Americans are notorious for their ignorance of global issues and international news. This may be because Americans aren’t interested or it may be that our news outlets feed us fluff and focus us only on the U.S. Probably it’s a vicious cycle.
This month, for example, Time magazine’s cover story is about the political strife in Egypt… everywhere except the U.S. that is. Americans get “pop psychology” (via Global Sociology):
It turns out you can go to the Time website and compare covers from previous issues going back a long ways. Here are some more examples from the last couple years (I cherry picked just a bit):
Dmitriy T.M. sent in these previous examples a while back.
The cover story for Newsweek magazine’s September 2006 edition was “Losing Afghanistan” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. It was “My Life in Pictures,” a story about the photographer Annie Liebovitz in the U.S. (via):
The cover story for Newsweek magazine’s October 2006 edition was “Global Warming’s First Victim” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. It was “Off Message,” a story about Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s sexually suggestive emails and IMs to teenage boys (via):
The cover story for Time magazine’s April 2007 edition was “Talibanistan” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. It was “Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public Schools” in the U.S. (via, also see Time):
Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy: Americans are assumed to not be interested in international and global affairs… ergo, Time decides to replace a perfectly legitimate and newsworthy cover on a significant event in Egypt with some pop psychology item. As a result, Americans are less informed and knowledgeable on global affairs because they do not get intelligent coverage on that topic.
Australian sparkling wine manufacturer Yellowglen has been running the Bubbly Girls campaign for about a decade in Australia. The brand’s self-proclaimed goal of the campaign is:
Yellowglen celebrates women everywhere. We’re proud to be part of the celebration, and as such have asked three women who are living their dreams to be the Yellowglen Bubbly Girls. Who are they? They’re bright, beautiful girls who epitomise everything that we love about Australian women.
The marketing campaign actively employs a conflation of femininity and aspirational fantasy. The three women in the video were allegedly chosen because of “…the real life achievements of women and the female spirit.”
No evidence is given of any actual life achievements (i.e., experiences, career developments or highlights). Rather, the featured women talk about their dreams and desires to be famous by way of acting, music, or by spending their life travelling the world. No evidence is provided that they have even pursued these goals yet, let alone achieved anything worthy of note in these pursuits.
The rest of the campaign consists of the women modelling and drinking sparkling wine, sometimes making appearances at “fashionable” events such as the Melbourne Cup (a national Australian event worthy of it’s own post) as part of larger fashion-oriented campaign.
Thus, the campaign appears to re-enforce several patriarchal notions of femininity:
The genderization of “‘fun”: femininity, fashion, friends, social attention (and bubbles!).
Success is defined by fantasy; lofty and rather unattainable ambitions for careers based on appearances and social attention.
Celebration is “a day in the spotlight,” of pamper and attention; not the acknowledgement of tangible outcomes.
Has anyone seen a male-oriented campaign that ‘celebrates’ men in a similar fashion? I’m genuinely curious.
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Nick Green studies Arts (Communications) at Monash University and Economics at University of New England, Australia, with particular interest in social economics. He performs in Heartbreak Club (a group that creates semi-satirical songs about male narcissism), writes about wine and loosely related topics at the Journal of Sparkling Shiraz, and is employed by an Australian media company.
SocImages Contributor Caroline Heldman and I are giving a talk together titled “Do Friends Matter? Love, Family, and Friendship in U.S. Culture.” If you’re in Los Angeles, find us at 6:30pm in Johnson Hall, Room 200. We’re gonna talk about how great friends are and what short shrift friendship gets in American culture. UPDATE: Because of the power outages in Southern California, the talk was rescheduled for Tuesday Dec. 6th at 6:00pm (Johnson Hall 200, Occidental College). Say “hello” if you come by!
I’m also looking forward to talks at Harvard (for Sex Week) and the University of Massachusetts – Amherst (for a conference on public sociology). Both are scheduled for March; I’ll keep everyone updated and try to arrange a SocImages Meet-Up in Boston.
New Publications:
I’m proud to report that two academic papers of mine came out this month. The first, in Social Problems, uses the case of female genital cutting (FGC) to explore the challenges of building multicultural democracies. Called “The Politics of Acculturation,” it traces a controversy between anti-FGC activists and physicians who wanted to offer a genital “nick” to Somali immigrants in Seattle.
The second shows how reporters sometimes have the power to socially construct issues as one-sided, thus creating conditions in which they can act like activists (instead of “objective” observers). This paper, published in Media, Culture & Society, is called “Journalism, Advocacy, and the Social Construction of Consensus.”
Apparently the company has been getting calls from consumers and reporters regarding the Molson Cosmo/Playboy ads we posted about yesterday. It turns out the ad campaign is quite old (2002/2003) and they would like to distance themselves from it now.
Please do volunteer if you’re interested in collecting posts for a guide! We’re happy to have as many as we can, duplicates even. See our Instructors Page for more.
Best of November:
Our fabulous intern, Norma Morella, collected the stuff ya’ll liked best from this month. Here’s what she found:
Anjan G. sent in an interesting pair of ads that ran as part of a Molson beer campaign in 2002/2003. One appeared in Cosmo; it involves a man in a sweater cuddling with puppies and drinking a Molson. It’s an example of an ad that glamorizes a soft and sensitive masculinity:
The other appeared in men’s magazines, including Playboy and FHM. It tells readers, explicitly, that the first ad is designed to manipulate women into being sexually attracted to men who drink Molson:
The text is worth reading:
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WOMEN.
PRE-PROGRAMMED FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE.
As you read this, women across America are reading something very different: an advertisement (fig. 1) scientifically formulated to enhance their perception of men who drink Molson. The ad shown below, currently running in Cosmopolitan magazine, is a perfectly tuned combination of words and images designed by trained professionals. Women who are exposed to it experience a very positive feeling. A feeling which they will later project directly onto you. Triggering the process is as simple as ordering a Molson Canadian (fig. 2).
…
Extravagent dinners. Subtitled movies. Floral arrangements tied together with little pieces of hay. It gets old. And it gets expensive, depleting funds that could go to a new set of of 20-inch rims. But thanks to the miracle of Twin Advertising Technology, you can achieve success without putting in any time or effort. So drop the bouquet and pick up a Molson Canadian…
The second ad, then, portrays men as lazy, shallow jerks who are just trying to get laid (not soft and sensitive at all). And it portrays women as stupid and manipulable.
The two ads are a nice reminder that marketers count on their audiences being separate. They can send each audience contradictory messages, confident that most women will never pick up Playboy and most men will never pick up Cosmo. This is an assumption that marketers have long counted on. Miller Beer, for example, includes pro-gay advertising in magazines aimed at gay men, counting on the idea that heterosexual men, many of whom are homophobic, will never see that Miller markets itself as a gay beer.
So Molson was counting on women never seeing their ads in men’s magazines. Alternatively, they were perfectly happy to alienate female customers. Or maybe both.
In the three-minute video below, Kate Pickett talks about why life life expectancy, happiness, and the variable that links them, stress, aren’t strongly related to national income averages within different developed countries.
Guest Blogger Amanda Czerniawski on November 27, 2011
This picture — a woman marked up for the plastic surgery she would require if she were to look like Barbie — captures in a moment what Dove’s Evolution video took over a minute to convey — the media images and fashion icons that we aspire to emulate are constructions. Like billboard signs and magazine editorials, the pictures are manipulations that distort our sense of normal bodies.
We are trapped in a narcissistic world of images, where we must self-surveil our bodies with beauty as one of our primary goals. We invest in and manipulate our bodies and engage in body regimes to cultivate our physiques, often towards unattainable goals of perfection. We become subjects (in the Foucauldian sense) to our own projects of becoming, as we police ourselves and internalize a normalizing gaze. The only way to achieve these kinds of bodies, like Barbie’s proportions in this image, is through dramatic, invasive cosmetic procedures. Yet, we still labor over our bodies, continually trying to shape it in accords of dominant ideals. We have forgotten (or simply ignored) that these kinds of bodies are fantastical images.
As Naomi Wolf argued in The Beauty Myth, we are trapped in a cycle of cosmetics, beauty aids, diets, and exercise fanaticism; however, our bodies are no longer the same prisons Wolf envisioned. With the new advances in cosmetic surgery, we can achieve the near impossible. The important question to ask is why do we do this to our bodies? Increasingly, we have gone from being judged on our “good works” to our “good looks.” We place a high premium on the look and shape of our bodies, as it is the visible sign of our moral status and class position. Here, the Barbie physique may be possible if you have enough cash.
Amanda M. Czerniawski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She specializes in bodies and culture, gender and sexuality, and medical sociology. Her past research projects involved the development of height and weight tables and the role of plus-size models in constructions of beauty. Her current research focuses on the contested role of the body in contemporary feminist discourse.
Dolores R. sent us the newest message from associated with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Sponsored by both PETA and the Ministry of Waxing (a pubic-hair removal site), the ad features a fur-covered “wallet” (via Ms.):
I guess it’s just an ad for waxing your pubes, but the logic is so convoluted that I’m having a hard time getting my head around it. The fur of slaughtered animals is gross/unethical, so you should shave off your public hair? Pubic hair is gross and that’s how you know wearing animal fur is gross? Shave your public hair as a token of your objection to wearing fur? Skin yourself, not animals?
Or perhaps my problem is looking for a logic in the first place.
UPDATE 1: A reader sent in a clarification regarding the relationship between PETA and the Ministry of Waxing, one with its own sociological lessons about social movement organizations. It appears that the Ministry has donated money to PETA for the privilege of using the “PETA Business Friend logo.” While PETA has apparently made a deal with the Ministry of Waxing, they legally disclaim any responsibility for how their logo is used and it’s possible that they did not approve this ad. Details on the program here.
…PETA isn’t somehow being used against their knowledge; they’re co-promoting it. There’s no disclaimer, no weaseling out, no “we didn’t know about it”; this is 100% PETA-approved.
It’s that time of year when we savage the world with our unbridled consumerism. If it’s not a Black Friday stampede at Target, it’s a news story of a shopper who camped out in front of a Best Buy for over a week to score some discounted gadgets. Everywhere you turn consumers are whipped into a frenzy, children’s eyes are glazed over as they think of what gifts they’ll open, and romantic partners are stressed over what they will give their loved one to demonstrate the depths of their love.
When consumerism is exaggerated, as it is this time of year, it’s easier to see the cultural scripts and rituals that surround it. These cultural scripts tell us:
How to feel when we come into a lot of money or even just get a good deal
How to act when we receive a gift
And how to impute love from inanimate objects.
1. The Rapturous Consumer Windfall
Next to presentations of sex and bad karaoke there is arguably no other scenario played out on television ad nauseam more than the consumer windfall. Turn on your TV right now, and find an advertisement or game show and you will almost certainly see someone falling to their knees, eyes full of tears, as they praise the gods of capitalism for blessing them. Bob Barker (er, Drew Carey) play the role of Benny Hinn in this consumer revival smashing their open palms on the foreheads of game show contestants as they exclaim, “The. Price. Is. RIGHT!” (Watch at 0:51):*
Television advertising is a wellspring for this type of consumer exaltation. The best example of this consumer rapture is the @ChristmasChamp campaign from Target. Watch the video below and you tell me; is this woman having a consumer-gasm or what?**
Maybe it’s just me, but this ritualized consumer rapture gives me the heebie geebies.
2. The “Show Us What You Got” Photo
Leaning on the arm of your parent’s love, seat slightly sauced, your aunt turns to you and says lovingly, “oh show me what Santa brought you!” After you halfheartedly motion to the pile of loot on the floor she puts her glass down, grabs the family Polaroid and says, “Let’s take a photo to send to [fill in name of absentee relative].”
If we were to flip through your family photo albums I bet we’d find page after page of people cheesing with their unwrapped gifts held head level. This obligatory photo is the classic post gift exchange cultural script. Somehow a gift is only properly received when there is a photo to document it.
From my point of view, it is strange that we take photos of the things we receive during holidays which are tangible and will be around well after the event. But many of us don’t take photos of the moments with our loved ones that won’t linger and fill up our closets.
3. The Hand Dance of Love
Does he love you? Does your hand show it? The holiday season is a time when many will pop the question and boy do advertisers know it. While the issues surrounding jewelry ads are well documented on this site, I’d like to talk about the hand dance women are socialized to do after their love has been verified by an appropriately large shiny rock. After a woman says “yes,” she walks around with one arm sticking out like a zombie for the next few months doing the hand dance. This cultural script dictates that women flaunt their recently acquired diamond ring and then all women in their surround give their requisite “Oh, that is GORGEOUS!” There is a sad sizing up that goes on here, where women are shamed or praised for the size of ring bestowed upon them.
In Conclusion
Most of these cultural scripts and rituals go unnoticed or at the very least unquestioned. These acts are the mechanisms through which we objectify the social world and alienate ourselves from our loved ones. So this year why not participate in Buy Nothing Dayand double down on some quality time with your loved ones.
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* We should acknowledge that sometimes the people who are receiving these windfalls are desperate and totally deserving. I don’t want to shame or cast dispersions on anyone in this situation, but these are exceptions to the rule.
** Forgive me for sexualizing this, but I mean come on, that’s an apt description. While we are at it, this ad is chock full of sociology. We have an “empowered woman” who uses her power to consume; it’s the classic redirection of feminist energies into consumer. This woman, who appears to be the epitome of the middle class, white, privileged consumer, is flexing her muscles, exerting her power, and being aggressive enough to make Betty Friedan blush… ’cept she is using her power to purchase consumer goods from a capitalist system that creates and maintains her oppression. Maybe it’s just me, but I think feminist scholars would have a (justified) objection if I called this “champ” a feminist. I dunno.
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