Charlotte alerted us to a make-up brand called Primitive that makes and sells natural lips sticks, glosses, and pencils.

The company is drawing on familiar associations of primitiveness with naturalness.  We were natural “for centuries,” but have now somehow graduated from naturalness, such that we need to make a special effort to recapture the simple, intelligent, real, and honest beauty of our foremothers.

So, Primitive romanticizes our primitive past while making a questionable assertion about the relationship between time and naturalness.  In addition, the names of their products locate primitiveness in some parts of the (modern) globe and not others.

The products are named after places that are, almost exclusively, in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the South Pacific.  In a previous post I introduced the idea of “anachronistic space.”  I wrote: “Catherine MacKinnon coined the term ‘anachronistic space’ to refer to the idea that different parts of the globe represent different historical periods.”  In this case, Primitive is counting on our associating a (romanticized) primitiveness with only some places and not others.  It’s 2010 in Mali and Morocco.  They don’t represent our own past, they represent unique modernities.  And the places left out of these product names — largely North America and Europe — don’t represent the future.  They are not wholly modern societies that have shed their primitive past; they, just like all societies, are a mixture of old and new stitched together to form the present.

For more instances in which anachronistic space appears, see our posts on representing the fashion of the Surma and Mursi tribes and Wild African Cream.

And for more on the social construction of the modern and the primitive, see these posts: “Africans” as props for white femininity, Union Carbide brings modernity to the world, primitive Australia cures modern ills, women as carries of tradition and progress, representing the Middle East, equating modernity with permissiveness, and civilizing the Pueblos.

Some have argued that the vitriolic nature of the opposition to health care reform among the political right comes not from a concern about money per se, but a concern that the money of good, hard-working, white Americans will be transferred to the not-so-good, lazy, non-white Americans. That is, that this is isn’t about money, it’s about color.

The fact that conservative anti-health care reform activists hurled the n-word at Black lawmakers on Saturday adds heft to that argument, as does the justification of the use of that word by Representative Devin Dunes (Republican – California) as understandable given Leftist “totalitarianism”:

Via Matthew Yglesias.

These aren’t really boobs, but they still may not be safe for work. So, after the jump…

An ad for lotion featuring knees and toes (copyranter):

A mammogram promotion featuring bald heads and noses (copyranter):

NEW (June ’10)! Jay Livingston sent in this ad that simply features a beer:

Also in boobs: booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs.

The Pew research foundation recently released some data comparing generational cohorts.  Data on the acceptance of interracial dating shows that acceptance is increasing among all groups and is higher for each successive cohort:

C.N. Lee, at Asian Nation, interprets:

I am also not surprised that the Millennials are the most supportive of interracial dating, as the graph illustrates. However, in looking at the graph, it shows that somewhere around 2007, the approval rates for interracial dating actually declined slightly for Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the Millennials. Further, at this point, we do not yet know whether the approval rate for interracial dating will continue to decline, or whether it will rebound and continue its upward trajectory.

See also our post on rates of support for gay marriage by age.

I can imagine a world in which gender difference did not translate into gender inequality… a world in which feminized tasks — nurturing others, creating beautiful and comfortable homes, cooking delicious, nutritious meals, and adorning oneself for the pleasure of oneself and others — were actually valued and, importantly, both respected and compensated in ways that reflected that value.

But alas. We don’t live in a world in which gender difference co-exists with gender equality. We live in a world in which boys go to the moon; and girls are princesses…

…at least, according to these “cookie pans” sent in by both Ash and Karen A.:

Jay Livingston of MontClair SocioBlog, in the tradition of Dan Myer‘s takedowns of TIDE and Aquafresh, tells the tale of his aspirin purchase:

It came in two sizes – 120 pills and 300 pills. The larger size was the better bargain. And it certainly looked much larger on the shelf.

Then I got home and opened the package. The bottle was mostly empty. I had bought a lot of air. The 300 little aspirin tablets were all there I guess, though I didn’t bother to count them. But they would have fit into a bottle one-third the size.

For more marketing tricks, see our post on the meaningless discount and the geography of the menu.

Laura Malischke, a friend and lovely photographer, sent in an ad featuring “women’s sizes”:

The phrase “women’s” is perhaps the most common euphemism used in the U.S. (I’m not sure about elsewhere) to refer to clothes made for women who wear sizes 14 and up.  What’s amazing about the term is what it implies about the “regular” sizes.  If non-“women’s”-sized clothes are not for women, who are they for?

I’ll take hypotheses…

Anna sent in another example of a brand marketing itself as for-manly-men-only.  Add this one, featuring McCoy Crisps, to some of our other examples: Dockers, Klondike Bar, Alpo, Oberto beef jerky, and Ketel One.

The first thing that the McCoy Crisps Pub site requires is that you tell it what kind of shoes you’re wearing:

If you answer “incorrectly,” the website says: “No, not right.  Get inside and learn how to be a real man.”

When you enter the online pub, the first thing you see is a woman that you are supposed to be disgusted by.  Immediately a set of beer goggles flies up onto your face (because you wouldn’t want to look at her for more than a split second, apparently):

Then you see this (phew! that was close!):

Alongside playing darts, drinking games, and playing manly trivia, you can get tips on how to be more manly.  Such as “How Not to Look Like a Girl Watching TV” and “How to Get Away with Not Ironing”:

And you can also take a manly quiz to find out how manly you are.  The quiz nicely tells you exactly how you are allowed to behave and what you are allowed to like.  Some examples of questions:

So being a guy means manipulating women with puppies, making fun of your brother-in-law for being a good husband and father, making women cook for you, eschewing personal grooming and healthy eating as much as possible, objectifying women, and enjoying the Pirelli company calender.

Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the Pirelli calendar, you really, really, really don’t want to click here (NSFW; trigger warning).

So there you have it: another marketing campaign that assumes that men are stupid, shallow, sexist, sport-o-holics.  I don’t understand why men tolerate it.