NEWS:

I’ll be in New Orleans until June 23 and the big Island of Hawaii from the 23rd to the 1st.  It’s always fun to meet readers, so if you’re nearby please send us an email (socimages@thesocietypages.org) and we’ll have coffee or drinks!

A Louis Vuitton advertising campaign that we critiqued has been determined by the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency to be a violation of truth in advertising.  Check it out.  Thanks to Anjan G. and Katrin for pointing it out.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post everyday.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! May ’10):

Cara McC. sent along another example of a commercial separating normal from abnormal… this time it’s “normal” skin.  We added it to our post on hair.  On the same theme, Renée Y. took a photo of bike helmets in women’s and… um… helmet.  We also added more examples to our post on gendering default icons, this time bike traffic lights in Amsterdam.

We added breast cancer-themed grape tomatoes — yes, you read right — to our post on surprising things themed as such.  Sent in by Renée Y.

M.I.A.’s  “Born Free” video shows red-headed, freckled male adolescents being rounded up as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. We added it to our post on gingerism.

Orangina has a drink with grenadine in it called “Indien” that features an orange wearing a feathered headdress. We added it to our earlier post on the use of feathered headdresses and other elements of some American Indian cultures.

We updated our post on the CNN experiment on children’s attitudes toward skin color with a segment of a parent reacting to her child’s preferences. Thanks to Abeer K., Dimitriy T.M., and Alex P. for sending in the one we missed!

Ang B. snapped a photo of an advertisement for men’s and women’s haircuts with the phrase “Fuck your Gender Binary” written across it.  We added it to our post featuring small acts of resistance against gendered and objectifying advertising.

Andi S. sent a photo of Spanx for men, designed to shape his upper body.  We added it to our post on the push-up panty for the penis.  Relatedly, Michelle R. sent us another example of how the diet/nutrition industry markets products differently to men and women.

We added two videos of the “men are like this, but women are like that, hahaha!” variety to one of our posts on gender stereotypes.  Also, in case you haven’t had enough of pointlessly gendered products, we added an example of a gendered “find” game and another example of gendered earplugs to our post on the topic.  On the other hand, doggie poop bags are unisex. Good to know.

In case you’re looking for some polite, submissive women, we added an online ad for “beautiful Russian ladies” to our post about a website that sells the submissive Asian stereotype to (mostly) non-Asian men.

We updated our post on a child’s zebra-striped string bikini with a bikini pulled from shelves in the U.K. The bikini, meant for young girls, included a padded bra.

We updated our post on envisioning how highways would affect the city of the future with an exhibit from the 1939 World’s Fair that pointed out that benefits of being able to avoid slums.  Also on the topic of highways, we added an image sent in by Jayna T. to our post on teens, the elderly, and driver safety.

This ad for laser hair removal in a New York newspaper, sent by Jac B., is particularly egregious in its effort to make women insecure:

Meanwhile, in a divulged secret at PostSecret this Sunday, a woman who conforms by bleaching her upper lip takes some glee in the possibility that she makes people face their own discomfort by refusing to full-on wax it:

On ESPN on May 17th, Jesse W. was subject to this little piece of advertising bookending an article.  According to this advertising, women decide to buy a new car because they know it in their heart; men, in contrast, know it in their mind:

UPDATE! In the comments, Kit M. and others noted that you could apply a race analysis to this ad as well. For hundreds of years darker-skinned people have been argued by Europeans to be closer to animals, more instinctual, and tied more tightly to their emotions. Whereas rationality has been granted largely to white men of the upper classes. So the use of a Black woman to represent heart and a White man to represent mind also fits neatly with familiar stereotypes.

Lordo found the towels below for sale at Imaginarium (a toy store specializing in smart toys)  in Spain.   One towel, pictured with a boy, doubles as a cape; the other, pictured with a girl, allows her to dress up like a mermaid.

This is another example in which children are encouraged to be girls and boys instead of just children and being a boy means doing something active (being a superhero) and being a girl means adopting an attractive and exotic appearance.

At BoingBoing, German professor Michael Shaughnessy offered his insights regarding how Americans and Germans see and talk about color differently.  Among other things, he noted how few foods in the U.S. are described as blue.  Blueberries, of course.  And blue cheese, I suppose.  (Or “bleu” cheese, as TheophileEscargot points out.)  But little or nothing else.

In contrast, Shaughnessy suggested that many more foods are described as blue in southern Germany.  Notably, blue onions, blue grapes, and blue cabbage (pictured):

In northern Germany, however, “Blaukraut” is “Rotkohl.”  That is, the same color (“blau”) is described as red “(“rot”).  He ponders whether “red onions [in the U.S.] are truly red.” In fact, their better described as purple.

He continues, “Words, impacted by the visual, often vary at the crossroads between colors.”  In other words, perception may be influenced by language and culture.  Where does blue end and red begin?

UPDATE: In the comments Alissa notes:

German wikipedia tells me that the south/north naming difference results from the difference in prepararation of the food. in northern germany it is usually prepared with acidic substances like vinegar giving it a more reddisch color, thus “Rotkraut” (very good with apples), in southern germany sugar or natron is the ingredient of choice, which enhances the blue of the original purple color, hence “Blaukraut”.

Interesting!

Stella P. sent in a link to the SIGG water bottle website, pointing to the fact that there are “women’s” and “men’s” collections. What’s interesting about the two collections isn’t just the reproduction of the gender binary and the gendering of water bottles, but the fact that the outcome of this bifurcation is actually less choice for men. There are 77 total water bottles in the women’s collection, but only 58 in the men’s. If you scroll through the options, you’ll see that women basically get to choose among ALL of the bottles, but men are not presented with any that (apparently) appear TOO feminine. This is a great example, then, of the way that patriarchy constrains men by pushing them away from items deemed girly.

Here are some screen shots of the men’s and women’s collections.

Men’s:

Women’s:

K. sent in a trailer for a new comedy called Outsourced.  In it, a white call center manager is sent to India to  manage a company full of Indian workers who take orders for gag items (including jingle jugs).  I think the it is both troubling and promising at the same time.  My thoughts after the trailer:

On the one hand, a lot of prior experience and several aspects of this trailer make me worry that this show is going to capitalize on negative stereotypes of Indians, especially ones that suggest that they are goofy and nerdy and are hilariously unfamiliar (e.g., “stupid” names and “scary” food)… with a handful of stereotypes about Americans thrown in for good measure.  The show threatens to reaffirm a binary where the U.S. and India are completely different in every way.

On the other hand, I am encouraged by the fact that the show includes a wide range of Indian characters.  In some cases, our stereotypes are upset by traits that Americans are conditioned not to expect in Indians (such as the guy who likes to dance); in other cases, characteristics are clearly attributed to individuals instead of “Indians” (such as the girl who is afraid to talk).  Further, it becomes clear in the trailer that the employees in the manager’s office are misfits because they’re misfits, not because they’re Indian.  The competitor call center employees are not misfits at all.  They are clearly super-effective and excellently-trained (though, perhaps, also Westernized).  The ridiculousness of the main ensemble cast, then, isn’t attributed to their Indianness per se.

So, yes, I fear that this is going to be a show that makes (white) Americans laugh by suggesting that Indians are dorky and weird.  At the same time, I see promise in a show that actually casts Indians as individuals instead of representatives of their nation/race.

We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework.  The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.”  Ah-mazing.  The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.

And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

Hat tip to Jezebel.