October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Accordingly, during October we come across more than the normal number of pink-ribbon-adorned items that variously give a portion of proceeds to breast cancer research, remind women to conduct breast exams, contain supportive messages for breast cancer survivors, or just sort of, you know, support the existence of boobs and oppose cancer. For instance, Alicia, the moderator of Think Before You Pink, found this thong

And Renée Yoxon noticed that Staples, among other office-supply stores, has a lot of pink ribbon products for sale, including pink-ribbon paper, file folder, calculators, daily planners, pens, and, in Canada, a tape dispenser from 3M shaped like a high-heeled shoe:

We’ve posted on the whole issue of breast cancer awareness branding before. And one response that always comes up is, basically, yes, companies may be using breast cancer as a marketing tool to increase sales, but if by doing so they also donate money for breast cancer research or prevention, who cares? By buying pink-ribbon address labels, money goes to fight breast cancer that probably wouldn’t have been donated otherwise, so the net effect is good, right?

In his book Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker suggests perhaps not. He summarizes a number of studies that found that “doing good in one area of life provided a rationale to worry less about such things in another” (p. 222). Specifically, feeling they had contributed in some way (by imagining they had agreed to volunteer at a community organization) significantly increased subjects’ preference for “luxury” items. It appears that feeling we have done a good deed makes us feel like we deserve rewards in other arenas, or at least frees us to make decisions we might otherwise be a bit embarrassed about.

Walker connects this research to the wide array of companies that either create a particular product that is slightly more eco- or labor-friendly than their regular line or that donate a tiny portion of profits to a charity of some sort. He suggests that the ability to easily “do good” through consumption — that is, I can choose the pink-ribbon file folders and feel good about myself for being a good citizen — may contribute some money to a particular charity, but may ultimately lead us to be less concerned about the impacts of our other consumption choices. As Walker summarizes the effect,

These various efforts each add just enough options to the miles of retail shelves to give us all an ethical fix — to do our one good shopping deed. Then we can push our basket a little farther down the aisle, letting other rationales take over: Here’s a bargain, here’s a great product…and here, yes, here is something ethical. I’ll take one of those, too. (p. 223)

From this perspective, this type of branding may benefit companies not just by making it more likely we’ll buy the specific product they’ve attached a pink (or red, or yellow, or whatever color) ribbon to, but by satisfying our need to feel like we’re aware, concerned consumers, and thus making us less likely to question the production practices of the other items we’re choosing among.

A former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon (R) is running in Connecticut for a seat in the U.S. Senate.  In an essay at the Huffington Post, sent in by Dr. Caroline Heldman, Jackson Katz explains that her company has promoted “…some of the most brutal, violent and hateful depictions of women in all of media culture over the past twenty years.”  The violence and misogyny in professional wrestling is an issue that Katz has taken on personally in his documentary, Wrestling with Manhood.

Media actors, he argued, have not focused on the substance of her company’s product, so much as its amazing success.  Katz, however, challenges the idea that her business acumen is more important than the fact that she spent 20 years promoting and excusing violence against women:

…incredibly, the rampant misogyny of McMahon’s WWE has gotten scant coverage during this fall’s U.S. senate campaign in Connecticut. Political reporters have largely rolled over and bought the McMahon campaign line that what goes on in professional wrestling is only entertainment, that the WWE has gotten more family-friendly in recent years, and that we should all just lighten up and focus on what really matters about Linda McMahon’s stewardship of the WWE: her savvy business skills and experience.

Hoping to bring attention to the kind of messages the WWE sent under McMahon’s leadership, Katz put together this 11-minute clip from his documentary (trigger warning):

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.

Adrienne at Native Appropriations reports that this year Harvard University fraternity Sigma Chi threw a Columbus Day “bros and hos” party titled “Conquistabros and Navajos.” Get it?

Perhaps it’s too much to expect student in the Ivy League to be sensitive, but Harvard students are supposed to be smart, right?  Not so much.  Adrienne points out their bizarre illogic: how exactly does it make sense to have a party that mingles Navajos (from the American Southwest) with pilgrims (who lived in the American Northeast) and Conquistadors (who arrived after, not with Columbus) and cowboys (who, as we know them, would come hundreds of years later)?

And while we’re at it, why not expect them to be sensitive.  Adrienne reminds us, again, patiently…

1. Glorifying and making light of the atrocities committed by the “explorers” of the Americas is just as bad as glorifying the Nazis and the Holocaust, and not something to be taken lightly.

2. The theme is using a generic stereotype of an Indigenous person (in this case “Navajo”) to represent thousands of tribes and communities throughout the Americas, each with their own unique culture and history. The Indigenous groups who encountered the conquistadors are not remotely the same as Navajos in the southwest, and by lumping them together, the party contributes to continued stereotyping of Native peoples as one monolithic group — consisting of hollywood stereotypes of war paint, feathers, and buckskin.

3. Encouraging party goers to “dress up” as American Indians and Indigenous Peoples puts Native people in the category of a fantasy character — something that no longer exists, or never did. Columbus, Conquistadors, and Pilgrims are all situated in the past, but Native peoples are still here, are still alive, and still Native (and yes, cowboys are still alive, but they are not systematically oppressed and facing continued colonialism). It is also condoning dressing up in racial drag, and I would bet Sigma Chi might get in a little trouble if they hosted a blackface party.

But no one would do that, would they?

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.

As we’ve talked about before, one marketing strategy to get people to buy more stuff is to manipulate sizes. In the case of clothing, companies often use “vanity sizing,” labeling clothes as a smaller size than they really are. Food serving sizes have followed a form of vanity sizing of their own, with portions getting larger over time. Ben Ostrowsky sent in a great example of changing norms of consumption, highlighting the enormous increase in what is considered a standard serving of soda.

In this 1950s ad for soda, the text proudly proclaims that a 12-oz. can is “king-size,” and includes 2 full servings:

Compare it to this sign at Long John Silver’s, where the smallest size is 20 oz., and a 32-oz. medium soda, presented as the default size, is nearly 3 times as large as the 1950s king-size double serving (though, as a reader pointed out and I didn’t think to mention, we do have to make some allowance for ice in the cup):

The gas station nearest me used to have fountain drink cups that started at 20 oz. I noticed recently they’ve completely dropped that size; the smallest cup you can now buy is 32 oz. The largest is a whopping 64 oz. I am actually curious how a person gets it home in their car, as I don’t see how it would fit in a standard cup holder. Perhaps you buckle it into an empty seat?

Of course, the larger the default size, the more product a company sells. For other examples of the push to increase portions or serving sizes, see Lisa’s post on manufacturers’ instructions for use.

Alex C. sent in an example of the belittling of men by men in the context of sport.  Two teenager fans of the Red Sox found themselves verbally assaulted by Yankee fans for the sin of sitting amongst them.  They surround the boys and sing, aggressively, to the tune of YMCA, after a mostly indecipherable lead in:

Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ it, D-I-C-K.
They have every size, you’re about to enjoy.
You can hang out with all the boys!
Why are you gay!
I saw you suckin’ some D-I-C-K.

It should be clear to everyone that this behavior represents a sick society. Team affiliation follows the rules of the minimal group paradigm: humans appear to be willing to form meaningful groups based on just about anything.  Sports just happens to be an arena in which hypermasculinity is rewarded, even demanded.  This makes it acceptable to be cruel to one another and makes it inevitable that that cruelty will take the form of hatred towards gay men (deemed masculine failures) in the form of homophobic slurs.  It’s not even that they think the kids are gay, but calling them gay is good for a laugh and a great insult.

This is what it’s like to be a man under patriarchy: moments of inhumanity in which men accept and reproduce hatred against others and moments of victimization when other men aim that hatred at you.

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.

Emma M.H. sent us a link (via Jewish Philanthropy) to a study by the Center of Philanthropy, at Indiana University, about differences in financial donating by men and women. The report looks at data from a 2007 nationally representative survey of households, in which respondents were asked about their charitable giving in 2006. To isolate differences in giving, the report includes data only on single heads of household (whether never-married, divorced, or widowed), since in married households it’s difficult to distinguish who made the decision to donate (they point out that the literature is also very clear that married households are much more likely to donate than non-married households). You can get a copy of the actual questionnaire here.

They break the data down by income as well, dividing them into quintiles (that is, each category contains 20% of respondents). The income quintiles are: Q1 = $23,509 or less, Q2 = over $23,509 but less than $43,500, Q3 = over $43,500 but less than $67,532, Q4 = over $67,532 but less than $103,000, and Q5 = $103,000+.

As we see, in each income category non-married women were more likely to donate to charities of some sort:

Women also generally gave more:

It’s interesting to me that the total amount of the giving doesn’t vary more by income for non-married women (the amount of reported giving is basically the same for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quintiles), yet varies so much for non-married men. Thoughts on what’s going on there?

Likelihood of giving also varies quite a bit depending on type of single status — those who are widowed are quite a bit more likely to donate than the never-married, which is probably partially a factor of age and related factors like generally higher incomes/wealth:

As we’ve posted on in the past, women are also more likely to be involved in volunteer work.

I’d love to see a breakdown of where men and women donate, but the report didn’t provide that level of detail.

The Nielsen Company finds that the use of phone voice and text communication varies quite tremendously by age:

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.

In a society in which masculinity is valued over femininity, like the U.S., the words “woman” and “girl” (not to mention words like “pussy,” “bitch,” and “cocksucker”) are effective slurs against both men and women. The flipside of this, of course, is that acting like a man is considered good. Acting like a man means being powerful, assertive, and effective. In masculinized arenas, like politics, both men and women are expected to act like men and being accused of being a woman is an effective slur against any politician.

Case in point: Dmitriy T.M. sent a 30-sec Politico video in which Sharron Angle tells Harry Reid to “man up.”

Politico reports five other instances in which candidates of both sexes delivered this chide to opponents. The fact that both men and women find this insult useful suggests that everyone has accepted sexism in politics and is willing to endorse and manipulate it to win. But, while the slur may help individual women and men win races, it ultimately affirms the idea that politics is no place for a woman.

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.