Ever since it occurred to me a few years ago, I’ve been deeply disturbed the two meanings that the word “fuck” has in U.S. culture.  We use the word when we want to hurt someone really, really bad; and we use it to describe what may be the most physically intimate thing two people can do together.  The fact that the word has that double meaning, I think, speaks volumes about our fucked up relationship with sex.

Illustrating this, Caroline H. pointed me to a June 2009 Playboy slideshow of politically conservative women that readers want to “hate fuck.”  After protests, Playboy took the slideshow down, but RedState captured screen shots. You can see them all here. I post a selection below.

The first slide:

Megyn Kelly:

Amanda Carpenter:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck:

Dana Perino:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The graphic below is interesting to me in light of the discourse about greenhouse gas emissions.  We often hear about emissions from cars and sometimes about emissions from industry.  I was surprised, then, to see that electricity and heat was such a large contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.  And I feel like land use change and agriculture hardly get discussed at all.

Graphic borrowed from ChartPorn, which also has an interactive graphic that breaks down emissions by country (via Simoleon Sense).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

On the heels of our Frito Bandito post, comes this (I think) 1975 ad for Tequila Gavilan.  Slogan: “One taste…and you’re not a Gringo anymore.”

If I’m reading this ad correctly, both the woman and the man in this ad are supposed to be Mexican. What’s interesting, then, is the different social construction of Mexican men and women. While the male is the familiar “Frito Bandito,” sombrero-wearing fool, the female is a hot, spicy Latina.  Today the Mexican fool is a risky stereotype to pull out, but the hot spicy Latina is still a very common trope.

From another angle, this reminds me a bit of the history of colonization and war. All too frequently, male ethnic others in war are considered enemies, while female ethnic others are considered the spoils of war. So the idea that the racially-othered men are disposable, while “their” women are desirable has a very long history in Western thought (see, for example, Joane Nagel’s great book, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Time magazine offers readers a history of the bikini in which they offer these two interesting tidbits:

First, the two piece bathing suit was, in part, justified/necessitated by war rationing during World War II. There simply wasn’t enough money to buy all that fabric.

Second, the bikini got it’s name from the oooh and awe resulting from a nuclear test at Bikini Atoll. Louis Réard, to whom the invention of the bikini is credited, followed the nuclear-loving fashion of the day.  He named it after the location, hoping that “his invention would be as explosive as that test…”

Critics of multiculturalism argue that, far too often, multiculturalism ignores addressing head on the tension caused by racial and ethnic inequality, in favor of cute, simple tokens of diversity.

Jessica G. sent us this screen shot of the Juicy Juice website. It is suggesting that we can teach our children about “diversity… by preparing ethnic meals.”

In the bottom left corner, it reads:

Tacos can take you to the Mayan pyramids of Mexico! Baked Ziti to the Tower of Pisa in Italy! Help your child discover the world through a meal you make together.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think there is anything wrong with teaching a child about Mayan pyramids and the Tower of Pisa. It is, however, going too far to suggest that you can teach children about the promise and perils of “diversity” by instituting “dinner without borders.”

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Reading Resist Racism, I found a link to an article in this Sunday’s Washington Post by a journalist by the name of Amit Paley who chronicled her exploration of “tribes” in Thailand.  The article is a study in class privilege, with a global twist.  It begins with the sentence: “You can see almost anything in the world if you pay enough.”

She wanted to see women of the Padaung (or Kayan), who are from Burma but now live in Thailand as refugees.  The Kayan women are famous for wearing brass rings around their necks, leading to the illusion of an elongated neck created by the depression of their collarbone. Paley writes:

Ever since I glimpsed the Padaung as a child in my grandfather’s National Geographics, I had wanted to see these curious women, who suffer painful disfigurement to emerge as graceful beauties.

Her description of human beings, indirectly, as curiosities, combined with the comment that you can see “anything… if you pay enough” (my emphasis) is an excellent example of the objectification of ethnic others.

Paley’s desire to see these women is almost thwarted by the majority of tourist companies in Thailand who describe her effort as exploitative and immoral.  They even suggest that the women are “prisoners held captive in the villages by businessmen” making money off of tourism.  This is confirmed by Wikipedia, for what it’s worth.

This doesn’t stop Paley, who keeps asking until she finds a company that will take her to one of the remote villages in which Kayan women live.

The women she meets confirm that they wear traditional garb, continue traditional practices (such as the brass rings), and are even forced to remain in the villages, in order to attract tourists.  Men, largely, appear to be exempted from earning their keep in this way.

Paley says that one powerful male village member said that the women “must wear the dress because of tradition” and “spoke excitedly about its appeal to tourists and noted that half of the village’s income of $30,000 a year comes from tourism.”

A woman in brass rings told her “We do it to put on a show for the foreigners and tourists!”

Paley finishes with this lackluster reflection:

So is it unethical to visit the long-necked women? It is clearly true that money spent to visit them supports an artificial village from which they essentially cannot leave. On the other hand, many of them appeared to prefer living in virtual confinement as long as they are paid and safe. According to what they told me, their situation beats the alternative of living in a repressive country plagued by abject poverty and hunger.

I don’t feel guilty about visiting the Padaung, but my feelings might be different if I had traveled solely as a tourist rather than as a journalist. And I certainly don’t like their lot in life:  Shouldn’t everyone have the freedom to live and travel wherever they want?

Well, Paley has shown that she certainly does have that freedom.  And she is apparently willing to use her “journalist” identity to justify just about any advantage that her privilege affords her.

Ann S. sent us this promotional photograph of Beyonce.  In it, I think, she is wearing something which is supposed to be a motorcyle that she is then riding.  !?

So she is a motorcycle and she is riding herself?  This is such a mess of objectification that I cannot bring it into focus:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The “Got Milk” campaign is funded by the California Milk Processor Board, a marketing organization funded collectively by California dairies.  In a recent comment thread, Adam linked to the clip below in which ABC does a segment about the awesomeness of milk.  It’s a great example of the way that the news media in not independent of business.

UPDATE! Abby, in the comments thread, linked to another great example:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.