Enjoy these earlier posts about Daylight Savings:
- A History and Account of Daylight Savings Time
- Social Construction, Deviance, and What Time is it Again?
- No Friday in Samoa
SocImages news!
Our top post on Tumblr this month, with over 45,000 likes and re-blogs, discusses a brain imaging study that suggests that social justice is linked to logic, not emotion.
We earned some major nerd cred this month when Wil Wheaton tumbled it! Here is the awesome evidence of that fabulous day:
Seriously, folks. My inner 14-year-old girl downright squealed.
You like! Here are our most appreciated posts this month:
Why do witches ride brooms was the clear winner with 9,300+ likes. And it’ll be obvious why if you click through to find out.
Other winners:
- 57% of languages do not have gendered pronouns (3,100+ likes)
- Muggle Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts (1,600+ likes)
- School shootings: What’s different about Europe? (1,400+ likes)
- What does organic look like? (900+ likes)
- Our annual “Sexy What!?” post (900+ likes)
- The no. 1 cause of traffic fatalities? It’s not texting, it’s driving (800+ likes)
Thanks everybody!
Editor’s pick:
New Pinterest board!
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and its backlash, we put together a Pinterest board featuring the weirdest and most outrageous examples of pinkwashing. And we started it BEFORE the pinkwashed fracking drill bit was announced!
Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:
Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, and Pinterest. I’m on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisawade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, and @jaylivingston.
Finally…
Sociologist D’Lane Compton hopes you had a happy Halloween! Follow her on Twitter!
Joel Best, the sociologist famous for debunking the myth that your children might receive Halloween candy impregnated with poison and razor blades, wishes you a “Happy Halloween” and nothing but the Best candy:
Yesterday I wrote about how the money spent on adult Halloween revelry now rivals, or even exceeds, that spent on kids. This may seem like a surprising shift, but it turns out it’s the focus on children that’s new. Halloween as the kid holiday we know it in the U.S. today was really invented in the 1950s.
This, and more fun facts about the history of Halloween, in this two-minute History Channel summary:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.The National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend $7.4 billion dollars celebrating Halloween this year. In total, 74% of households will buy something for Halloween and, among those, the average will spend $125.
There’ll be a bumper crop of pumpkins, more than ever before, and worth about $149 million dollars.
A full two-thirds of the population will buy a costume, spending an average of $77.52 each. That’s a record in terms of both spending and the sheer number of costumes sold.
Interestingly, the holiday has evolved from primarily a children’s holiday to one celebrated by adults, especially millenials. Less than half of the money spent on costumes is going to costumes for children. Adults dress up (to the tune of $1.4 million) and their dress up their pets ($350 million). They also throw parties for other adults and patronize bars and clubs, which increasingly feature Halloween-themed events, food, and drinks.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.Here are my picks for the bizarrest sexy costumes this year. Enjoy!
Sexy Scrabble (via):
Except — I know, I know — nothing’s sexier than Scrabble.
I take it back; that costume is fantastic.
Sexy BDSM pig (via):
Okay, I admit. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on here.
Want more? See sexy what!? (2012) and sexy what!? (2010) or What do sexy Halloween costumes for men look like?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.According to an article by Megan Garber at The Atlantic, they did it for the drugs.
Starting in the 1300s, Europeans developed a taste for hallucinogenic drugs. Unfortunately, ingesting them often caused nausea and vomiting. Absorbing them through the skin came with fewer side effects and delivering them through the mucous membranes of the female genitals was ideal.
A physician quoted at The Guardian says the claim is medically sound:
Ointment would have been very effective as a delivery method… Mucous membranes are particularly good at transporting drugs – that’s why cocaine is snorted… Vaginal application would be pretty efficient, and the effects of the drugs would be noticeable quite rapidly.
According to legend, then, witches would coat the handle of a broom — a convenient household item — lift their skirts and get high.
The women who trafficked in hallucinogenic substances were often accused of being witches. Or, conversely, women accused of being witches were also accused of making magic ointments (from the fat of murdered children, no less). And witch experts in the 15th century claimed that they used these ointments not just to get high, but to get high; that is, that they literally flew using ointments.
Hence, witches on brooms.
Flashback Friday.
An excellent piece of evidence that femininity is hilarious or ridiculous in U.S. culture, or even frightening or disgusting, is the fact that men use the category “woman” as a Halloween costume. We laugh when we see men dressed up as women because how ridiculous, right? Women do not generally dress up like a generic man on Halloween because adopting masculinity is an everyday things for us. It’s valued, not mocked.
Many costume manufacturers (or homemade costume makers, for that matter) add fat hatred to the mix. Because there is nothing more disgusting and hilarious, we are told, than a fat woman. Except, perhaps, a fat woman who fails to be properly humiliated.
The costume manufacturers know this and are trafficking in this hatred on purpose. Here are some examples, sent in by Michaela N. and Shane M., from several different online costume stores:
Pamela Anderson’s character on Baywatch wasn’t fat. This reveals that the costume manufacturers aren’t just making costumes that let people dress up as fat others, they’re adding fatness as a joke.
Halloween is a disturbing fun house mirror, showing us what we really think about each other.
Originally posted in 2010. Cross-posted at The Huffington Post.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.