A reader who asked to remain anonymous sent in a video about a recent interview by Star Jones with the lawyer for Kelsey Peterson, a teacher accused in 2007 of fleeing to Mexico in order to live with a 13-year-old student of hers (he was 12 at the time they began having sex together). In the interview, the lawyer for Peterson says he “resents” the boy being referred to as a child because he is a “Latino machismo teenager” (a phrase that doesn’t even make sense) and “manly”:

Notice that the lawyer also argues, at about 1:25, that teen boys have a high sex drive, which somehow excuses an adult woman having sex with a 12-year-old. In addition, at 3:30 in Jones mentions that some individuals have implied the kid couldn’t be a victim because he was physically larger than other kids his age (5′ 6″ in 8th grade, which doesn’t sound super unusual to me); it sounds like Peterson’s defenders have questioned his age because of his size.

Jones calls him out on his implication that Latino teens are hyper-sexual and therefore this boy shouldn’t be seen as a victim. At about 5:45 one of her guests discusses the adultification of non-White children — that is, the way they are often treated as adults, regardless of their age. Ann Arnett Ferguson discusses this process at length in her book, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity. This adultification includes assumptions that they are sexual at earlier ages than White children.

From what Jones and one of her guests say, it also appears that the fact that he was an undocumented immigrant has also been used as a way to undermine his ability to claim victim status. At about 7:55 a guest discusses the way that referring to people as “aliens” dehumanizes them, making it easier to deny them equal legal protection. (Side note: Jones mentions the history of immigration in the U.S. and in doing so says everyone in the U.S. is descended from immigrants, something Native Americans might find surprising, though I suppose if you go back a few thousand years to the migration from Asia to North America, technically yes, they are immigrants.)

When I searched for news stories about the case, I came across one at ABC news in which the boy is described as “a sexually-active sixth-grade student with a crush on her,” which seems to me to be reminiscent of the way female rape victims are often asked about their sexual history, as though they cannot be true victims if they have been sexually active.

The ABC story contains this quote from Peterson’s lawyer:

From the beginning, he was trying to entice her. There’s no question about that…He would try to kiss her, he would grab her, he would do these things. She didn’t initiate this relationship. That young man did.

Again the blame is placed not on the adult woman but on a 12-year-old boy. Peterson says she was shocked the first time he kissed her, which was in her kitchen — a place that maybe a thinking person wouldn’t have a 12-year-old student in. She also says his parents knew about and were fine with their sexual interactions; they dispute this.

Perhaps drawing on the stereotype of macho Latino men, her lawyer said,

He used to tell her what she could wear. And whether she could wear makeup and the length of her skirts in terms of where they were gonna go and what they were gonna do…He had a very, very strong influence over her in terms of controlling her behavior.

The comments to the ABC story are pretty fascinating too.

This is a disturbing example of the way that boys, and particularly non-White boys, are generally denied victim status when it comes to sex because our cultural beliefs include the idea that boys want sex and attempt to get it at an early age, and thus can’t really be vulnerable to sexual assault or coercion. For another example, see this post about how Jimmy Kimmel reacts when Lil’ Wayne confirms that he lost his virginity at age 11.

In “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost?”, Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist question whether athletic stadiums are a useful or effective means of economic development for communities.* When new stadiums are built, they are often heavily subsidized by taxpayers, particularly by issuing state or city bonds.

Cities do this in the hopes of improving the economy. They argue that new arenas directly create construction jobs and indirectly create more employment opportunities by bringing in fans who patronize local businesses. They also often hope that the prestige of having a new stadium will make the city more attractive to companies looking to relocate, as well as tourists.

Noll and Zimbalist looked at the effects of stadium construction in a number of cities, as have others. They conclude,

In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even  negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. (p. 249)

However, cities continue to subsidize stadiums, despite the evidence that they aren’t economically practical, as well as frequent public opposition. Among other things, they often face a form of economic blackmail: teams threaten to move to another city that will build them an updated facility, with fancier concessions, luxury seats, club boxes, and the like, if their host city won’t. While the benefit to cities is doubtful, the additional revenue brought in by these luxuries definitely benefits the teams.

I thought of their findings when I saw a video over at Jay Smooth’s blog about the new stadiums built for the Yankees and the Mets. It’s 18 minutes long, but it’s pretty funny and also highlights some of the issues Noll and Zimbalist bring up (particularly why teams want updated stadiums, effects on the local economy, fans’ differing reactions to new facilities, and teams’ threats to move if they didn’t get what they wanted). You might want to skip the intro, which is about 40 seconds long.

Stadium Status from Internets Celebrities on Vimeo.

* Source: Sport in Contemporary Society, 6th edition, edited by D. Stanley Eitzen. 2001. P. 248-255.

While I was at my grandma’s house this week I read Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, a fascinating book by Rob Walker. There will be more posts to come in the next few weeks, but for starters, I was struck by the results of a 2006 survey Walker mentions by the Pew Research Center. The survey asked people if various items were luxuries or necessities. Here are the results from 2006 and 1996:

Clearly, over time we’re defining more and more items as necessities rather than luxuries:

A breakdown of some results by age:

If I had to guess, I’d think the fact that younger people are less likely to say a TV is a necessity than older people is due not to less concern about TV but more willingness to watch content online. Does that seem reasonable? Other explanations?

The survey found that the higher a person’s income, the more items they define as a necessity:

The biggest differences by income were for dishwashers, cell phones, computers, and high-speed internet, which are more likely to be defined as a necessity as income increases.

The Pew Center’s website has links to more detailed breakdowns, as well as full info on the question wording, methodology, etc. And as the authors say in the summary, the results show only a one-way change: in no case did they find that the overall percent defining something as a necessity decreased between 1996 and 2006. As they put it,

The old adage proclaims that “necessity is the mother of invention.” These findings serve as a reminder that the opposite is also true: invention is the mother of necessity. Throughout human history, from the wheel to the computer, previously unimaginable inventions have created their own demand, and eventually their own need.

The income data would seem to back this up: what we have, we often come to define as necessities.

I would love to see an international comparison of some sort. I’ll see what I can find.

UPDATE: I haven’t found an international comparison yet, but I discovered that the Pew Research Center conducted the survey again in 2009 to see if attitudes had changed during the recession. Quite a striking change for several items:

d

Sorry for the sporadic posting. I’m visiting family in Oklahoma and that means very, very limited internet access.

Zac from Georgia sent in a link to some interesting images that illustrate the mismatch between what the federal government spends money on and what the media cover. This image shows spending only via federal contracts (not all spending) compared to all articles in the New York Times in 2009 (granted, a very small sample of all media coverage, so keep that in mind):

Contract spending data is available here.

This time we have all spending, not just spending through contracts; the Department of Defense has dropped down to 4th place:

In this video they posted at Feministing, Chloe and Samhita discuss Sex and the City 2. Enjoy!

Jessica L. sent in an example that simply and clearly illustrates the way that lighter skin tones that come closest to matching White skin are given the status of neutral, “regular,” unmarked skin. She was shopping for a sports bra and noticed that the colors included white, black, and a beige color, which instead of being called beige or tan or something of that sort is called “skin” (reader May points out that “tan” is used to refer to skin color as well):

For other examples, see our post on “flesh”-colored clothing.

Sanguinity sent in an interesting, if disheartening, report by Insight Center for Community Economic Development. The report looks at the assets owned by women of color and the wealth gap between them and men of different racial/ethnic groups.

An overview of wealth (the value of all assets minus the value of debts) broken down by race/ethnicity and type of household:

Of course, the most striking finding there are the major disparities by race, particularly how much wealth White non-Hispanics have compared to all other groups (largely due to owning more valuable homes). Notice that single White men and women have higher median household wealth than married Black or Hispanic couples. This is astounding.

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely than Whites to have no wealth at all, or to have debts outweigh all assets; again, unmarried Whites are better off in this regard than are married Blacks and Hispanics:

Among single parents, women appear to bear a disproportionate amount of the financial hardships of caring for children. White single mothers with children of any age (second column) have only 57% as much wealth as White single fathers; the equivalent ratio for Blacks is 0.4% and for Hispanics, 5%. Read that again: 0.4% and 5% as much wealth as single fathers from the same race! And take a look at the actual cash value: median wealth for Black women is $100, and for Hispanic women, it’s $120!

But then look at that third column! If you’re a single mother and have children under the age of 18 — who are more likely to be living with you than with their father — your financial picture is pretty dismal. Black and Hispanic women with children under age 18 have a median wealth of zero, meaning half have no wealth at all or owe more than all their assets combined are worth. Even White women, who are absolutely wealthy by comparison, have only 14% as much wealth as White single fathers with children under age 18.

Thinking about the implications of those numbers — the very meager financial resources available to many families, the particularly difficult situation of single mothers of all races, what this means for a family’s ability to cope with a crisis such as a car breaking down or a medical emergency, the ability to come up with deposits for an apartment — is mind-blowing.

The report has quite a bit of other information too, so if you’re interested in this topic, go check it out.

Sabriel let us know about a story at Gawker about the repeated use of nearly identical covers for Men’s Health. For instance, here are the “Six-Pack Abs!” covers from December 2006, April 2007, March 2006, and April 2008 (it was used a couple of other times, too):

They used the “Lose Your Gut!” template repeatedly, including in May 2009, October 2008, and March 2005, among others:

The editor responded by saying that the reused covers are only on the newsstand editions; subscribers get different versions, though even then, there’s quite a bit of repeating.

But regardless, I’m not interested in the fact that a magazine was recycling covers per se. I was struck by two things. First, the repeated covers make clear how much men’s midsections have become objects of scrutiny, the area to work on and obsess about, and by which your physique is judged. From Gawker:

Since 2007, Men’s Health has led with “Flat-Belly Foods,” “Get Back Into Shape,” and “Lose Your Gut” at least twice a year, and a “Six-Pack Abs” at least once a year since 2005.

Second, the degree to which cover lines can be reused, and content is interchangeable, underscores the degree to which these types of magazines — whether aimed at men or women — are selling us the same story, month after month. That story is: you aren’t good enough, your body isn’t good enough, but we have the secret to fixing it (lose weight, gain muscle), getting great sex (or, in the case of women, pleasing your guy), and improving your life in other ways (men = make more money, women = deal with a difficult coworker). The magazines are selling you slightly modified versions of that story because that story is what advertisers want you to get.

This might be a particularly literal repackaging of that theme, but other fashion/health/exercise/gossip magazines are doing the same thing in a somewhat more subtle form.