NEWS

Please welcome Julianne Monday, our first Sociological Images intern! 

Be our friend!  We have a facebook page.

Gwen was quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the New York Post editorial cartoon scandal.  Check it out here.

Gwen would also like to say that she missed the chance to be interviewed by a reporter at the New York Times because she was at lunch when they emailed her and by the time she got back to her office they’d found someone else to be their expert commenter.   She missed a chance to be quoted in the NYT for a stupid portabello mushroom-and-poblano pepper taco plate.  She wasn’t even all that hungry. 

That said, no one called Lisa this month at all.  I’m just saying.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS

Our post about racist Disney characters was updated with a comparison of an image of Goofy to a traditional “Sambo” caricature and a discussion of whether Goofy is necessarily meant to be a racial archetype.

We added some of the coverage of the policing of Jessica Simpson’s weight to our post chronicling fat scandals.

We found another example of “chaperoning,” or never letting non-white people outnumber white people in ads, and added it to this post (scroll down).

To our post on “subliminal” sex in advertising, we added a vintage lipstick ad suggestive of oral sex (scroll down).

We found another ad suggesting that men use alcohol to get sex and added it to our post on the theme here (scroll down).

We added a video by Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine [who we are totally crushing on] to this post about the use of the phrase “no homo.”

We added the hoax site Porn for Women by Women to this post about how images of men doing housework or being thoughtful is often jokingly portrayed as women’s equivalent of porn.

In the video game My World, My Way, players take on the role of a spoiled female character who uses pout points and selfishness to win.  We added a video about it to this post about several other video games (note: the post isn’t safe for work).

We added more t-shirts to this post about portrayals of American Indians.

We added another image to our extremely popular post on the objectification of men (scroll to the “bottom”).  We just can’t figure out why it attracts so much traffic.  Hmmmm.

We have an extensive post demonstrating the sexualization of food, but they keep on comin’.  Scroll all the way down for our burger boobs and Doritos undies.

Someone thought it’d be neat to fashion a female mannequin torso into an ipod stereo.  We added a picture of the product to our post featuring furniture in the shape of female bodies.

Finally, we updated a post about “ethnic” fashion with an image of “tribal” sandals.

A great example of how humor can be used to reveal the absurdity of certain social patterns that we take-for-granted:

“I can’t explain it,” said Nakajima, dressed in a pleated miniskirt and pure white knee socks. “There’s just something about American men who are at least twice my age and nearly three times my body weight that totally drives me wild.”

Added Nakajima, “They’re so hot.”

…

“I like it when they dress up like middle managers,” said Nakajima, twirling her girlish pigtails with one alabaster finger.

…

Drawn by her curiosity, Nakajima has scheduled a vacation to St. Louis for early March.

More at The Onion.

For a very real example of the flip side  of this fetish, see this post on sex tourism in Thailand.

To self-objectify is to think of yourself as an object first and a subject second.  People who self-objectify often consider their appearance to be for others and work on their bodies and attractiveness in order to please/not offend an imagined other.  Self-objectification is usually discussed in the context of women.  It is suggested that these women take on the “male gaze,” looking at themselves through an imaginary male judge.

I found this ad in Maxim magazine.  It encourages men to self-objectify by suggesting that they should think about how an imaginary female judge might evaluate their appearance (“She’s totally checking me out MILK Nutritional Shake”).

It’s fascinating that a magazine well-known for objectifying women also participates (at least in running this ad) in encouraging men to self-objectify.  Without suggesting that women and men are equally objectified in American culture, I think it might be interesting to talk about the extent to which we live in an objectifying culture, period, and learn to self-objectify whether we are men or women.

The New York Times has a fascinating peak into marketing logic.  The team at Frito Lay discovered that women prefer to snack on veggies and fruit, but that didn’t deter them.  They’re on a mission to sell more chips to the ladies. 

Through market research, they discovered that women feel guilty.  A lot.  The article reads:

Though Frito-Lay had often tried advertising snacks as guilt-free, this led to the conclusion that “we’re not going to alleviate her guilt,” Ms. Nykoliation said. “This is something in her life. So the question for us was, how do we not trip her guilt?”

Part of the strategy was to follow the success of SunChips by toning down the packaging and showing off healthy ingredients in the snacks.

“She wants a reminder that she’s eating something better for her,” Mr. Jones said.

Baked Lay’s will no longer be in a shiny yellow bag, but in a matte beige bag that displays pictures of the ingredients like spices or ranch dressing.

So Frito Lay is attempting a guilt-detour.  You don’t have to justify eating the bad-for-you-chips because they’re good-for-you-chips.  The bag is a natural color instead of neon orange and there are actual food stuffs on the front instead of a Cheetah! 

(image via)

This is a nice example of the appeal to nature as a marketing strategy.  Of all of the marketing strategies out there designed to make us buy things that we don’t need and perhaps don’t even want, I suppose this is rather innocuous (though I could argue that it makes it more difficult for us to actually evaluate what foods are and are not “natural”).

Alongside this makeover, Frito-Lay is also starting a website and animated cartoon serial designed to appeal to women.  I’ve embedded the “trailer” below.  Notice how it affirms the idea that women are obsessed with food and their weight, at the same time that it is carefully crafted so as to encourage women to “cheat.”  As the woman in the video says about her cookie: “So if I eat it standing up, it doesn’t count right?”  And her friend replies: “Absolutely.”  Everyone knows that it still “counts,” but when the one friend eggs on the other, we all feel more comfortable “cheating.”   Frito Lay foods for everyone!

So the commercial reproduces the stereotype that women are boy crazed whiners with a deranged relationship to food and an embarassing obsession with shoes.  [By the way, Gwen and I are, like, totally like this.  It’s amazing we even have time to be sociologists, what with all the traipsing around in high heels, discussing diet fads, and oogling cute boys!]

Okay, so it reproduces rather repugnant ideas about women.  What’s the harm?

On the first day of Sociology of Gender I ask students to introduce themselves and answer a few questions including:  “Are you a stereotypical man or woman?  Why or why not?”  Inevitably the majority of students will say that they do not conform to the stereotype, that they both do and do not have characteristics associated with it, that they display human characteristics, not just ones associated with their sex.  I then ask them:  “What percentage of your friends and family fit the stereotype?”  They respond similarly.  I follow up: “How many of you regularly find yourself starting sentences with ‘Women are so…’ and ‘Men are so…’?”  They all raise their hands.

 This, I suggest, is interesting.  Gender stereotypes don’t come from us and aren’t validated by our actual experiences.  Yet, we still talk as if they were true.   If we don’t affirm the stereotype, where do they come from and why do we believe that they are true?

Well, here’s part of the answer: We know what men and women are like because we are constantly told what women and men are like.   This Frito Lay campaign is one source of this particular stereotype about women; more can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Another question, and one I’d love to know the answer to, is:  Why is it that, when cultural messages and actual experiences contradict each other, we come out endorsing the cultural messages?

Percent of internet users by region (from internetworldstats):

Akamai offers moment-to-moment data on internet use.  This is a screenshot from 11:34:55pm Pacific Standard Time:

You can choose any region to highlight.  Here are the United States and China, South Korea, and Japan:

Hits per second by region:

Via Graphic Sociology.

February is Black History Month, the month in which companies tout their support for the Black community.  MultiCultClassics, a blog that focuses on company outreach to people of color as employees and consumers, has been asking some interesting questions about this phenomenon.  Cynically, perhaps, it is suggested that it is all a big marketing scheme aimed at a good 13 percent of the American population.   Hmmmm.  For example:

This message was appearing on the screens at a grocery store…

…and HighJive decided to test the theory.  The blogger went to the grocery store website, searched for information regarding “Black History Month,”  and found only this:

(Post here.)

Cynthia Enloe draws attention to how mobilizing a nation at war requires drawing on not just the notion of the heroic masculine protector, but also the vulnerable women and children who must be protected.  To draw attention to the way in which this binary (protector/protected) has functioned, she wrote “women and children” as “womenandchildren.”   Speaking very generally, women and children, and perhaps especially womeandchildren, are sympathetic characters in society in a way that men simply are not.  Likewise, women and children often seem more deserving of assistance and charity than men, who are expected to buck up and take care of themselves.

Stephen W. found himself confronted with this solicitation when making an internet purchase:

Stephen wondered why he would want to “wipe out heart disease in women,” as opposed to “wipe out heart disease”? 

Why indeed?

Perhaps the appeal to save a group we often understand to be vulnerable and deserving of assistance makes (or is believed to make) this a more effective solicitation.

NEW (Jan ’10)!  Anna K.-B. sent in another instance of this women-need-extra-care-and-protection thing.  In this case, it’s a walk to end women’s cancers only:

The Active Life Movement has produced these ads as part of their campaign against childhood obesity:

What irks me about this ad campaign is the negative message (i.e., the implicit “don’t”).  The message is: Don’t look like this.  And, maybe secondarily: Don’t eat a lot, watch TV, use your computer, or have conversations (?).   It’s ultimately restrictive and shaming.

The message could be a positive one (i.e., an implicit “do”): Do go outside, play, learn to dance, enjoy nature!  All of those would (presumably) accomplish the goals of the Active Life Movement without shaming people who don’t look like Barbie, Superman, or Legos (?) and who like to eat food, watch TV, be on the computer, and sit down sometimes.

Ultimately, then, instead of promoting the behaviors the organization likes, the advertisers resorted to reinforcing fat phobia/hatred and the stereotype that fat people just sit around and eat.

[I just realized I’m sitting in my bed, with a cat, having tossed off my shoes, I’m on my computer… and I am eating a SNACK!!!! Oh no!!!!!]

(Ad Freak via Shapely Prose.)