Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, a selection of essays on aging, now through March 15th.  I borrowed the material below from the essay, “Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.”

The average American is aging… and fast.  Advances in public health — especially related to childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease — have led to longer lives.   “The result is that death has been permanently shifted from a phenomenon among the young to one of the old.”  This means that the age distribution in the U.S. has shifted from one shaped like a neat pyramid (in 1900), to one shaped kind of like a house (in 2000), to whatever shape that is they’re predicting in 2050:

The great news is that “active life span is increasing faster than total life span.”  That is, even though we live longer, we spend fewer of our years sick or disabled than ever before.  This is called (so you can impress your friends) the “compression of morbidity.”

Sometimes when we put up hyperfeminine clothes and toys for girls, people argue that no one has to buy those clothes, so there is no point in critiquing their existence.  The implication is that all conformity to gendered expectations is voluntary (on the part of both mothers and their daughters).

However, the recent furor over Shiloh Jolie-Pitts haircut and boyish outfit, sent in by Tara C., Cailin H., and Lindsay F., shows us that having a gender-consistent appearance isn’t simply voluntary; when you don’t perform gender, other people will police your choices.  In this case, people are questioning whether she is harming her child by turning her “into A BOY?”

In this case, of course, it’s mass media doing the policing (or inviting readers to do the policing).  In the lives of non-celebrities, this same sort of policing is often done by family members, friends, and even strangers.  For the non-conformist (parent), then, gender non-conformity can be a real drag.

Image borrowed from DListed.

Finally, a push-up panty for the penis!

It’s here and, thanks to Luis J.C.R., we all know about it.

Images and discussion after the jump because not safe for work.

Andrew Christian enhancing underwear for men, for sale at Bang Lads:

The description is priceless:

(Awesome) Selected Text:

Andrew Christian Show-It Bulge Enhancing Boxer

Features Show-It Technology 2.0 with a hidden “comfy cup” that gently lifts and presents the package to the front.

The horseshoe shaped inner cup is lined by soft elastic that gently aids in the lifting and adds up to 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) to a man’s frontal measurement and provides the biggest enhancement of any underwear.

The underwear also features the custom Andrew Christian ‘Anti-Muffin Top’ elastic to slim the appearance of love handles.

Yep, this is the treatment women have been getting for decades.  Except, when men get it, they tend to get it a gay context.  That is, it’s the male gaze that results in objectification, not a female body.

NEW (May ’10)! Andi S. forwarded us some photos of Spanx for Men.  The product is an undershirt designed to shape his upper body:

Tennille N. sent in this Australian commercial for NutriGrain cereal:

Transcription:

Boys need protein for growth and muscle development.
NutriGrain is one of the highest protein cereals, so as part of a balanced diet and regular exercise, NutriGrain has what it takes to help build your son into an Ironman.
Thanks Mum.
NutriGrain, Ironman food.

As Tennille noted, I guess she doesn’t need NutriGrain, since she’s a girl and, accordingly, does not need muscles, nor athletic aspirations.

Michelle DuB. sent in some data from the Toronto Star, showing that blacks are more likely than whites to be stopped by police in every single patrol zone except for one.  The disproportion was even high in mostly white areas; they were stopped up to 17 times as often (darker red is most disproportion):

Click here for a video showing what some citizens and a bunch of Toronto police have to say.

See also our posts showing how the stopping of people on the street usually results in… nothing (other than people feeling harassed) and how racial profiling turns out to be ineffective anyway.

The image below shows who has broadband internet (as opposed to dial up or no internet at all). It was sent in by Dmitrity T.M., who sees no surprises here. Do you?

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.

With these words Karl Marx condemned religion for making the class-disadvantaged masses complacent in the face of injustice. New data from the Pew Forum, sent in by Dmitriy T.M. and Allie B., suggests that this may be true for some religions more than others!

Visual at GOOD, shown here in three parts:

Allie was actually quite troubled by this figure, arguing that it affirmed stereotypes that Jews controlled all the money and encouraged people of different religions to see each other as competition.

Indeed, how we choose to present data is always a political decision.   Why correlate religion with income at all?  Maybe religion is somewhat spurious, compared to variables like geographic location, race, or immigration status.  That is, it may be that income correlates with geography, race, and immigration status and those variables correlate with religion.

It’s pretty tricky to figure these things out (and that’s why we force sociology graduate students to learn fancy statistical methods), but in the end we still can’t attribute causality, just correlation.  Figuring out why and how things correlate requires qualitative of research.

Carolyn L., who blogs at Remodel Minority, found these and other mascot costumes at Costume Shop.  They are, from left to right, the “Mexican Costume Mascot”, “Mandarin Man Chinese Costume”, “Native American Chief Costume Mascot,” “Native American Indian Costume”:

The costumes start at $887.   This reminds us that racist mascots are an industry, not just a poor choice.  It would be much more difficult to field a team called the Indians, the Gauchos, or the Orientals if there were no pre-made costumes to buy.