(Image found here.)

Ballgame at Feminist Critics writes:

The assertion, “children do better with parents together” could mean a number of different things, so let’s go through the possible ways the statement could be interpreted:

The notion that “Children ALWAYS do better with parents together” is almost certainly false. If one of the parents is abusive, it seems pretty non-controversial to assume that the kids would be better off with the non-abusive parent alone.

The notion that “Children SOMETIMES do better with parents together” is almost certainly true, but so banal and useless an observation that it’s not worth the expense of a billboard or worth discussing at any length.

That leaves “Children GENERALLY do better with parents together.” This, itself, has two entirely different meanings which are easily confused. Take 100 couples with children. Of those couples, 75 are (at the moment) happily married, while 25 have marital difficulties — some severe — and are on the brink of divorce. Let’s say 20 of the 25 couples actually go through with the divorce.

The notion that “Children GENERALLY do better with parents together” could be taken to mean that, out of the 100 families described above, children from the 80 non-divorcing families end up being mentally and emotionally healthier (as a group) than the children from the 20 divorcing families. That is very easy to believe. Indeed, there are any number of studies that show this, and these are the studies that are typically trotted out to misleadingly imply that divorce hurts children. In fact it’s just another rather banal observation that children from happy families do better than children from emotionally fraught ones, and hardly worth the price of a billboard. It’s almost like saying, “People with money are less likely to have difficulties making ends meet.”

But the other meaning of “Children GENERALLY do better with parents together” is quite different: namely, that the children in the 20 divorcing families would have been better off if those parents hadn’t gotten divorced. THAT notion is purely speculative as far as I know.

Via Alas.

At one point in U.S. history, sodomy was illegal in every state. In the penal codes (no pun intended), sodomy was sometimes defined as anal sex, sometimes as oral sex, and sometimes both. In some cases, the laws applied only to same sex partners, in other cases to any two partners (even husband and wife).

This map (found here) shows when each state repealed its law:

In 2003, the Supreme Court made all such laws unconstitutional. This image (found here) shows which states had sodomy laws that applied to same sex couples and those that had laws that applied to all couples:

Both Cole S. and Toban B. found this Nestle’s candy bar (Cole saw it at World Market):

The Yorkie website was down (the error message said for routine maintenance) when I tried it, but Toban managed to snag some quotes from it earlier that indicate how the bar is being marketed to men. The bar is described as “a big, solid, chunky eat, uniquely for men,” and the site goes on:

Yorkie is positioning itself as a chocolate bar for men who need a satisfying hunger buster. With five solid chunks of chocolate, it’s a man sized eat…

[Earlier] advertising reflected this with macho imagery – lorry drivers who take it one chunk at a time…
Yorkie still holds these values today but was relaunched in 1994 as a hunger satisfying bar.

It’s similar to the way that Hungry Man frozen dinners are marketed: the association with working-class male appetites, which presumably require big, “solid” meals to satisfy them after their hard days of work. Clearly any candy bar this serious isn’t appropriate for women. Oh, excuse me…not a candy bar, a hunger-satisfying bar. Women eat chocolate for emotional reasons or to bask in the luxury of the taste; men eat chocolate just to fill their stomachs. Notice that the advertising doesn’t focus on the types of things we generally see in Dove or Hershey’s ads for chocolate bars: the chocolate being rich, smooth, delicious, etc., which imply that eating chocolate is an indulgence rather than just a practical way to satisfy your hunger.

Also, in our comments Trevor pointed us to a conversation about a pink version of the Yorkie.  I am completely perplexed.  Along the top it says “VERY LIMITED EDITION.”  Along the bottom is says “5 HUNKY CHUNKS OF MILK CHOCOLATE.”  Along the top, diagnolly, it reads: “GET YOUR LIPS AROUND THIS!” 

So is it a girl version?  I can’t tell.  The female figure is still crossed-out with the “no” symbol.  I don’t know what pink thing she is holding.  I am perplexed.

Also note, Men’s Pocky (thanks Lis Riba): 

Candy, like other high-sugar products, are often gendered female.  Perhaps that’s why this candy marketing is making such a big point of making candy manly?  Notice that the Men’s Pocky is “bitter,” i.e., not too sweet.  That seems to be happening a lot these days, as in the new Snickers and Twix marketing, see here, here, here, and here.

NEW! Keely W. sent in a commercial for Mars’ new candy bar aimed at women, Fling (found here).  The message: You shouldn’t (sexually) indulge a lot, but you can (sexually) indulge just a little… with the help of Mars Co., of course.

First, thanks to all of you for making 2008 a great year for Sociological Images!  Our list of 152 blogs that link to us is one tiny way that we try to show our appreciation.  Browse through our list, if you like, and if you link to us in your blogroll and aren’t on there, please send us a note at socimages@thesocietypages.org to let us know.

Second, as usual, we have been up to some stuff behind your back!  Here it is:

Remember how the swastika didn’t used to connote total evil?  Neither did we. We added several more examples of pre-Nazi uses of the swastika to this post.

The Canadian Centre for Diversity put out an interesting PSA along the lines of the U.S. “I am African” campaign (so brilliantly parodied).  Find the link here.  Thanks to Julie C. for sending it in!

Our post about rape as hyperconformity to masculine norms sparked a ton of comments, many of them negative.  Maybe these screenshots of a whole series of recipes for a drink called the “Liquid Panty Remover” will influence you one way or the other.   Enjoy!  (Thanks to an anonymous commenter and Vidya for pointed us to a hoax billboard that led us to discover these.)

We added another example of an image of sexualized dominance, this time women’s dominance over men, to our post on the theme.  Thanks to Stumblng Tumblr for the submission!

Still on the topic of sex:  Laura at The F Word posted a video of a commercial that just begged to be added to our post on ejaculation imagery.

You wine drinkers are all sissies!  We added another set of ads to this post on messages about masculinity in Jim Beam ads.  Also on the theme of masculinity, we added a Gillette shampoo ad that tells men to “take charge” of their hair to this post about masculinizing beauty products.  And a reader sent us a link to more antics from Dmitri the Lover (I feel gross just writing his name).

We added a series of furnishings shaped like female bodies–mostly tits and asses really–to a post on in-no-way-theoretical objectification. Click here for the post.  Here’s a teaser just for fun:

Relatedly, we added an image of a pole-dancer alarm clock from a catalog to this post featuring the “Bitchcruiser.”  Yeah, you gotta take a look at that one.

On the theme of using women’s bodies to “sell” stuff, here’s another image showing how PETA sexualizes women as a way to advocate vegetarianism.

On gender and socialization, we added a screen shot of an Amazon webpage showing what to buy “for her” and “for him” to our post about gendered holiday gift marketing (sent in by Sofia A.) and we added an image of the video game Imagine: Babies to this post about how Miss Bimbo socializes girls into traditional gender roles.

Speaking of banal stereotypes, Jasmine sent us some more examples of truly boring uses of stereotypes.  This time they are used to promote eye care.  Find them here.

We added an image comparing a Brazilian brand of rum to Brazilian waxes (you know, those kinds of waxes) to make the claim that the brand is authentic to this post.  Because there’s nothing more authentic than a woman waxed to look like a child.  What!?

Finally, what better way to end our list than with a post about animals, “love,” and babies!  A bonded pair of male penguins at a zoo were replacing the eggs of male-female couples with rocks and sneaking off with their eggs.  The zoo keepers helped them legitimately adopt and now everyone’s happy.  We added a picture of this couple to our post about actual “homosexual” pairings among animals.

Laura Agustin, author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets, and the Rescue Industry, asks us to be critical consumers of stories about sex trafficking, the moving of girls and women across national borders in order to force them into prostitution.  Without denying that sex trafficking occurs or suggesting that it is unproblematic, Agustin wants us to avoid completely erasing the possibility of women’s autonomy and self-determination.

About one news story on sex trafficking, she writes:

…[the] ‘undercover investigation’, one with live images, fails to prove its point about sex trafficking… reporters filmed men and women in a field, sometimes running, sometimes walking, sometimes talking together.

…I’m willing to believe that we’re looking at prostitution, maybe in an informal outdoor brothel. But what we’re shown cannot be called sex trafficking unless we hear from the women themselves whether they opted into this situation on any level at all. They aren’t in chains and no guns are pointed at them, although they might be coerced, frightened, loaded with debt or wishing they were anywhere else. But we don’t hear from them. I’m not blaming the reporters or police involved for not rushing up to ask them, but the fact is that their voices are absent.

…

There are lots of things we might find out about the fields near San Diego… [but] we don’t see evidence for the sex-trafficking story. Feeling titillated or disgusted ourselves does not prove anything about what we are looking at or about how the people actually involved felt.

Regarding a news clip, Agustin writes:

…a reporter dressed like a tourist strolls past women lined up on Singapore streets, commenting on their many nationalities and that ‘they seem to be doing it willingly’. But since he sees pimps everywhere he asks how we know whether they are victims of trafficking or not? His investigation consists of interviewing a single woman who… articulates clearly how her debt to travel turned out to be too big to pay off without selling sex. Then an embassy official says numbers of trafficked victims have gone up, without explaining what he means by ‘trafficked’ or how the embassy keeps track…

So here again, there could be bad stories, but we are shown no evidence of them. The women themselves, with the exception of one, are left in the background and treated like objects.

To recap, what Agustin is urging us to do is to refrain from excluding the possibility of women’s agency by definition. Why might a woman choose a dangerous, stigmatized, and likely unpleasant job? Well, many women enter prostitution “voluntarily” because of social structural conditions (e.g., they need to feed their children and prostitution is the most economically-rewarding work they can get). Assuming all women are forced by mean people, however, makes the social structural forces invisible. We don’t need mean pimps to force women into prostitution, our own social institutions do a pretty good job of it.

And, of course, we must also acknowledge the possibility that some women choose prostitution because they like the work. You might say, “Okay, fine, there may be some high-end prostitutions who like the work, but who could possibly like having sex with random guys for $20 in dirty bushes?” Well, if we decide that the fact that their job is shitty means that they are “coerced” in some way, we need to also ask about those people that “choose” other potentially shitty jobs like migrant farmwork, being a cashier, filing, working behind the counter at an airline (seriously, that must suck), factory work, and being a maid or janitor. There are lots of shitty jobs in the U.S. and world economy. Agustin simply wants us to give women involved in prostitution the same subject status as women and men doing other work.

Maggie B. says:

I was shocked and appalled when I saw these posters hanging above the children’s shoe section in a FootAction store in Jensen Beach, FL this weekend.

In her book, Bad Boys, Ann Ferguson argues that while white boys are seen as naturally and innocently naughty, black boys are seen as willfully bad.  This is possible because teachers attribute adult motivations to black, but not white, children.  Ferguson calls this adultification.   Essentially this means that many teachers and other school authorities see black boys as “criminals” instead of kids.  And black girls–also adultified, but differently–are seen as dangerously sexual.  Adults, of course, are held 100% responsible for their behavior.  There is no leeway here, no second chances, and no benefit of the doubt.

These pictures do more than just sexualize the young children pictured (who appear to be black and mixed-race), they also adultify them with their expressions, postures, fashion, and implied contexts.

A Daily Mail story reports that women lawyers are being told by “image consultants’ that to appear “professional” they should enhance their femininity by wearing skirts and stilettos, but avoid drawing attention to their breasts.  Thoughts about the word “professional” after the screenshot (thanks to Jason S. for the link):

A spokesman for the company doling out this advice says that it’s about being “professional.”  This is a great term to take apart.  What do we really mean when we say “professional”?

How much of it has to do with proper gender display or even, in masculinized workplaces, simply masculine display?

How much of it has to do with whiteness?  Are afros and corn rows unprofessional?   Is speaking Spanish?  Why or why not?

How much of it has to do with appearing attractive, heterosexual, monogamous, and, you know, not one of those “unAmerican” religions?

For that matter, how much of it has to do with pretending like your work is your life, you are devoted to the employer, and your co-workers are like family (anyone play Secret Santa at work this year)?

What do we really mean when we say “professional”?  How does this word get used to coerce people into upholding normative expectations that center certain kinds of people and marginalize others?

Text: “The Hunt Is On.”

A fashion spread (note the “safari” colors”):

Other ads had the text: “Going in for the kill has never been so satisfying” and “Animal attraction is meant to be acted on.”

Text: “Her primal urges may be fulfilled, but he’s still hot on her trail.”

Text: “He spots his prey…”

Five-page ad for Dentyne:

Text:

INTRODUCTION:  Admit it, guys.  No matter where you are, you’re thinking about it.

It’s okay.  Ever since you were a cave dweller.  Hunting has come naturally.   But you won’t get anywhere with cave breath.

So aside from having a mouth that won’t scare her off, we’ve outlined some fundamental basics you’ll need to master when out on the hunt.

Let’s get started.  Happy hunting.

THE SPECIES:  First of all, you have to know what you’re hunting.  Here are some common species you may encounter on your expeditions.  Good luck.

THE CAREER GIRL:  The one in a power suit with a cell phone attached to her ear, tends to be icy and dismissive but can be melted.  Play your cards right and you will be a kept man.  Habitat: Gym, high-end shoe stores, assertiveness-training classes.

THE HOT GIRL: Hot and know it.  Will toy with you like a cat with a mouse (if she even notices you).  Tame this one and you can write your own guide.  Habitat: The market, the bus, living next door to your girlfriend.

Text:

THE EASY GIRL:  Appearances vary, but the same willing soul resides within.  A sure thing that can be a temporary boost to the ego.  Habitat:   Could be anywhere.  Good chance you’ll spot her at happy hour.

THE TEASE:  Easily mistaken for the easy girl, she’s anything but.  Habitat: Anywhere.

THE CHATTY GIRL:  You won’t recognize her until you say ‘Hi.’  Then it’s too late.  To escape, fake getting a phone call and say you’ll be ‘right back.’  Habitat: Almost anywhere except a library.

THE BOHEMIAN ROCKER GIRL: Odds are she’s no musician.  Just dresses like one.  Look interested when she talks about all the ‘projects’ she has going on while not being an administrative assistant.  Habitat: Used record stores, art museums, open mic night.

Text:

RULES WHEN OUT IN THE FIELD:

Look her in the eye, not the anatomy.

Practice chivaly.  Unless she’s a militant feminist, she’ll like it.

Compliment her outfit.  Lie if you have to.

Look interested when she talks about her cat.

If you get shot down, move on to one of her friends.

Pop in a piece of Dentyne before making any moves.

RED FLAGS:

In the first five minutes, she mentions an ex.

She says she has to go home and take her ‘medication.’

She’s made plans for the two of you next weekend.

She knows every bartender by name.

She has an adam’s apple.

Text:

THE ARSENAL:

Money (it never hurts).

Your own place.  Living above mom and dad’s garage doesn’t count.

Perseverance, it’s tough out there.

Plenty of Dentyne gum.

These all remind me of an unfortunate Target billboard.

Thanks to my students who have brought these in over the years!