This graph, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics and current as of February 6th, compares the number of jobs lost during the 1990 (blue), 2001 (red), and current (green) recessions:

Found at The Daily Kos thanks to Jerry A.

Stephen W. sent in a link to a music video promoting the National Guard.   He saw the video before a screening of Taken in Sioux Falls, SD. At the moment, the National Guard website (warning: noisy) features Kid Rock and Dale Earnhardt Jr.  The opening graphics, set to a snippet of Rock’s Warrior, feature a military helicopter followed by a race car and then a picture of an anonymous African-American National Guard member with the rock star and car star:

A few clicks into the website leads you to this music video:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeVt4j_T7-8[/youtube]

In the photographs made available, pictures of Kid Rock’s life as a rock star are mixed with pictures of people in the National Guard, and the lines between the two blur:

Some observations on the marketing of military service:

First, the glorification of military service is an American phenomenon.  (See this post which features an American and a Swedish military recruitment commercial back-to-back.  The difference is quite amazing.)  In this video, the glorification is particularly acute when the light-skinned driver of the Hummer manages to avoid hitting the blue-eyed, olive-skinned, dark-haired boy and then comes out with his giant gun to kick the ball back to him, inspiring a look of awe from the child who’s country he is likely (given the politics in the last 8 years) invading.  We’re left, assured, that the U.S. military are all around good folk.

Second, in this case we have military service being marketed with celebrity tie-ins.  The website deliberately blurs the line between being a famous rock star, a celebrated race car driver, and a member of the National Guard.  Similarly, this Air Force recruitment ad blurs the line between various extreme sports and military service:

These links between military service, skateboarding, and being a rock star are disingenuous, to say the least.  And it reminds me of a series of recruitment ads I’ve been seeing lately that highlight the super cool jobs you could end up doing in the Air Force (like being a fighter pilot). I don’t know about you, but both of my family members who joined the military (in their cases, the Army) ended up being bus drivers.

Third, which celebrities are being used to market the National Guard tells us something about who they are trying to recruit.  Clearly, they are reaching out to young, working class, perhaps rural, white men.  This is not part of the National Guard marketing aimed specifically at this group, the entire National Guard website (warning: noisy), at this time, is entirely devoted to this theme. It speaks to who fights American wars?  Studies have shown that, while once military service was required of elites, this changed during Vietnam.  Today military service is overwhelmingly performed by working- and middle-class men.

Finally, the re-framing of the role from “soldier” to “warrior,” one who wages war, is very interesting.  I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

More fodder for discussion, if you need it:

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?