Cross-posted at PolicyMic.

In this clip from a campaign rally, Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan argues that “traditional marriage” is a “universal human value.”

Ryan could not be more wrong. In fact, few practices have undergone more fundamental transformation.

For thousands of years, marriage served economic and political functions unrelated to love, happiness, or personal fulfillment.  Prior to the Victorian era, love was considered a trivial basis for marriage and a bad reason to marry.  There were much bigger concerns afoot: gaining money and resources, building alliances between families, organizing the division of labor, and producing legitimate male heirs.

These marriages were patriarchal in the strictest sense of the term.  Men were heads of households and women were human property, equivalent to children, slaves, servants, and employees.  Women didn’t choose to enter a marriage that defined her as property, she was entered into the marriage by her father, who owned her until he “gave her away.”

Ultimately, in response to feminist activism as well as other forces, marriage would change.  By the 1950s, a new kind of marriage would become ideal.  This is the one that Ryan likely means when he uses the terms “traditional” and “universal.”  In this model, men and women married by choice and were expected to find sustenance in their relationship.  Women were not legally subordinate to their husbands (that is, she was no longer property).  But the rights and responsibilities of husbands and wives continued to be defined differently.  Women owed men domestic services (cleaning, cooking, childcare, and sex); in return, men were legally required to support their wives financially.

The New York Times‘ Sabrina Tavernise reports that the long term trend of increasing life expectancy has reversed it self among one specific group of people.  Between 1990 and 2008, the life expectancy of White men and women without high school degrees has dropped.  Women have lost five years, men three.

The difference in the life expectancy between men and women without high school degrees and those who complete college are even more striking.  Women with a college degree can expect to live, on average, more than 10 years longer than high school drop outs.  Among men, the gap is even larger, a whopping 13 years.

The words “alarming” and “vexing” were used to describe this drop in life expectancy.  Scholars are still unsure of its causes, but note the stress of balancing work and family, “a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.”

Ultimately, they argue, as fewer and fewer people fail to graduate from high school, the concentration of disadvantages in those that do are making this population especially vulnerable to all kinds of ills, some of which kill them.

Hat tip to The Global Sociology Blog.

SocImages News

Paul Frank, creator of fashion icon Julius the Monkey, emailed us.  He wanted to let us know that he opposed the monkey’s appearance in a Native American-inspired fashion event that we used as an example of cultural appropriation.  The post and the follow up can be found here.

My unusually strong argument about Chris Brown’s battered woman tattoo (in which I drew extensively from Amanda Marcotte) was reposted at Jezebel and received a great deal of attention and debate.

Gwen was quoted at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish talking about awareness of beneficiaries’ awareness of their use of government programs.

I was quoted in the Deseret News in a story about the challenges faced by families in the age of the internet.

SocImages posts also appeared at Ms., Jezebel, and Racialicious this month:

• Racialicious, Nature, Nurture, and the Pro Athlete
• Jezebel, The Weight Watchers Life Trajectory
• Jezebel, Gender, Power, and Chris Brown’s Battered Woman Tattoo
• Ms., We Like You A Lot, Ms. Scientist, But We’d Rather Hire the Guy

Upcoming Lectures and Appearances

I had a fabulous time at Indiana State University this month and I’m looking forward to upcoming talks in California and Boston:

• California State University – Northridge (Oct. 8): “Female Genital ‘Mutilation’ in the American Imagination”
• Western Political Science Association (Hollywood, CA, Mar. 28-30): panels on “Public Intellectualism” and the “Twenty-First Century Sex Wars”
• Harvard University (Women’s Week, Mar. 8-14): “A Feminist Defense of Friendship”

New Intern

Please welcome Laura Bertocci, our new SocImages intern.  Laura is a senior History major at Occidental College currently writing her thesis on the American media coverage of the Chilean dictatorship in 1973, inspired by her recent semester abroad in Valparaíso, Chile. She has worked at her hometown’s branch of Patch.com, LA politics blog The City Maven, Forbes Magazine, and Gannett Government Media in every role from reporter to editor to photographer, and plans on pursuing journalism after graduation.

Most Popular Posts

Speaking of Laura, she collected this set of our most popular posts from September:

• Gender, Power, and Chris Brown’s Battered Woman Tattoo
• Confirmation Bias and the iPhone 5
• Mitt Romney and the 47% Meme
• Hidden Beneficiaries of Federal Programs
• Words: The Democratic and Republican Conventions
• Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies
• The “Sworn Virgins” of Albania: Social Rules and Accommodations
• Gender and Biased Perceptions: Scientists Rate Job Applicants

Newest Pinterest Page

Gwen put together a new Pinterest page featuring a collection of a SocImages audience favorite: Pointlessly Gendered Products.  See all of our boards here.

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff

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: @lisadwade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, @jaylivingston, and @wendyphd.

In Other News…

Wow, who’s that with the Bluth Company stair car!?

In 2010 we posted about a Boston.com slide show celebrating Oktoberfest.  We argued that, while many different types of men were included, the women pictured were overwhelmingly young and often had visible cleavage.  That is, the slideshow was an example of the sexual objectification of women.  In response, the slide show editor, Alan Taylor, sent us a note saying that, while he didn’t disagree and was sympathetic to our concern, he was limited by what photographs were available as well as their quality.

This year’s photos, I noted pleasantly, had exactly zero gratuitous cleavage shots.  I thought I’d highlight it as an example of how not to sexually objectify women in an Oktoberfest slide show.

In other words, look! It’s possible to take pictures of young women in dirndls without showing tons of cleavage!

MSNBC does a pretty good job too.  See also, Oktoberfest and Tradition.

In the 3-minute video below we see 100 people, filmed by Jeroen Wolf, from ages one to one hundred.  The one-year-old mostly just stares, the remainder look into the camera and state their age.

What I find interesting is the uneven way that people age.  As you watch the clip, people’s ages become increasingly difficult to pin down.  You know that each person is about one year older than the last, but their appearance betrays this knowledge.  One might look significantly older than the one before, or quite a bit younger.  How old we look doesn’t ascend nicely in a linear fashion,  but varies tremendously.  No doubt this is based, in part, on genetics and life choices, but it is also dependent on opportunities and expectations related to ascribed identities and social structures.

Enjoy:

Generally speaking, gender equality in the U.S. and other Western countries has involved women moving into men’s spheres.  We have not seen an equivalent migration of men into women’s spheres.  Accordingly, while women have integrated many male occupations (they are now, for example, 50% or more of law and medical students), many female-dominated ones remain heavily female.

This is perhaps nowhere more true than in early childhood education.  In a story about male childcare workers at Organizations, Occupations and Work, Lata Murti reports that only 5% of child care workers and 3% of pre-school teachers are male.  Numbers are also low in other Western countries.  In Germany, the average is 3.5% (and this includes all employees of child care centers, including custodians).

So, Spiegel Online reports, Germany has decided to try to do something about it.  Aiming to increase the percentage of men in child care to 20%, the government is spending 13 million Euros on a “More Men in Early Childhood Education and Care” program.

The state isn’t doing this, though, solely out of a passion for gender equality or a soft place in their heart for men holding babies.  They’re doing it because Germany has promised that there will be a spot in a day care center for all children when they turn one year old.  To fulfill this promise, they need more day care workers badly; recruiting men means that that other half of the population might fill out the profession.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Sara sent in an example of a phenomenon that I always find somewhat funny: the socially constructed life trajectory.

Never fear!  If you don’t know what to do next in life, the answer is out there.  When I filled my taxes out with Turbo Tax, it happily pointed a strong finger towards marriage, buying a house, and having children.  In that order of course.  A slide show about birth control options laid out my best choice depending on what it told me I was to be doing in each decade of my life.

Sara’s example is on the Weight Watchers website.  Under the phrase “Life Stages,” it nicely lays out a trajectory.  First you go to college, then you get married, then you have a child, and then you are old. (At every stage of life, though, you’re too fat!)

Get in line, ladies!  College, husband, babies, old person!  Oh, and make sure you’re losing weight every step of the way.

Last week a secretly-taped video of Romney made headlines. In it, he said that 47% of America believes that they are “victims,” is “dependent” on the government, and likes it that way.  SocImages, like many places around the web, did some talking about who the 47% of people who pay no income taxes really are.

In this post, however, I’d like to make a different kind of point about framing and the sociological imagination, inspired by Ill Doctrine‘s Jay Smooth and Slate’s William Saletan.

Reacting to the release of the video, the media returned to a similarly clandestine video of Obama that had made the rounds during his first run for the presidency.  In it, Obama refers to Americans who are “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment…”  So, six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other right?  Both statements are equally tone deaf and biased right?

No. In fact, one is embedded in a deep empathy and an understanding that circumstance (i.e., that thing that sociologists study) can shape one’s outlook, sometimes in negative ways.  The other is a straightforward criticism of a group’s character, with a lack of empathy and understanding.

Let’s take a closer look at how Obama introduced his (fairly criticized) comment about the bitter clinging to guns (transcript).  He begins by saying that people have a good reason to be unhappy with politicians:

In contrast, Romney’s comments are dismissive and accusing (transcript).   His targets — the 47% of people who are exempt from paying income taxes — aren’t embattled, fighting for a decent life despite political neglect, they’re “entitled” to something they haven’t earned.  They’re happy to be dependent on the government and don’t want it any other way.  They’re leeches, parasites, freeloaders, bums.

And, instead of saying that its his job to help those people see life a different way, Romney dismisses them entirely:

 [They’ll] vote for the [current] president no matter what… my job is not to worry about those people — I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives…

So, while some are arguing that Romney’s comments are just a politically-right version of Obama’s — equally biased and cynical — nothing could be farther from the truth.   Obama looks at Americans who will not likely vote for him and sees social structural reasons that their negative emotions are valid (even when they’re aimed at him), he expresses empathy for their plight, and seeks to connect with them.  Romney does nothing of the sort.  Instead, he condemns them as individuals and blows them off as potential constituents; and he encourages others to do the same.

In short, Obama has a sociological imagination that enables, even presses him to see the bigger picture.  He sees both individuals and the circumstances they live in.  Romney, for whatever reason, does not exercise a similar imagination.

Wanna hear it straight from Jay? I would too: