Nicole S. sent us screenshots of two sets of books she saw for sale online at Barnes & Noble. They provide us with some very important information about how men and women differ, as well as the types of things/activities/emotions that have been masculinized or feminized. Not sure if you’re speaking to a man or a woman? Check to see what pet they have with them:

And don’t be fooled into thinking parents are interchangeable. They serve very different roles. Dads are for playing with. Moms need to stay in the house and bake while you’re out playing catch with Dad, and then console you when you get hit in the face with the baseball:

I would provide some more sociological analysis here, but I’m distressed to realize I’m not fitting into appropriate gender roles, so I need to run to the animal shelter and trade in my dogs for a couple more cats to go with the one I ended up with when an ex-boyfriend abandoned her, which he must have done after realizing owning her was feminizing him.

As for understanding me through my cat, the other day I was ignoring her while I read a book so she came up and bit me on the nose hard enough to draw blood, so apparently I’m either a masochist or an aggressive self-involved brat, depending on whether you judge me by my cat, or by what I put up with from her.

Carol C. sent in another example of the male = active, female = passive dichotomy, this time from Lego. They have a line called Lego City, which contains four figures and various accessories:

While you can obviously pose the characters however you want, Lego’s description of the set clearly assumes men are in more active, with specific work-related roles:

Meet the residents of LEGO® City!

LEGO® City is one busy place! As the girl listens to the radio on the park bench, the nearby policeman directs cars at the traffic light, the delivery boy hurries with an important package on his cart, and the businessman heads to his next meeting. Includes minifigures, street signs, accessories and more!

The men have jobs and things they are going to do. The girl — the only one here not in a uniform — sits on a bench.

Though she’s listening to the radio (on a boombox from, like, 1989), and possibly being hit on by the delivery boy, so maybe those are supposed to count as being active.

Martin W. found two neat graphs over at The Horizon that show the 2000 world population’s distribution by latitude and longitude.

It’s not that they’re shocking, in the sense that of course we’d expect more people to be living in temperate/tropical latitudes than in the Arctic, given availability of resources to support human settlements (at least until the development of modern conveniences like heat, canned food, and quick transportation to get them to people far from their sources). And the huge spikes where China and India are make sense too. But I still think it’s visually striking to see, for instance, how little of the world’s population is located in the Americas. And the patterns we see here certainly have important implications for global economic development and the likely highly uneven distribution of negative impacts of environmental/climate change, among other issues.

But then, I’m also just a geek about maps and like looking at them in general.

I found this Levi’s ad a while back and kept forgetting to post it:

What I think is interesting is the implicit class element, in which “men in suits” (presumably middle- and upper-middle-class white-collar workers) are less authentically American. The message is that hard working, jeans-wearing people are true Americans (notice the flag). Of course, it’s also a commentary on masculinity; the type of men who dominate economic and political life today are, from this perspective, lesser men compared to earlier generations of blue-collar workers.

For other examples of class and masculinity in ads, see old vs. new money in a Smirnoff video, upper-class dogs are sissies, and Acura says trust-fund money is out.

Etan B. sent in an interesting case of both stereotyping women (generally as annoying) and interpreting everything they do through the lens of gender difference. Dan Steinberg posted an article on D.C. Sports Blog, a blog of the Washington Post, about comments yesterday by Rob Dibble, a sports commentator for Fox News and for the D.C. baseball team the Nationals on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network channel during televised games. Dibble was apparently fascinated by the fact that a group of women attended the game and, like, talked and stuff. Here are the women to whom he repeatedly referred (he’s also the one who circled them on the screen so viewers could clearly see them):

Steinberg transcribed some of Dibble’s comments:

Those ladies right behind there, they haven’t stopped talking the whole game…They have some conversation going on. Right here…There must be a sale tomorrow going on here or something….Their husbands are going man, don’t bring your wife next time.

Then:

…now they’re back there, they’re eating ice cream and talking at the same time…

Later:

…they’re right there, still talking…

And:

I was just thinking, those women, there’s a new series, Real Housewives of D.C., that just came out…Maybe they’re filming an episode?

This is a perfect example of the way we interpret behavior depending on the gender of the person engaging in it. While I’m by no means a big fan, I have been to baseball games, everything from my nephew’s Little League game for 6-year-olds (seriously hilarious, since the kids mostly run from the ball, stare into space, and have very little idea what’s going on) to major-league games. Everyone eats and talks during the game, at the same time, even. Quite a few spectators consume a lot of beer, after which their conversations become more animated. Sure, they pay more attention at some times than others, but going to a baseball game is a pretty social event that does not involve staring intently at the field at all moments. In fact, the very fact that Dibble was making all these comments means he wasn’t focusing solely on events on the field himself.

But these mundane activities drew Dibble’s attention because women were doing them. Since he stereotypes women as not having a real interest in baseball, their presence, and willingness to talk and eat food, and then talk more, is a sign that they aren’t there for the right reasons and are probably ruining the game for the men around them. They must be talking about typically girly things like shopping. Or maybe they’re there because they’re part of a TV show! That is definitely the most logical explanation.

In a society where gender differences are emphasized, and where femininity is devalued, anything women do may be viewed negatively, even when (or because) men do the exact same thing. The things these women did would almost certainly go unnoticed if a group of men did them, and wouldn’t have attention drawn to them throughout the game. But because it was women, eating and talking becomes noteworthy and bizarre, if not outright annoying, and their presence at all requires explanation.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight posted this graph that shows changes in attitudes toward same-sex marriage over time (each dot represents a poll Silver considers reliable). As he points out, there seems to be an acceleration in positive attitudes toward same-sex marriage:

CNN just conducted the first poll showing that a majority of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal. That’s just one poll, and we’ll need to see more data, obviously. But we can clearly see that an increasing number of polls show the % favoring same-sex marriage at or above 45%. A regression of all the polls shows a 4 percentage point increase in the last 16 months alone. If this trend continues, we should be nearing the point where differences in support for and opposition to same-sex marriage would fall within the margin of error.

Silver suggests that activism among gay and lesbian rights groups, including a specific push for recognition of same-sex marriages, has led to more acceptance:

Something to bear in mind is that it’s only been fairly recently that gay rights groups — and other liberals and libertarians — shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise…it seems that, in general, “having the debate” is helpful to the gay marriage cause…

Of course, presuming this trend continues and we soon have a majority (even if not an overwhelming one) of Americans supporting legalization of same-sex marriage, that does not necessarily translate into legalization. Acceptance of same-sex marriage is surely unevenly distributed across the U.S. If legalization is left to the states, we can assume some will be much more likely to accept same-sex marriages than others, continuing the patchwork system we have now where gays and lesbians may find themselves married in one state but unmarried if they go on vacation to a neighboring one. National legislation to legalize same-sex marriage would be strongly opposed by a number of legislators from districts where acceptance is below the national average; I’m guessing that even many Democrats, who are usually depicted as more friendly to gay and lesbian rights than Republicans, would not go so far as to vote to legalize gay marriage in the near future. During the campaign, Obama and Biden clearly stated that they supported civil unions but not marriage for same-sex couples.

On the other hand, the federal judicial system could take this out of the hands of Congress and the Senate, or individual states; same-sex marriage could be legalized whether or not a majority of Americans supported it. But short of that, while changes in public attitudes toward same-sex marriage certainly present an encouraging picture for supporters, I think legislative action to actually legalize it is likely to lag significantly behind overall public acceptance.

In Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker discusses the “mysterious return of PBR.” When I was an undergrad in Oklahoma in the late ’90s, PBR had very distinct connotations: it was a crappy, cheap beer you only drank if you didn’t have the money to buy better beer.  I know this in large part because I had a number of friends who weren’t in college and lived on low incomes for various reasons, including some who were in bands and kept crappy day jobs just until they got their big record deal. [Just FYI: a punk-influenced song about Schrodinger’s cat can be quite catchy and informative, but it may not be the key to fame and fortune.]

I digress. The point is, they often drank PBR because it was cheap. As far as I could tell, they didn’t do so out of a sense that PBR was good or cool, but because they could buy larger quantities of it than other beer (I was never a beer drinker, so I wasn’t directly engaged in the decision-making process about which brand to buy). It was the beer version of ramen noodles: not necessarily exciting, but it’ll suffice if it’s all you can buy. And at various times I would overhear other people make nasty comments about PBR. It, and its drinkers, were, to put it bluntly, considered trashy by a lot of people.

But as Walker describes, PBR has become hip in a lot of places. Walker describes its resurgence since about 2002, when sales, which had dropped precipitously over the last twenty years, suddenly rose 5%. Portland, OR, seems to be the epicenter of the rediscovery of PBR, though it soon spread to other cities, with trendy bars adding it to their menu.

PBR, surprised by this, set about finding out what was going on. They eventually decided that PBR had become a “protest brand,” the non-hyped underdog beer that hipsters chose because it was non-mainstream and wasn’t constantly pushed at them by a PR machine. As a result, PBR rejected a lot of standard marketing tactics (though they did pay to have the beer placed in the 2009 movie Whip It, among others). Instead, they chose to focus on sponsoring events that the new customer base attended or participated in, but in a relatively quiet, non-intrusive way. Here’s a post for an event PBR is sponsoring this Saturday in Atlanta:

Part of PBR’s image, and attraction to people who consider themselves outsiders, is its association with what Walker calls a “blue-collar, honest-workingman, vaguely anticapitalist image” (p. 113). It’s old-school, blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth beer from the days of Milwaukee’s manufacturing and beer-producing glory. When you buy PBR, it lists a P.O. Box in Milwaukee, and the website lists Milwaukee at the bottom of the page.

Except…not so much. PBR is no longer headquartered in Milwaukee. In 1985 PBR was purchased by a man who was buying up a lot of low-market-share beer companies. He moved the headquarters to San Antonio (in May of this year he announced he sold PBR to another company; the headquarters are now in a suburb of Chicago). The move put about 250 people in Milwaukee out of work, including a lot of the blue-collar workers the beer is associated with.

On top of that, PBR doesn’t actually make beer anymore. Miller brews beer for the company, which then packages it in PBR cans. PBR is no longer a producer of beer; it’s a name and logo attached to beer made by a company many of the people drinking PBR would probably dislike.

On the one hand, PBR is a case that shows how consumers make decisions and can affect the marketplace independent of advertising campaigns; PBR certainly wasn’t spending a lot of money trying to woo this new demographic and didn’t initially know quite what to make of it. A group of consumers identified with PBR. That is, they saw the company as like them. They dislike in-your-face marketing, the feeling that companies are trying to manipulate them. They’re outsiders who see themselves as dissenters from a lot of mainstream culture. And PBR fits well with this identity; it’s the underdog, old-school beer company that isn’t actively trying to win over consumers. No TV commercials, no PBR babes in bikinis giving away free samples at bars. And it has working-class cachet.

But much of this is symbolic. Buying PBR makes money for Miller, a company that uses the loud marketing techniques hipsters express disdain for. At this point, you could argue that PBR is simply a beer fashion label. And while it might have associations with the working-class, the process of outsourcing its beer to Miller and moving headquarters to a different state left quite a few members of that class out of work. Walker argues that this indicates a new form of solidarity with blue-collar workers. It isn’t about making sure you’re buying from companies that pay a living wage or fighting for better working conditions. Symbolic solidarity — paying a nod to the working class by buying products (beer, clothing, etc.) — is often seen as sufficient. By drinking PBR you’re identifying with blue-collar workers in spirit, if not in any specific, concrete way.

PBR capitalizes on the perceptions of the brand while engaging in or working companies who engage in many of the practices that those who repopularized it were rejecting when they switched to PBR in the first place.

And, just to add one more twist to the story…in China, PBR sells a specialty beer called Blue Ribbon 1844:

How much does the beer sold by the cheap, working-class company cost in China? Why, $44 a bottle. A PBR executive who oversees the Asian market explains, “There’s the nouveau riche, and in China, perception is everything—look at me, I’m rich.” Not exactly the bike-messenger hipster crowd.

So there you go…the long, bizarre, contradictory story of PBR.

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UPDATE: I got an email from an employee of PBR, who says this in defense of the brand:

I just want clear up a huge misunderstanding…We actually are independent American Company, not owned by Miller Brewing. Pabst itself contracts out all its production to other breweries, and has become, in effect, a “virtual brewery.” This keeps our beer fresh and saves us the cost of shipping large distances. It saves the earth, and helps us keep cost low. Many brand do this, also a few micro brands, you be surprised. We are 100% American Company. We also have NOTHING to do with the China Brand. They are a totally separate company just to let  you know.

I thought it was only fair to share his viewpoint. However, I don’t know that there’s really a misunderstanding there. I know PBR isn’t owned by Miller, but rather that the company outsources production of their beer, and I *think* my discussion made that distinction. I apologize if anyone was confused by that. As for my assertion that buying PBR makes money for Miller, it’s not because Miller directly owns them, but because they get money for the outsourcing, which common sense indicates they profit from or they wouldn’t keep doing it.

I’m more skeptical about the claim that PBR has nothing to do with the China beer. The Chinese website for the beer has the regular PBR logo prominently displayed on both the site itself and the poster for the beer:

Crystal and Corina C. sent in this image of an ad for Snack Factory Pretzel Crisps that recently appeared around NYC (from The Gothamist):

The ads led to some local resistance among those who felt the tagline, while meant to refer to the size of the pretzels, also links to ideas about body size. Here’s a video of a man making some modifications to one of the ads (from Salon):

According to NYC the Blog,

Responding to the criticisms via Twitter, Pretzel Crisps insisted they are just “using the word ‘thin’ in a creative way to describe our product,” and people are “interpreting [the ads] in their own way.”

Later they made another statement:

We hope people noticed what isn’t in the ads: No extra thin, scantily clad female models; No mention of dieting programs, points, etc… Our website and facebook page are all about EATING. We talk about pairing our product in different ways for appetizers. We want people to eat.

Finally, Pretzel Crisps announced they’re taking down the ads.

What struck me was the importance of social media in this whole process. Sites such as NYC the Blog publicized the resistance, magnifying its effect (would the company have even known about the guy pasting images to their ad if he hadn’t gotten NYC the Blog to post his video of it?); Pretzel Thins responded via Twitter; and the ongoing publicity of the criticisms as well as complaints to the company (which are a lot easier to make as a response to a tweet than if you have to look up contact info and get in touch individually) eventually led the company to end the ad campaign.

For a different example of resistance, see Lisa’s recent post on an astroturf protest campaign.

UPDATE: Well. As commenter Rebecca pointed out, they replaced those ads with new ones that indicate they may not have quite gotten the point of the criticisms (via Jezebel):