In a twist on the men are people and women are women theme, Catherine L. sent in this screen shot of a Business Week article about women hedge fund managers.  Notice that it’s placed in the “working parents” section of the website, even though the article does not say a single thing about kids or, even, work/life balance.

Also, women produce double the returns!?  Double!?  Damn!

Judy Z. H. sent in Kanye’s video for Love Lockdown for analysis.  My first thought was: they should have just went with Qwest Crew. But I digress.

The video contrasts Kanye, singing in a nearly empty apartment, with tribal imagery.

Here’s my thoughts:  The song is about a man who loves a woman but knows intellectually that the relationship is wrong.  So he has to leave her, even as his heart breaks to do it.  So the song is about a conflict between his heart and his mind or, alternatively, passion and rationality.

The passion/rationality binary is often layered onto a primitive/modern binary.  Primitives, we presume, are superstitious, driven by passions, more instinctual than intellectual, more closely connected to animals and nature more generally.  Moderns, by contrast, are assumed to be rational, in control of our emotions; modernity has brought us science and technology and taken us farther away from nature.

Accordingly, the primitives in the video express strong emotions and are dressed in skins and feathers, decorated with the earth, while Kanye calmly sings about a heart-wrenching decision, surrounded by a clean, white, even sterile, apartment, and lounging in the kitchen (the most technological room in the house); the only item other than furniture that we see is a telescope.  A telescope!  How very modern.

The video works because Kanye’s audience recognizes the modern/primitive binary and all that it implies.  But, of course, it’s false.   Psychological research (and, as far as I can tell, all of the research on voting behavior) demonstrates again and again that rationality is not our strong point as a species.  If anything, what is modern is the inferring of rationality (hello rational choice theorists!), something that we see clearly in this video.

About a year ago, Gwen posted about the evolution of the Sun-Maid, the young spokeswoman for Sun-Maid raisins:

In her post, she asked: “I wonder if Sun-Maid has stayed with the de-sexualized icon because raisins are associated with children?”

Well, Gwen, I’m afraid you spoke too soon.  Here, via Jezebel, is the new Sun Maid:

Noticably slimmer and with more form-fitting clothes, this new Sun Maid is clearly not hyper-sexualized, but it’s a move in that direction.

Here’s a commercial in which, building on her increasing sexualization and objectification, she turns into a Hollywood celebrity for a sec:

I think–considering also the recent makeovers of Dora the Explorer, Holly Hobbie, and Strawberry Shortcake–we can officially call this a trend.

In previous posts on Gossip Girl promotions and the New Beverly Hills 90210, we’ve argued that daily life is becoming increasingly pornified.  That is, features of the genre of pornography are being mainstreamed and porn is now, more than ever in modern history, everywhere.

I couldn’t help but this of this concept of pornification when I investigated the Burger King Shower Cam website, sent in by Catrina C.

Text:  “Watch our shower babe shake her bits to the hits every morning.”

Um, yeah, so everyday you can go to the website and watch a girl in a bikini sing a song in the shower (don’t miss the burger boobs).  You can also vote on the song and bikini for the next day, as well as enter into a contest for a date with the girl.  If you don’t win the date, you may still be a lucky runner up and win Burger King “proper man toiletries”:

Yep, Burger King hygiene products.

Word on the street is that the products are a joke; they actually smell like meat.

Has Axe been so successful in using misogyny to pitch its products that Burger King feels that it must sell toiletries to fully get on the pornification bandwagon?  I just don’t know.

In any case, as A Sarah points out at the Shapely Prose, this is insulting to women and men both.  Apparently Burger King presumes men are stupid or shallow enough to be impressed by BKs facilitation of bit-shaking and, therefore, that the campaign will actually translate into a desire to consume their product (as opposed to a desire to avoid it).

The fact that it’s supposed to be funny doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.  Because, really, this is the kind of humor they think men respond to?  “Hahaha.  She’s wearing a bikini and it looks like there are fried eggs on her boobs!  Hahaha!”  “Hahaha!  I smell like meat!”  Dudes, Burger King thinks you’re stupid.

V. and Anna G. sent in this ad for a LOLCats T-shirt.  Notice that the woman’s t-shirt is for women only, but the man’s t-shirt also doubles as a unisex shirt.

Both Emily W. and Sabine M. sent in this example of the same phenomenon at Mental Floss:

Mindy J. sent us a third example from Secret Society of Vegans:

From Johanna G:

Finally, Jessica S. sent in this example from Kung Fu Nation:

This is just another example of the phenomenon of how we take one half of a (false) binary (such as man vs. woman) and make one generic and the other specific.   Men can be human, but women are always female humans; white people can be just people, but non-white people are always other; Christian symbols are for everyone, but non-Christian symbols are exclusive; and so on and so on.

For more examples, see these posts on how racial and ethnic identity adds spice, Sotomayor’s racial bias, male neutrality in stick figures (here and here), male-default avatars, flesh-colored products, for normal to darker skin, Michelle Obama’s “flesh-colored” gown.

At Weird Universe.

In an attempt to further muddy some conceptual waters, I present you this Finnish music video:

Shava are probably the only representatives so far of the genre of Suomibhangra, a Finnish take on the South Asian diaspora dance genre, bhangra. One one level there’s a lot to be critical of here, perhaps – the wilful exoticism, the fake Indian dancers, the almost-brownface of someone like the “Finnjabi bad boy” in the video.

On the other hand, though, which I think is perhaps more interesting, there’s the reaction in the bhangra community. I actually found the track on a bhangra blog, it’s been reposted and become popular on a bhangra youtube channel where it’s generated positive comments, the band has toured to desi audiences in Canada and it’s played on several bhangra radio stations… The bhangra community is not offended at all, they rather like it. (For as they say: Imitation is…)

So who’s right? Us radical critics or the people we think we’re defending? Perhaps it’s worth thinking about.

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Johan Palmeis a musicology student in Stokholm, Sweden.  He blogs about music and other stuff at Birdseed’s Tunedown.

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Duplo blocks are made by the Lego company.  They are like legos, but bigger and chunkier (less swallowable).  Like this:

Amanda R. captured this screenshot on the Duplo website:

Apparently, if you’re going to buy Duplos for some little kid, the very most important first piece of most vital information you will ever need before you ever ask anything else is whether or not the kid has a penis or a vagina.

Meanwhile, Elisabeth R. found exactly the same thing at the Toys R Us website: