Ghanimah A. sent us these images for Cordaid, an “international development organisation” that specializes in “emergency aid and structural poverty eradication.”  We would love to know what you think.

Remember that Trojan ad where men were pigs? Daniel G. sent us another ad portraying men as animals. In this one, men in a bar grow antlers so as to head-butt over a cute girl. Guess which one she goes for? Thanks Daniel!

We consolidated our products-shaped-like-boobs posts and added 17 (yes, 17) new boob-shaped products. Thanks to Stumblng Tumblr and Shakesville.

On a similar theme, we added some additional images of things shaped like women, generally, including a cigarette extinguisher. See them here.

And, still on this theme, we added one more urinal shaped like a woman. We added a second example of a non-American Indian appropriating an American Indian identity and doing conservation work. Click here for Archibald, I mean, Grey Owl.

We added another example of people of color being associated with “spice” and, thus, spicing up the bland world of white people. And this one in a truly misguided pro-diversity ad!

We added to our ad using the idea that Latinas are “hot” and “spicy,” some ads for Rio Casino in which a black woman is used to communicate “passion.” Both demonstrate how women of color are stereotyped as more highly sexual than white women. See it here.

We added a description of a chapter in the book Freakonomics that presents a theory on how baby names become popular to this post about historical trends in baby names, including a link to a website that tracks the popularity of names the Freakonomics authors predict will be most popular by 2015.

We updated this post about an Israeli air conditioner ad that let viewers manipulate a thermostat to make a woman’s nipples get more or less visible. We added a comment from the CEO of the company that he released after protests in Israel forced the company to take the ad down in which he calls people out for being hypocrites for targeting some sexist material but not others. And also says that if they can’t use sexist ads, products would have to actually have a competitive advantage. We thought it was awesome that a CEO would admit they need media images to sell their products because or they’d have to actually make something better or cheaper than what’s already out there.

Eva Longoria was recently accused of being “fat.” We added a pic of her offending body to this post on the scandal over Czech model Karolina Kurkova’s scandalous appearance on the runway and Ali Michael’s fall from grace. Thanks to Elizabeth A. for the tip!

We added an ad for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and one for Skyy vodka to this post about the sexualization of food. Scroll way down.

We added a Snickers commercial in which Mr. T. attacks a man for acting like a sissy (i.e., gay and/or feminine) to our other commecial demonstrating the policing of masculinity. Thanks to Penny R. for alerting us to the commercial!

The presence of lead paint on toys made in China this year brought the threat of lead poisoning to the forefront of the American mind. Parents, pundits, and politicians called on the U.S. government to DO SOMETHING. But lead poisoning was a problem for low-income families long before the China toy scandal and there was little to no outcry in the popular press.

Lead poisoning in children can increase the risk of cognitive delay, hyperactivity, and antisocial behavior. Many older homes and apartments available for rental in low-income neighborhoods still have lead paint and ingesting paint dust and paint chips is the most common way to get lead poisoning. Blood tests show that children living in poverty show much higher exposure to lead than other children.

According to William Ryan, if you are a landlord, renting out a residence with lead paint without making tenants aware of it is a crime. But, instead of enforcing compliance among landlords, the most common response to the threat of lead poisoning has been to warn mothers. Here is a representative poster:

Ryan writes that, while lead poisoning is often described as a problem involving negligent or ignorant mothers, it:

…is more accurately analyzed as the result of a systematic program of lawbreaking by one interest group in the community [landlords], with the toleration and encouragement of the public authority charged with enforcing that law.

So as long as the threat of lead poisoning was more-or-less restricted to the poor in the U.S., it was considered the problem of individuals (mothers) and the state refrained from doing much more than promoting individual responsibility. But, as soon as the lead poisoning threat affected middle class children through the toys from China, state intervention seemed appropriate.

Ryan again:

To ignore these continued and repeated law violations [by landlords who rent residences with lead paint], to ignore the fact that the supposed law enforcer actually cooperates in lawbreaking [by ignoring landlord infractions], and then to load a burden of guilt on the mother of a dead or dangerously ill child is an egregious distortion of reality. And to do so under the guise of public-spirited and humanitarian service to the community is intolerable.

CITATION: Ryan, William. 1998. Blaming the Victim. In Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. See also his book.

Did you know that the U.S. has a higher imprisonment rate than even Russia?  And the U.S. imprisonment rate is about six times that of many European countries. 

(This first figure was made by Kieran Healy.)

When and how did this happen?  It started in the 1980s with Reagan’s “war on drugs.”  The figure below shows the increase in the incarceration rate beginning in the 1980s (# of people out of 100,000).

So our imprisonment rate is the result of imprisoning people who break drug laws, NOT violent criminals or even people who commit property crimes.  The increase is largely due to more aggressive policing of drug law violations. 

And, as you can see in the figure below, the aggressive policing of drug law violations can be found disproportionately in black neighborhoods.  (White and black people take drugs at a very similar rate, but black neighborhoods are more heavily policing and drugs more common among blacks than white have carried heavier sentences — i.e., crack versus cocaine until recently).  This figure shows that the increase in the incarceration rate is mostly an increase in the black incarceration rate. 

Thanks to the amazing Pam Oliver for reminding me that this last graph comes from her work on the incarceration rate (found here).

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first presidential candidate to use television commercials. Below is one of his commercials, made by Disney, from 1952.

Eisenhower was skeptical about using television and his opponent, Stevenson, wouldn’t appear on television because he thought it demeaning to a man ascending to the presidency. Eisenhower won.
This and campaign commercials since can be found at The Living Room Candidate.

More ads portraying men as stupid and trivial. Click here for more.

Miguel E. found all of these here!

NEW: In our comments, Pharmacopaeia pointed us to this commerical from New Zealand:

See also bros before hos.

This is why Gwen was pessimistic about the New Yorker cover.  Another product sold at the Texas Republican Convention:

Also sold at the Texas Republican Convention: If Obama is President… Will We Still Call it the Whitehouse?

Found here via Copyranter.

Susanne T. sent us this image of an ad at a busy stop at the University of Bremen, Germany (comments after the image).  Susanne translates the ad to read:

Kids are only well when mothers are well.  Her project ‘wellcome’ helps families to order the everyday chaos.  Strong women, strong country.

Feminist theorists note that there are two ways to integrate women into a society as equals to men: as citizen-workers (who perform the same tasks as men, namely breadwinning) or as citizen-mothers (who perform different tasks than men, namely parenting). If, and this is a big if, we truly valued parenting as much as we valued breadwinning, then the latter is a perfectly viable strategy with which to bring about a gender egalitarian society.

In the U.S., we conflate the idea of equality with gender sameness, assuming that any difference between men and women is a sign of oppression.  So, to many Americans, the fact that this ad makes fathers invisible and holds women alone responsible for parenting is problematic (as Susanne noted).  But different isn’t necessarily unequal and Germany (as well as France) has a tradition of supporting women as mothers.  By “supporting” I mean generous social policy that rewards women in concrete ways for reproducing the nation.

I’m not sure to what extent Germany still supports mothers with pro-natal policies.  Susanne’s critique may very well be more accurate than my comments about different ways of integrating women into the state.  However, I think it’s useful to problematize our assumptions about what equality would look like.  If women were truly valued for their unique contributions, that would be okay.  The problem in the U.S. is that we hold women responsible for childcare and also devalue that work. 

Adding freedom to that equality, of course, means state support for both citizen-workers and citizen-parents (of both sexes) and equally valuing both contributions.

Also see this post on equating motherhood and military service in the Third Reich.