In this two-and-a-half minutes of spoken word poetry, Dan Sully & Tim Stafford express their frustration with those who don’t take short men seriously.

Borrowed from The Social Complex, a heightism blog.  See also our guest posts from The Social Complex introducing the concept of heightism as a gendered prejudice and discussing heightism (and other icky stuff) at Hooters.

The declining birth rate in Latin America, depicted in this graph, is a nice example of the way that both cultural and social change affects individual choices.  Brazil is highlighted as an extreme case. It’s birthrate has fallen from over six children/woman in 1960 to under 1.9 today.

The accompanying Washington Post article, sent in by Mae C., explains that the decrease in the birthrate since the 1960s is related to migration to cities.  In rural areas children are useful. They can help with crops and animals.  In crowded and expensive cities, however, they cost money and take up space.  Economic change, then, changed the context of individual choices.

This transition — from a largely rural country with high birthrates to an industrialized one with lower birthrates — has been observed across countries again and again.  It’s no surprise to demographers (social scientists who study changes in human population).  But Brazil did surprise demographers in one way:

…Brazil’s fertility rate fell almost uniformly from cosmopolitan Sao Paulo, with its tiny apartments and go-go economy, to Amazonian villages and the vast central farming belt.

The decline in birthrate, in other words, has occurred across the urban/rural divide. Demographers attribute this to cultural factors.  The idea of “an appealing, affluent, highflying world, whose distinguishing features include the small family” has been widely portrayed on popular soap operas, while Brazilian women in the real world have made strong strides into high-status, well-paid, but time-intensive occupations.  They mention, in particular, Brazil’s widely-admired first female president, Dilma Rousseff, who has one child.

Ultimately, then, the dramatic drop in the birthrate is due to a combination of both economic and cultural change.

In this minute-and-a-half, sociologist Nikki Jones talks about the way that the idea of the ghetto has been commodified — especially in rap and hip hop — in ways that informs Americans who don’t live in inner-city urban areas, but potentially mystifies the reality of that life as well:

I’m very pleased to announce that Amanda Jungels, a graduate student in sociology at Georgia State University, has put together a new course guide!  Amanda collected and organized material relevant to classes on the sociology of sexuality.  This brings our list of materials guides up to four:

• Introduction to Sociology, by Gwen Sharp (Nevada State College)
• Sociology of Gender, by Mary Nell Trautner (University at Buffalo, SUNY)
• Sexuality and Society, by Amanda Jungels (Georgia State University)
• Sociological Research Methods, by Lisa Wade (Occidental College)

If you’re a graduate student or professor of sociology interested in writing a materials guide, we’d love to hear from you!

Cross-posted at Ms.

It’s time for a round-up of all the reader submissions illustrating the annoying habit of having products and products-for-women.  The phenomenon illustrates the way we continue to think of men as people and women as women, thereby centering men and men’s lives as “normal” and women’s as “special” (and not in a good way).

Anti-Monkey Butt Powder and Lady Anti-Monkey Butt Powder, sent in by Jennifer N.:

Alexander is a “little kid,” Isabella is a “little girl” (thanks Heather F.!):

Snippet from a consumer survey taken by Alison M.:

SMBC t-shirt order page, sent in by Mordy O.:

At REI, Jackie H. noticed, there are “road bikes,” “mountain bikes,” “recreational bikes,” “urban and commuting bikes,” and… “women’s bikes”:

And no men = people, women = women round-up would be complete without a sports website.  As Amy H. says:  “Basketball, Running, Soccer, Football, Baseball, Training, Women. Sigh.”

For more, see an earlier round up of the neutral male and our posts on the Body Worlds exhibit, “regular” t-shirts and women’s t-shirts, scientists and female scientists, Best Buy assumes customers are male, stick figures are stick figures who parent, default avatars.

I don’t know if “subliminal” is a real thing or just a layperson idea, but when I talk about media in Introduction to Sociology I show some images to show just how carefully advertisers are steeping their material in raw sex. I start with the image below.

I ask: Notice anything interesting about this image? Even in very large classes it usually takes a long time for anyone to see…

…that the shadow of the liquor bottle is pointing directly between her nearly bare breasts.

Here are some more:

This is a picture of an ad at the Burbank airport.  Notice the profoundly phallic shape of the foaming surf that happens to be pointing directly at the woman’s crotch.  The foam mimicks the crown printed at the top of the Budweiser bottle (in the upper left hand of the image in red).

And where is the rocket going?

This ejaculating bottle is in an ad for clothing in a magazine aimed at gay men:

What image accompanies the word “come”?

That’s Salma Hayak and Campari… or should I say Salma Hayak’s boobs and an ejaculation fantasy.

I love this one. Just underneath the banner you see two nuts, a thick pour and, let’s face it, a chocolate vaginal opening.

A vintage ad for Bright and Clear lipstick (found here):

Finally, Chappell E. sent in this Brookstone cover featuring a woman an an, errrr… automatic wine bottle opener:

See also our posts on ejaculation imagery, booby products, “boobs” in ads, other subtle and not-so-subtle sexual imagery used in advertising, and using sex to sell the most unlikely things.

In honor of Prune Breakfast Month, we’re re-running this post on the prune.

What’s a prune?

Answer One, the social construction: Prunes are dried fruit you serve to old people who need help with their bowel movements (though, hilariously, it wasn’t always that way).  This is epitomized by the Sunsweet slogan, “The Natural Way to Go” and illustrated in the following eclectic combination of cultural items:

Not exactly an appetizing advertising campaign, eh?  (Though my grandpa, and all three uncles, would totally wear that hat.)

Answer Two, the purely descriptive answer: Prunes are dried plums. Which, of course, they are.  Lovely, gorgeous, beautiful plums:

Mariani, not stupid, recently changed the name of their product from “prunes” to “dried plums,” instantly transforming their product from one for the constipated elderly to one for connoisseurs of exotic dried fruits.

From prunes:

To dried plums:

Words matter, is all.

(Images borrowed from here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

A new study shows that owners of run-down apartment buildings are selling them to each other  “in a criminal conspiracy to avoid having to do the legally required maintenance necessary to keeping their buildings habitable and safe” (BoingBoing).

A tenant advocate was working with the city to document unsafe living conditions in apartments — things like leaking sewage and lead levels that were causing mental retardation — and get the owners of the buildings to make repairs  “But every time documented problems were delivered to the current LLC [Limited Liability Company] owners by city officials,” the report says, “nothing would happen.”

When the city’s deadline approached to fix the violations, the old LLC owner would explain that the property had changed hands and they were no longer involved. The buildings continued to deteriorate as owner after owner avoided addressing the violations.

In fact, the buildings were shifting hands within an extended family.  Confirming the connections between the various landlords proved that “…properties exchanged hands not as independent and valid real estate investments but as a conspiracy to avoid fixing the building violations.”

So, it went something like this. The building was passing from one LLC to another:

But all the LLCs were controlled by people connected to one other:

So the family had found a way around the law, “allowing the owners to ‘strip mine’ the equity from the buildings,” while leaving tenants in dangerous conditions.

The authors of the report call this a “common slumlord modus operandi.”  You should read the whole thing; it’s pretty stunning.