, they won’t be playing together.

Melissa discusses the specific images on several pages of the catalogs — check her full post out for more commentary.

Today I’ve got another of my occasional posts of various items related to gender and technology. All of these examples either reflect the male gaze in tech-related media or reinforce the idea that the primary creators and users of science and technology are males.

Morgan A. pointed out a recent cover of Wired, which she read about on Cindy’s Take on Tech:

In her post, Cindy points out that Wired often sexualizes or trivializes women when it puts them on the cover, or uses women to illustrate stories about other topics rather than focusing on their accomplishments. A few examples:

So the first one mentions being naked, the second has a woman displayed synthetic diamonds, the third uses a woman to illustrate a story about being famous even if you’re a “nobody,” and Uma Thurman appeared because she played a character in a movie based on a novel by Philip K. Dick.

I looked at all Wired covers from 2005 through 2010. Of those, 46 had people on them, in either human or cartoon form (including body parts, such as the boob cover), whose sex could be fairly well inferred. And 12 of those, or 26%, had a woman (or female character, as with the manga cover) either alone or pictured with men. Those 12 included several of the covers pictured above, as well as one showing the lower half of a woman’s face as she puts a pill in her mouth. The accompanying text is for an article titled “The Thin Pill.” When I went to the article, I found this set of photos:

So we have part of a naked woman’s body to represent the idea of thinness itself, one image of a male scientist quoted in the story, and another image of a clothed man who isn’t identified.

In a similar example, Julie Alsop sent us a link to a post at twatterr about covers of magazines about digital photography and Photoshop. A few examples:

The twatterr post has a link to archives to see covers of back issues of a number of digital photography magazines, and as she points out, they tend to use lots of sexualizes images of (very thin) women. Passive, sexualized female robots/cyborgs are another common theme.

Merve G. sent in this video, titled “The Power to Create,” made by the University of Copenhagen. In the video, women are sexualized, and we see the male = active, female = passive dichotomy: men have the “power to create,” while women are the things being created by them:

Barbara B. N., a Research Fellow at the Technical University of Lisbon, sent in this Nokia video in which the woman describing the features of a Nokia product first makes sure to describe herself — she’s hot — and at the end of the video tosses her head seductively and invites you to choose another video to “see more of” her:

And finally, an anonymous reader let us know about the “Geek and Gamer Girls” video, a parody of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” created by four actresses who called themselves Team Unicorn:

As the sender-inner says, she feels conflicted about the video. On the one hand, the song does celebrate girls being geeky and into science and technology and other elements of geek culture often associated mostly with guys. But on the other hand, “the difference between the message I got from the song lyrics and the message I got from the video left me rather uncomfortable. I guess it’s only cool to be a geek girl if you’re really really pretty.”

Last month, Lisa posted a video of Jennifer Lee discussing the U.S. racial ideology with Dalton Conley. Jennifer (who teaches sociology at the University of California-Irvine) emailed us to let us know there’s now a second video, in which she discusses the difference between race and ethnicity, as well as how racial ideologies are socially constructed:

Peter Nardi, of Pitzer College, sent in an image that illustrates the social construction of race. He visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, and took a photo of a plaque on the wall that reprinted information published in the Johannesburg-based newspaper The Star on March 21, 1986. The article reported on changes in the official racial classification of over 1,000 South Africans in 1985:

Because race is socially constructed, racial classifications change as underlying racial ideologies shift, sometimes opening up opportunities (for instance, allowing groups to be classified as a less stigmatized race) but also often reinforcing racial stratification (such as when the U.S. made the “one-drop” rule, by which you were African American if you had even one Black ancestor, official policy, preventing mixed-race individuals from avoiding the stigma of being Black).

And I’m visiting my family until the 28th, so I will have very sporadic internet access. I’ve scheduled posts for the whole week, but I won’t be able to update/correct/respond much, so I apologize in advance. On the upside, my trips home often provide material for at least one post, so yay!

Talking Points Memo posted an article about a study recently released by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The study looks at misinformation about issues related to the 2010 election among the U.S. electorate. The survey sampled 616 individuals who reported that they voted in the November elections, and according to their methodology, was chosen to be representative of the overall U.S. population. After individuals were chosen to take part, they were asked to complete an online survey; those who didn’t have access to a computer were provided with a laptop and internet access. You can read more about this method of collecting data, which uses an online program called Knowledge Networks, here.

Of course, any study of misinformation brings up the tricky question of how to identify what is “true,” and how to do so in a way that isn’t itself political. The authors explain at length:

…we used as reference points the conclusions of key government agencies that are run by professional experts and have a strong reputation for being immune to partisan influences. These include the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Commerce, and the National Academy of Sciences. We also noted efforts to survey elite opinion, such as the regular survey of economists conducted by the Wall Street Journal; however, we only used this as supporting evidence for what constitutes expert opinion. In most cases we inquired about respondents’ views of expert opinion, as well as the respondents’ own views…in designing this study we took the position that some respondents may have had correct information about prevailing expert opinion but nonetheless came to a contrary conclusion, and thus should not be regarded as ‘misinformed.’

…

On some issues, such as climate change, there is a vocal dissenting minority among experts. Thus questions were framed in terms of whether, among experts, more had one or another view, or views were evenly divided.

The researchers first asked if respondents believed they had seen or heard misleading or incorrect information during the fall campaign. Overall, a majority of voters said they had encountered misinformation during the election, and over half said there was more misinformation this time than usual.

The results also indicated relatively high levels of misinformation on a number of questions. For instance, 40% thought the Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP, or the bank bailout) was passed under President Obama, when it was actually passed under President Bush; 43% didn’t know that President Obama has increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. And overall, respondents seemed quite confused about financial policies, with overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats getting questions about taxes, the stimulus, and the auto maker bailout wrong:

However, for most items, Democrats and Republicans tended to differ on which issues they were misinformed about, in fairly predictable ways:

Finally, the study found that source of information seemed to play a role. Those who said they watched Fox News were more misinformed than any other group, and the more they watched it, the more misinformed they were — whereas with most other news sources, the more news individuals consumed, the less misinformed they were. Viewers of Fox News were more likely to believe the following (incorrect) statements (from p. 20 of the report):

most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

the economy is getting worse (26 points)

most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

This pattern persisted regardless of political affiliation — Democrats who reported watching more Fox News were more misinformed than other Democrats, though less so than Republicans who watch the same amount of Fox News.

This table shows the number of respondents who said most experts believe climate change either isn’t occurring or that the scientific community is evenly split, by source of news and how often they view that source (p. 21):

They have the same breakdown of data for each question. In general, the lowest levels of misinformation were found among those who reported high levels of consumption of news from MSNBC and/or PBS/NPR. However, as the study authors point out, for a number of questions (such as those about the effects of the stimulus program), all groups had quite high levels of misinformation.

Of course, this leaves a number of questions unanswered: are people more misinformed because they watch Fox News? Or are misinformed people more likely to watch Fox News at least in part because it is more likely to reinforce ideas they already have?

And how does the choice of these particular questions, out of all the potential questions we could ask to judge how well- or poorly-informed people are, affect the results? I suspect critics might say that many of these questions are ones liberals are more likely to get right simply by answering based on political ideology, regardless of actual knowledge — for instance, someone who is Democratic might be more likely to say the health care bill wouldn’t add to the deficit, and thus be “right,” but answer that way because health care reform was a Democratic-backed policy and thus something they supported, not because they have any concrete knowledge about it. As we see with the question about the Chamber of Commerce, when a question doesn’t fit so well with liberal-leaning views (the Chamber of Commerce tends to be more popular among conservatives), Democrats showed high levels of misinformation as well. If we asked more of those sorts of questions, would we find that Democrats (or, say, those who report PBS or NPR as their main source of information) were more misinformed than Fox viewers?

Thoughts?

A  number of readers, including Mickey C., Lu Fong (writer and editor at The Good Men Project and Good Feed), Cheryl S., and Kelly V., let us know about Google Ngram. The program includes a database of a little over 5 million books and allows you to graph the frequency with which various words or phrases show up in books published in various languages over time (English can also be broken down into British or American English). Mickey and Lu each graphed the words “men” and “women” (see Lu’s discussion here):

Cheryl S. tried “shameful divorce” vs. “amicable divorce”:

The plateaus are due to smoothing, which presents the data as 3-year averages to reduce huge spikes and valleys from individual data points to make overall trends more apparent. You can change the level of smoothing. Here’s the graph with no smoothing at all:

Overall, the tool provides a way to track changes in language as well as social trends. Google provides some info on their methodology, though not as much as I’d like. Some key points:

1. They “normalize” the results based on the number of books published each year, to account for the fact that many more books are published each year now than in, say, 1800, so 100 occurrences of a phrase today means less than 100 occurrences then — that’s why results are presented as percentages, not as raw numbers.

2. Phrases have to appear in at least 40 books total to be included in the database.

3. Keep in mind, the dataset is not based on all books published, but of a subset of books digitized by Google Books. The database includes about 4% of all published books, according to a journal article just published in Science.

I suspect it will be an amazing time-killer.

To commemorate the last weekend before Christmas, when many will be out trying desperately to complete holiday shopping, I thought I’d post this image, designed and sent in by Joseph Moriarty in response to the craziness of all the holiday-season shopping frenzies (including the now-predictable tramplings):

Andi M. sent in a video created by J.C. Penney called “The Doghouse.” The ad tells the story of men sent to the doghouse by their wives for various bad behaviors, but mostly for giving bad Christmas gifts. A bad gift is a non-romantic gift, or a gift that is related to housework, or that implies a woman needs to lose weight or change her appearance:

As Andi points out, the ad portrays men as idiots or even actively mean-spirited. But I’m also interested in the way we define what are appropriate gifts for women. We often see “practical” gifts as perfectly acceptable to give to men. But increasingly, gifts for women are supposed to be essentially romantic, a symbol of love, not usefulness, a cultural trend the jewelry industry, in particular, has encouraged and benefited from.

In this ad, we have several “bad” gifts — more computer memory, a vacuum cleaner, facial hair remover, and a work-out accessory. All are presented as equally idiotic choices for men to make. So getting a woman something that might significantly improve her computer is just the same as giving her something to work out with, while actively mocking her body and eating habits. Any non-romantic gift is risky, even if accompanied by an attempt to be sweet (see the poor computer memory guy).

I’ve discussed before research on low-income women who complain when they feel that men waste money on romantic but non-essential gifts rather than stuff they actually need. On the other hand, I asked one of my classes about what they would consider an acceptable gifts, and I was (probably stupidly) surprised that many of the women in the class were adamant that useful or helpful items were nice to get, but only in addition to a romantic gift, never as the “main” gift itself. A couple said they’d feel bad if their female friends were showing off jewelry they got for Valentine’s Day or Christmas and they didn’t have anything to show, because their friends would assume their boyfriends/husbands weren’t romantic or didn’t love them very much. So it was less about whether they wanted jewelry than that they knew other women did, and thus feared their friends would judge their relationships if they didn’t get the right gift to “prove” they had good partners.

I think ads like this both reflect and reinforce this social pressure to buy the “right” kind of gifts for women. J.C. Penney tapped into an existing cultural norm about what kinds of gifts women want, and then reinforces it by presenting jewelry as the only means available to men to get out of the doghouse, and shows all women as being in complete agreement about what an acceptable gift is.

UPDATE: Reader Josh Leo pointed out that the ad also portrays the doghouse as a place men are tortured by having to do feminine things:

…all they are fed in “the doghouse” is Quiche and Chai Latte’s. This is clearly a statement that these foods are feminine an almost a form of torture for “Real Men.”