Behold, “The Ugly Truth” about women and men:Amanda at Pandagon offers a nice analysis:

It’s the classic modern attempt to mollify women about vicious gender stereotyping by phony flattery through insulting men—men are such dogs, amiriteladeez?!  But the “men are dogs” stereotype is ultimately about putting women in their place, because it packages these assumptions:

* Women are naive, emotional, and kind of stupid, which is why men can exploit these “feelings” women have to steal sex from us.

* Women are obsessed with irrational things like weddings and getting flowers, and they lose their minds over this.  (Men are compelled by their supposed out of this world horniness, but rarely are they depicted as losing control of themselves to the point where they lose their dignity.) This is why men have the upper hand, because women are too crazy to hang onto it.  It’s certainly not that this is a male-dominated society, no siree, and to make that abundantly clear, female rom com characters now usually have a lot of professional power.

* Women don’t really like sex that much; they just tolerate it to lure unwilling men into pretending to care about us.

* Men are cold, unfeeling creatures that just want sex and nothing more.  Women cannot change this, so we have to accept it.  For some reason, just abandoning men altogether if they suck this much doesn’t occur to anyone.

* But for some reason, if you buy into this bleak worldview where men and women are completely different, and at war with each other, you’ll be rewarded with True Love.

Via Jezebel.

Hortense at Jezebel writes:

The ad depicts a horde of completely insane women, screaming with excitement… if, as the ad claims, these packs are “goodies for grown-ups,” then why are women the only ones going crazy over the cookies in this ad? The men in this ad react to the woman with a mix of “WTF” and “oh my god, you’re crazy” which only serves to make the women look even more pathetic and ridiculous.

This commercial tells a similar story: women totally lose it in the face of low calorie sweets.

NEW (Nov. ’09)! And, of course, there is holiday shopping (found at Ad Freak):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wer7b29mreA[/youtube]

This graphic shows the age at which successive cohorts of French women are marrying.  Along the bottom of the graphic, the thick grey line represents women who were age 15 in 1987 (the oldest at the end of data collection is a little less than 30, which is why the line stops).  Each line above that represents an earlier cohort of women.  The data shows that, while the earliest cohorts largely married in their early 20s, with just a few stragglers.  The younger cohorts increasingly spread out the typical age of marriage.  It takes nearly 15 years for the most recent cohort to have married off the same proportion of women that were married in the older cohort in the five years between 15 and 20.

This image was borrowed from a new Contexts blog called Graphic Sociology.  Check it out.

Citation: German Rodriguez (2006) Office of Population Research, Princeton University. Problem Set 4: Marriage in France.  Research Methods in Demography.

This week in the New York Times, Catherine Rampell explained how the recession was affecting the ratio of female to male workers:

The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.

Here are the results:

Excluding farm workers and the self-employed, women held 49 percent of the nation’s jobs as of November. Including farm workers and the self-employed, women held 47 percent of jobs.

But, Rampell reminds us:

Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family… Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income…

If the recession continues as it has, the U.S. workforce may soon be majority female.

See also this post on job segregation.

I read some very silly celebrity blogs, but make a point of staying away from the ones that make fun of people for being fat, sad, whatever, even as they may poke fun of the sometimes-ridiculous things celebrities wear.

That said, AYYY! does a “puzzle corner” every Monday and blurs out the faces of people in a similar theme (i.e. child star pics of current stars) and the reader’s meant to guess who’s who.  Last week, they did one of women who are currently very twig-like, but once were curvier.

So, let’s pretend we’re playing the puzzle just like any old Monday morning. Do you think you recognize any of these stars? I’ll admit, I only had guesses for a couple of them.

So, let’s have the big reveal, shall we?

1. Renee Zellweger, 2. Nicole Richie, 3. Madonna, 4. Amy Winehouse, 5. Lindsay Lohan, 6. Jennifer Connelly, 7. Christina Ricci, 8. Courtney Love, 9. Teri Hatcher, 10. Sophie Dahl

And here are the same women today:

Now, I want to put a disclaimer out there that I’m not trying to body shame anyone here—fat, skinny, in between, or whatever words you prefer to describe yourselves. And, based on their older pics, I’d say that these are not generally women who are naturally this thin (though, of course, such natural changes can occur). I’m sure we all know at least one naturally extremely thin woman, and they get their share of shame (No boobs!) and guilt (Gawd! You’re so lucky! I wish I could be that skinny!) from people daily. I’m not here to add to that.

The point I want to make is that these women have ALWAYS been beautiful. They were considered beautiful enough to be stars with their curves, so what made them think they needed to lose them?

What I want to know is: What changed? What happened between the ’90s (when several of those pics were taken) and today? You can see evidence of the skinnying of hollywood over many decades, but it seems like it suddenly sped up to an extreme point in the last 10-15 years.

What are your takes on the social/political issues that have made this shift occur? My guesses include a lot of conservative blowback against the liberation of women, but I’d really like to know what you think.

* Title unapologetically stolen from ayyyy.com, the inspiration for this post.  Originally posted at Shakesville and Crossing the Highway

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InfamousQBert, sometimes known as Bethany Keeler, is a pinko-commie-liberal-vegetarian-feminist, living, writing, and attempting to fight the good fight in Dallas, TX.

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Nearly a month ago Daphne L. sent us this poster advertising the new television show about lawyers, Damages.  I saw it all around town and maybe you did, too.

I have been trying to think of something interesting to say about it.  I have rejected my first instinct–that the ad represents woman-on-woman violence designed to titillate men and reproduce the stereotype of women as catty–as totally off.  I am not having any luck coming up with an idea of how it fits into our collective consciousnesses. 

There is certainly something fascinating here, but it may just be the way in which Glenn Close is looking calmly into the camera, while the brunette doesn’t even seem to notice or care that she is there.  Perhaps some advertising is just meant to surprise or disturb the reader and be memorable by virtue of failing to make any sense at all.  

I leave it to you, oh readers, to articulate objections, explanations, and defenses.  Or shall we just simply agree with Daphne that it is “unnerving” and leave it at that?

Piper A. sent us a link to a post at Cake Wrecks featuring “redneck” wedding cakes. As someone who recently received an invitation to a cousin’s wedding that included the words “hitched,” “shotgun,” “Honkers,” “Tri-Tip,” and “beer tenders,” I feel especially qualified to comment on these cakes.*

The fact that these cakes are considered “wrecks” reveals that we expect people to follow wedding rules. You are not allowed to have any cake you want, you must have a wedding cake and that cake must conform to certain specifications (apparently three tiers is not sufficient, neither is white frosting, and a sense of humor appears to be out). If you don’t conform, you are getting married wrong. In this case, if I may infer from the “redneck” statement, your wedding has no “class.”

See also this related post on “taste” and two more posts on how to do weddings right (i.e., girls should be skinny and be chosen).

* Extra credit for anyone who can tell from that list of words where my extended family lives.

In From Motherhood to Citizenship, Nitza Berkovich traces a global shift.  Sometime during the 20th century, nation-states became convinced that women could boost national economies and foster development.  Accordingly, states began thinking of their women as potential productive workers instead of reproductive mothers.  It was this economic argument, not necessarily a feminist one, that led to women’s incorporation into the public sphere as citizens (workers, voters, etc).

I was reminded of Berkovitch’s book by a short video sent in by Fran.  The video, produced by a non-profit called Girl Effect*, argues that if you get girls into school and give them cows, the world will be a better place.  As Fran puts it:  “Apparently, girls are only worth supporting if they improve the economy!” Here is an image from the website:

“Girl Effect” is defined as:

The powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.

The logic is not that girls deserve education or the opportunity to sustain their livelihoods (a feminist argument); the logic is that we should invest in girls because it is good for the world (a global improvement or humanist argument or something).  I’m not arguing that the former is better or worse than the latter, only pointing out that it’s interesting that feminist initiatives (helping girls) can be supported with non-feminist logics.

The video:

*  As an aside, I always think it’s interesting when and how people choose to use the word “girl” as opposed to “woman.”  In this case, I suspect the activists think girls are more sympathetic than women.  Kids always pull at the heart purse strings moreso than adults.  I suppose this is because we ascribe to children a sort of innocence.  That, in itself (though socially constructed), doesn’t seem troublesome… but, if we can give the benefit of the doubt, we can also take it away.  I always wonder, for example: When do boys growing up in poverty transition from innocent victims of circumstance to potential criminals?  When do their sisters transition to welfare queens?  When do we decide to retract our generous offering of benevolence and replace it with malevolence?  These are just things I wonder.