Last week the U.S. Congress made headlines when it quickly adjusted the sequester cuts that affected air traffic control. How quickly?  Parts of it were hand-written (via The Daily Show):
The move was interpreted as one meant to a certain class of voters, but it was also as a purely self-interested move, since Congress members fly quite frequently.

Riffing on this, Bloomberg Businessweek put together a short video about a little-known congressional perk: free and convenient parking at Reagan National Airport.

This little perk, saving congress members time and $22-a-day parking fees, is a great example of the way that privilege translates into being “above society.” The more power, connections, and money you have, the more likely you are to be able to break both the legal and social contract with impunity. Sometimes this just means getting away with breaking the law (e.g., the fact that, compared to the crimes of the poor and working classes, we do relatively little to identify and prosecute so-called “white collar” criminals and tend to give them lighter or suspended sentences when we do). But these perks are also often above board; they’re built into the system. And who builds the system again?

In other words, some of the richest people in the world get free parking at the airport because they’re the ones making the rules. I like this as a concrete example, but be assured that there is a whole universe of such rules and, like this sudden revelation about free parking, most of them go entirely unnoticed by most of us most of the time.

This vintage ad for a cockroach racing game is a great reminder that what seems normal isn’t necessarily natural or inevitable.  Most Americans today would grimace at the idea of playing with cockroaches, as the insect is held up as an icon of filth and disease.  But sometime in the ’40s, someone at the International Mutoscope Reel Company thought this was a good idea!  Or, then again, maybe times haven’t changed so much; the company went bankrupt in 1949.

From Weird Universe.

Scholars suggest that studying abroad in a previously-colonized country may increase people’s cultural sensitivity and awareness of global inequality.  I investigated this hypothesis by interviewing college students: one group had studied abroad for a semester or more, the other had only traveled out of the country for vacation.

I asked both groups to view and analyze fashion photography that contrasted models with more humble images of residents of less developed countries.  I hoped people would point to how, by contrasting glamorous, thin, conventionally-attractive White models with “average” people from less-privileged countries served to heighten the high status of the West and their representatives.  I saw this as a form of Western “slumming”: a practice of spending time in places or with people who are “below” you, out of curiosity or for fun or personal development.

My findings revealed that study abroad students think they’re more culturally competent but, in fact, they were no more likely than people who had never studied abroad to express concern about the exploitation of previously colonized people in ads like these.

The majority of students from both groups – those who’d studied abroad and those who hadn’t — demonstrated a distinct lack of concern.  They unreflexively “Othered” the people in these images; that is, they affirmed the locals’ marginalized group status and labeled them as being Other, belonging outside of our normative Western structure.

The majority also expressed approval of the aesthetics of the ads without irony. For example, one student said: “I think it works because it’s this edgy, culturally stimulating, and aesthetically pleasing ad.” When asked the art director’s intentions, another student commented: “I don’t know. Just like ordinary people next to someone who’s on top of their fashion game.”

Only select few students successfully observed the use of Othering in the images. When asked the art director’s intentions of one image, a student replied: “I think it’s to contrast the model with the everyday life of these people…  (it) feels more like an image of people of color being an accessory.” Noticing this theme, interestingly, did not correlate with having studied abroad, in contrast to my hypothesis.

My findings suggest, then, that living abroad for a semester or more in a previously colonized country does not necessarily contribute to the detection of global inequality in fashion photography.

Erica Ales is a senior Sociology major at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.

Research has shown that college students largely think that asking for sexual consent — “Do you want to have sex?” — “ruins the mood.”  This is partly because it violates their sexual script, the norms and expectations that guide sexual encounters.

If explicit consent violates the sexual script, then students are left trying to discern consent from more subtle and implicit verbal and non-verbal cues.  I did a research project to determine how they do this, interviewing 19 college students about their perceptions of sexual consent in popular television programs. 

I discovered that students often interpreted the same scenes dramatically differently. For example, I showed them this scene from The Vampire Diaries:

Eleven of my 19 respondents brought up the issue of verbal consent.  Five said the verbal interchange in the scene indicated consent; six said it did not.  Their contrasting perceptions focused on the male character’s statement, “Let’s get out of here.”  The five students who saw the scene as consensual were inclined to classify the declaration, “Let’s get out of here” as the moment where verbal consent is given.  For example, Hannah said:

…like I mean he doesn’t outright say “do you wanna have sex” but he says “do you want to get out of here” and she’s like “yes.”  That’s like the only one where there’s like an actual yes! [giggling] I mean like a verbal yes.

Hannah said the scene indicated consent because she equated “getting out of here” with sex.

In contrast, Natalie and five others disagreed with Hannah and those who considered the verbal exchange between Tyler and Caroline to be a form of verbal consent:

No, I would say, there was like no talk of consent, really… In the Vampire Diaries one, by him saying like, “let’s get out of here,” there might be an assumption associated with that and then her saying, “Okay,” like could be consent, quote, unquote.  But, I don’t really think that qualifies, either.

Natalie believed there was a correct way to obtain verbal consent.  When I asked her what would make this scene consensual, Natalie replied, “Basically saying ‘Do you want to, do you want to go through with this?’—something like that.”  Obviously, Natalie viewed consent as a different kind of verbal question.

The differences in these responses to The Vampire Diaries scene are striking. While verbal consent is often held up as the gold standard, I found disagreement as to exactly which statements constitute consent.  This disagreement sets the stage for serious miscommunication about students’ sexual intentions.  Some students interpret a phrase such as “Do you want to leave?” as “Do you want to leave this party and have sex at my house?” while other students believe that only a phrase such as “Do you agree to have sex with me?” communicates sexual consent.

Nona Gronert will graduate from Occidental College this May with a degree in Sociology and Spanish Literary Studies.  She aspires to become a professor of Sociology.

Clearly depicting a sexual encounter between two women, this billboard — posted on Doheny Drive in Los Angeles — looks like it would undermine heteronormativity: an invisibility of same-sex sexual and romantic relationships.

In fact, I don’t think it does.  For one, the aim of the advertisement is to appeal to male consumers. The women’s appearance is in conformity with the demands of the hypothetical heterosexual male gaze.  They have long groomed hair and are wearing sexy lingerie and make-up. They are arching their backs and sticking out their busts and butts. The performance of male gaze-compliant femininity is clear, making the male viewer an implicit part of the advertisement.  This enforces heterosexuality and promotes heternormativity instead of undermining it.

Moreover – and stay with me here – that implicit male manifests himself symbolically in the shaft of the champagne bottle.  The woman’s hand gripping the bottle turns this image into a depiction of a threesome rather than a lesbian encounter. This billboard, then, reinforces heterosexuality instead of disrupting it.

SocImages News:

Updates on Image Guides

We are super excited to have a new Image Guide!  UCLA graduate student Calvin N. Ho has collected and organized our posts on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.  His excellent guide joins our others:

• Introduction to Sociology, by Gwen Sharp
• Sociology of Gender, by Mary Nell Trautner
• Sociology of Sport, by J.A. Carter
• Sexuality and Society, by Amanda Jungels
• Women and History, by Lisa Wade
• Sociological Research Methods, by Lisa Wade

If you’d be interested in writing a guide on one of the other racial/ethnic groups — or on anything at all! — we’d be glad to make it available.  We’re even happy to have duplicate Guides, since every instructor is different.  Analytics show that thousands of professors visit these guides every year, so we’re eager to be able to offer more.

New Pinterest Board

We also have a new Pinterest page: the social construction of flavor.  If you’ve never heard of cucumber Pepsi, celery-flavored JELL-O, seaweed Pringles, whiskey toothpaste, or the delicious combination of ham and jelly, then this board is for you!

We’ve got 24 Pinterest boards, including sexy toy make-overs, what color is flesh?, gendered housework and parenting, “subliminal” sexual symbolism, and violence in fashion.  Maggie particularly likes “Women vs. People,” which collects images that expose the fact that men are usually the default human (thanks Maggie!):

Elsewhere on the Net:

This month SocImages or its authors were quoted in…

• Slate, Abstinence is not the Solution to Hook Up Culture
• The Tampa Bay Times, Hooking Up Isn’t Hot or Bothering
• Boing Boing, Why the Majority of People Now Favor Marriage Equality

Cross-post highlights…

• Ms., Occidental College Takes on Rape Culture
• Racialicious, The Stigma of Immigrant Languages
• PolicyMic, 100 Iconic American Companies Exploiting Prisoners for Profits
• Huffington Post, Law & Order Episode Quotes Rape Survivors, Calls Itself Fiction
• Pacific Standard, The Manly Origins of Cheerleading
• BlogHer, Why Have 16% of Americans Changed Their Minds About Same-Sex Marriage

Upcoming Lectures and Appearances:

I go on sabbatical next year to write in earnest, but I’d love to use my flexible schedule to do lots of public speaking as well.  Visit my website if you’d be interested in having me.  I have great talks on the value of friendship, the biology of sex differences, the politics of genital cutting and, of course, hook up culture.  And I do a pretty decent AKD induction ceremony/commencement speech.

I’ve already scheduled my first talk for next year; I’ll be part of the Bastian Diversity Lecture Series at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.  Looking forward to it already!

Tweets of the Month:

Aw shucks.

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.  Lisa is on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisawade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, and @jaylivingston.

In Other News…

I want to send a shout out to all the great people I met at the University of Akron this month!  Here are two pictures: one of my ascent out of Los Angeles and the other from the airport on my way home, waiting for the white-out to clear.  Oh earth, you play such tricks!

Los Angeles:

Ohio:

In a 2007 national survey, 40% of children adopted by Americans, both domestically and internationally, were of a different race than their adoptive parents (source). Transracial adoptions are very common.  But who adopts who?  If you ask Google Images, white families adopt non-white children. Six of the images below appear to feature white parents with children of color:

Why in America do we associate transracial adoptions with white parents?

One reason might be simply numerical.  White people aren’t more likely to adopt – in fact, the population of adopters is less white (73%) than the general population (78%) – but only 39% of adoptees are white. So, when white people do adopt, there’s a decent chance that they’ll adopt a non-white baby. Compounding this, they may be more likely to adopt transnationally because whites as a group are more affluent and so may have the money necessary pay the expenses of an overseas adoption, traveling across the globe possibly multiple times.

I think, however, that we also associate transracial adoptions with white parents out of bias.  Many Americans are suspicious that minorities might not be “fit parents,” especially to a white child.  In this scenario, we value white children more than other children and imagine that they should be placed only with good/white parents. Or, conversely, we imagine that it is only children of color that need saving and only white people that save.

The idea that people of color never raise white children as their own is illustrated by the story of Regina and Stacey Bush.  Regina is Stacey’s adoptive mother.  She’s black and Stacey is white.  Jessica Ravitz, at CNN, discusses the various ways in which the mother and child upset other people’s sense of what’s normal and right.  Ravitz writes:

When a young Stacey once started climbing into the van to join her family at an Arby’s restaurant, patrons came running to grab her, yelling that she was going into the wrong car. The girl was given detention at school, accused of lying because she called a young black boy her little brother, which he was. At a movie theater one time, someone called the police because they feared Stacey had been abducted.

These reactions reveal that many people still can’t imagine a non-white person raising a white child that is his or her own.

Hannah Rau is a sophomore at Occidental College. She plans to study Sociology and Art History.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter andFacebook.

Vogue’s photo-shoot titled “Storm Troopers: Celebrating Hurricane Sandy First Responders” features various images of models with workers of different organizations who combated the damage of Hurricane Sandy. Vogue praises the attributes of these workers in the caption: “when Hurricane Sandy hit, the city’s bravest and brightest punched back.”

Although the title and caption suggest that the photos are meant celebrate the hard work of the men and women who responded to the hurricane, they also serve as a foil against which the models stand out. In other words, this photo spread is at least as concerned with celebrating a look and lifestyle associated with money and beauty, as it is with celebrating the working class.  This is obvious for at least two reasons.

First – the weaker argument — the majority of the workers are dressed in baggy, loosely fitting uniforms; they are not wearing the make-up or striking the poses so cherished by magazines like Vogue.  The models, in literal contrast, embody high fashion.  Their expressionless faces and leisurely poses are the province of the elite.

The next image is particularly striking in this regard.  The glamorous model not only contrasts with the gritty workers, she is elevated above them; the eye is drawn to her ephemeral presence, not to the men and women below.  Their presence serves to make her allure all the more impressive.So, the class contrast elevates the models, figuratively and sometimes literally in these images.  We see race contrast used to do the same thing when Black men and women are used as props in fashion shoots as well as East Indian and Asian people.

Second – the stronger argument – if Vogue wanted to celebrate the men and women in working class occupations that helped after Hurricane Sandy, they could have left the models out altogether.  As it is, the implication is that the workers aren’t valuable in themselves, they’re only valuable as a setting for high fashion.

The photo shoot, then, instead of honoring the workers, affirms the class hierarchy in which they are embedded.  The photographs fall in line with the magazine’s message – a celebration of an elite lifestyle – one that is well out of the reach of blue collar men and women.

Eliza Connors is a first year student at Occidental College.  She hopes to pursue a degree in sociology.