In a previous post I embedded a video of a small child worshipping, arguing that it illustrated how children learn “the culturally-specific rules guiding the performance of devotion.”  The video below is a similar case, showing how a young child of about the same age, who has yet to learn to speak, has nonetheless absorbed the rhythms, emotional expression, and gestures customary among preachers in the particular faith in which he is being raised:

Discovered thanks to Dmitriy T.M.

The cover of January Cosmo is as sexed-up as ever — on newsstands at least. But we got a copy of the version the mag sends to advertisers, and it’s significantly more chaste. What’s going on here?

Note the miraculous disappearance of “60 Sex Tips” and “Orgasm Virgins” — suddenly, Cosmo‘s appropriate for your grandma! Or your grandma’s favorite retailer — a tipster suggests that the cleaned-up cover is meant to be “more appropriate for conservative [advertising] clients, which the ad sales team is hoping to fool.” If so, they’re not doing a very good job — the table of contents in the ad-friendly version still lists both the sex tips and the orgasm piece as cover stories.

A spokesperson for Cosmo offered this terse comment in response to our queries: “It is common for magazines to have different versions of the cover.”  We decided to see if this was indeed common at other publications. Caroline Nuckolls at Teen Vogue told us the magazine usually has just one version of the cover — but of course, Teen Vogue has a cleaner image to start out with, and less to hide. So we called Maxim, known for its lad-mag raunch — a source there told us they too produce just one cover, which goes out to newsstands, subscribers, and advertisers alike. This isn’t to say that no magazine does what Cosmo‘s done, but it’s not an industry-wide standard.

Of course, it’s not a surprise that a publication feels it needs to put its best foot forward to attract ad dollars — still, creating whole new cover lines is a pretty big step. Which coveted advertising account merited such a drastic cleanup? Some high-fashion brand? (Current Cosmo advertisers include Dior and Chanel.) Mainstream car or consumer products companies? (January’s issue includes an ad for Chevrolet.) Maybe they’re gunning for that Candie’s account? Whatever the brand, Cosmo assumes the ad buyers don’t read very carefully, and don’t know that the mag’s been providing sex advice and orgasm pointers to eager middle-schoolers for decades.

Send an email to Anna North at annanorth@jezebel.com.

George Wiman, in searching for news about the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords’ and others, typed into Google the phrase “congresswoman assassinated.”  Google, it turns out, isn’t sure that “congresswoman” is a word.  I tried it again at midnight last night with the same result.

UPDATE: Readers discovered that Google doesn’t say “Did you mean congressman?” if you type only “congresswoman.”   The algorithm is based on language that already exists on the net and apparently “congresswoman assassinated” is not a phrase we find out there.  It’s so interesting how neutral tools — like algorithms — can nevertheless reproduce existing biases.  Because there have been so few congresswomen (too bad), and so few targeted with violence (thank goodness), typing in “congresswoman assassinated” makes it seem as if women are strangers to congress.  To sum, I’m not saying that this is some evil plan or oversight by Google, it’s an interaction between our real, unequal social world and a neutral algorithm.

Meant to reveal the unbearable whiteness of the TV show Friends, this video by The DocFuture Show, is a pretty hilarious account of all of the black characters to ever grace the screen alongside the cast. It’s, um, funny:

Via BoingBoing.

Eight readers — Christine B., Hermes, Yvette, Hope H., Tyler D., Pris S., John G., and Dmitrity T.M. — alerted us to a photo spread in the December issue of French Vogue. The series of photographs is another piece of evidence of the adultification of young girls, an adultification that looks suspiciously like child porn, given the sexualization of adult women.  New York Magazine reports that the girls are 6 years old.  Don’t miss the lipstick, high heels, and disinterested pouts.

The thing is: the adultification/sexualization of young girls is paralleled by a infantilization of adult women.  This adds up to a conflation of women and children which serves to uphold prejudice against adult women and the exploitation of girls.

More at Gawker.

For more on the infantilization of adult women, see our posts on lady spanking, Glee, this collection of examples, a vintage example, and the Halloween edition.

For more on the adultification/sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, a Halloween costume post, and girls in the World of Dance tour.

And, yes, it happens to boys too.  For examples of the sexualization of young boys, see our posts on Lil’ Wayne’s virginity loss, the depiction of a 13-year-old boy having a relationship with his teacher, the sexy marketing of both Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber, with a follow up here.

Justin G., an adjunct instructor in the Department of Sociology at Marymount University, recently received a gender lesson from his local Target. I’ll let him tell the story:

I grabbed the pack of eight depicted in the photo because they match our towels and bathroom wall colors and, to my surprise, when I scanned them for the price, I was told by the machine that they were “feminine casual” washcloths! I stood there and wondered how much darker the shades of blue and green would need to be for them to be “masculine”? Even when it comes to washcloths, it seems that Target and/or the manufacturer feels we need to be told what color we should be comfortable scrubbing our naked bodies with in the privacy of our own showers.

A set of stock photos on Hairpin must have hit a nerve because eight people — Renée Y., R. Walker, Amy E., Duff McDuffee, Lauren McG., Patricia P., Amy H., and Dmitriy T.M. — have sent it in.  The images appear, titled “Women Laughing Alone with Salad,” without comment.  Here’s a sampling:

These images resonate with readers, I think, because they are so damn familiar.  They are a good example of advertising in general.  They practically beg: “Please please please think it is fun to eat salad!”  And they insist: “Eating salad will make you haaaaappppppyyyyy!”  Much advertising today needs to convince you that the product will make you happy because we don’t need almost anything we buy.  Necessity lost out to desire in marketing a long time ago.

In an earlier post we reviewed research by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett showing that income inequality contributes to a whole host of negative outcomes, including higher rates of mental illness, drug use, obesity, infant death, imprisonment, and interpersonal trust.

In the 3 1/2-minute video below, Kate Pickett argues that social inequality causes violence by creating status inequalities that those on the bottom respond to with violence.

Pickett and Wilkinson’s data is striking, but I’m not sure I buy that low status combined with status-sensitivity instigates violence.  Sociologists have made this argument; but others have questioned these conclusions.

Villanova University’s Lance Hannon, for example, tested this “subculture of violence” thesis as applied to poor African Americans. Using police department homicide data, he found no evidence that Black people were more likely than White people to react to an insult with violence.  This is swapping race for class, of course (and Hannon doesn’t control for class because the data was limited), but it does suggest that we should think carefully about the kind of argument Pickett is making.

See Dr. Pickett making similar arguments as to why raising the average national income in developed countries doesn’t make people happier or enable them to live longer and how status inequality increases stress.  And see more about income inequality and national well-being at Equality Trust.