I found this Levi’s ad a while back and kept forgetting to post it:

What I think is interesting is the implicit class element, in which “men in suits” (presumably middle- and upper-middle-class white-collar workers) are less authentically American. The message is that hard working, jeans-wearing people are true Americans (notice the flag). Of course, it’s also a commentary on masculinity; the type of men who dominate economic and political life today are, from this perspective, lesser men compared to earlier generations of blue-collar workers.

For other examples of class and masculinity in ads, see old vs. new money in a Smirnoff video, upper-class dogs are sissies, and Acura says trust-fund money is out.

U.S. unemployment numbers only begin to describe how U.S. workers have suffered in this recession.  The Pew Research Center has some additional data on this experience.

Twenty-six percent of full-time workers who became re-employed currently only work part-time.  Thirteen percent moved from part-time to full time work.  So, among the employed, there are 13 percent fewer full-time workers.

Americans who lost their jobs and became re-employed during this recession say that they’re making about the same, that the benefits are about equal, and many like their new job better:

Still, the re-employed are more likely than the still-employed to say that they are overqualified for their current job:

People that moved from full- to part-time work are significantly less likely to be satisfied with their new position:

Forty-seven percent of part-time workers would like a full-time job:

The term “underemployed” refers to this 47 percent of the population.   Men, young people, the less educated, lower income, and non-whites are more likely to be underemployed:

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.

Etan B. sent in an interesting case of both stereotyping women (generally as annoying) and interpreting everything they do through the lens of gender difference. Dan Steinberg posted an article on D.C. Sports Blog, a blog of the Washington Post, about comments yesterday by Rob Dibble, a sports commentator for Fox News and for the D.C. baseball team the Nationals on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network channel during televised games. Dibble was apparently fascinated by the fact that a group of women attended the game and, like, talked and stuff. Here are the women to whom he repeatedly referred (he’s also the one who circled them on the screen so viewers could clearly see them):

Steinberg transcribed some of Dibble’s comments:

Those ladies right behind there, they haven’t stopped talking the whole game…They have some conversation going on. Right here…There must be a sale tomorrow going on here or something….Their husbands are going man, don’t bring your wife next time.

Then:

…now they’re back there, they’re eating ice cream and talking at the same time…

Later:

…they’re right there, still talking…

And:

I was just thinking, those women, there’s a new series, Real Housewives of D.C., that just came out…Maybe they’re filming an episode?

This is a perfect example of the way we interpret behavior depending on the gender of the person engaging in it. While I’m by no means a big fan, I have been to baseball games, everything from my nephew’s Little League game for 6-year-olds (seriously hilarious, since the kids mostly run from the ball, stare into space, and have very little idea what’s going on) to major-league games. Everyone eats and talks during the game, at the same time, even. Quite a few spectators consume a lot of beer, after which their conversations become more animated. Sure, they pay more attention at some times than others, but going to a baseball game is a pretty social event that does not involve staring intently at the field at all moments. In fact, the very fact that Dibble was making all these comments means he wasn’t focusing solely on events on the field himself.

But these mundane activities drew Dibble’s attention because women were doing them. Since he stereotypes women as not having a real interest in baseball, their presence, and willingness to talk and eat food, and then talk more, is a sign that they aren’t there for the right reasons and are probably ruining the game for the men around them. They must be talking about typically girly things like shopping. Or maybe they’re there because they’re part of a TV show! That is definitely the most logical explanation.

In a society where gender differences are emphasized, and where femininity is devalued, anything women do may be viewed negatively, even when (or because) men do the exact same thing. The things these women did would almost certainly go unnoticed if a group of men did them, and wouldn’t have attention drawn to them throughout the game. But because it was women, eating and talking becomes noteworthy and bizarre, if not outright annoying, and their presence at all requires explanation.

Reel Injun, a new documentary about the portrayal of American Indians in U.S. movies, has been earning high praise and notice from bloggers and film critics. About the film:

Hollywood has made over 4000 films about Native people; over 100 years of movies defining how Indians are seen by the world...

Travelling through the heartland of America, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond looks at how the myth of “the Injun” has influenced the world’s understanding – and misunderstanding – of Natives.

With candid interviews with directors, writers, actors and activists, including Clint Eastwood, Jim Jarmusch, Robbie Robertson, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell and Russell Means, clips from hundreds of classic and recent films, including Stagecoach, Little Big Man, The Outlaw Josey Wales, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Atanarjuat the Fast Runner, Reel Injun traces the evolution of cinema’s depiction of Native people from the silent film era to today.

I can’t wait to see it.

The trailer:

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.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is famous for helping us understand how economic elites reproduce their own wealth across generations.  It takes money to make money, and that is certainly true.  But as Bourdieu noticed, it wasn’t just money.  Upper-class people had entire ways of living that excluded people without money and people who were newly rich.  They knew the right people (and knew them in common), the right things (e.g., how to talk about yachts), and the right way to act (e.g., which fork to use first).  Other people’s ignorance of these things exposes them to the elite as “not our kind of people.” Even when the elite aren’t biased towards their own on purpose, they’re still more likely to hire the guy who can chat about the most lauded vintage that year, and their children are more likely to marry the children of others who summered alongside them, and so on.  All of these little things — mannerisms, interests, languages, sartorial choices — send messages that distinguish the elite from the non-elite, preserving the group as distinctly advantaged.

In other words, Countess Luann is right:

Thanks to RGR for linking to this video in our recent birthday post for Pierre!  More Bourdieu-ian posts: taste, dumb vs. smart books, and the Evangelican habitus.

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.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight posted this graph that shows changes in attitudes toward same-sex marriage over time (each dot represents a poll Silver considers reliable). As he points out, there seems to be an acceleration in positive attitudes toward same-sex marriage:

CNN just conducted the first poll showing that a majority of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal. That’s just one poll, and we’ll need to see more data, obviously. But we can clearly see that an increasing number of polls show the % favoring same-sex marriage at or above 45%. A regression of all the polls shows a 4 percentage point increase in the last 16 months alone. If this trend continues, we should be nearing the point where differences in support for and opposition to same-sex marriage would fall within the margin of error.

Silver suggests that activism among gay and lesbian rights groups, including a specific push for recognition of same-sex marriages, has led to more acceptance:

Something to bear in mind is that it’s only been fairly recently that gay rights groups — and other liberals and libertarians — shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise…it seems that, in general, “having the debate” is helpful to the gay marriage cause…

Of course, presuming this trend continues and we soon have a majority (even if not an overwhelming one) of Americans supporting legalization of same-sex marriage, that does not necessarily translate into legalization. Acceptance of same-sex marriage is surely unevenly distributed across the U.S. If legalization is left to the states, we can assume some will be much more likely to accept same-sex marriages than others, continuing the patchwork system we have now where gays and lesbians may find themselves married in one state but unmarried if they go on vacation to a neighboring one. National legislation to legalize same-sex marriage would be strongly opposed by a number of legislators from districts where acceptance is below the national average; I’m guessing that even many Democrats, who are usually depicted as more friendly to gay and lesbian rights than Republicans, would not go so far as to vote to legalize gay marriage in the near future. During the campaign, Obama and Biden clearly stated that they supported civil unions but not marriage for same-sex couples.

On the other hand, the federal judicial system could take this out of the hands of Congress and the Senate, or individual states; same-sex marriage could be legalized whether or not a majority of Americans supported it. But short of that, while changes in public attitudes toward same-sex marriage certainly present an encouraging picture for supporters, I think legislative action to actually legalize it is likely to lag significantly behind overall public acceptance.

An article at Colorlines, and the accompanying video interview below, illustrates the way that employment policy virtually ensures that some people will remain excluded from the above-ground economy.  Fourteen months ago, the interviewee, Vincent, lost his job as a maintenance technician, just days before he would be eligible for unemployment, when his boss ran a criminal background check and discovered that Vincent had a 25-year-old record for breaking and entering.

Since then, he’s been unemployed.  When he applies for jobs, he’s frequently told that his application can’t be accepted because of  his criminal background. Accordingly, he is having a terribly difficult time finding a job.  “It’s real hurtful,” he says, “to know that your chances are so broke down to zero.”

Seventy-five percent of people who have left prison are currently unemployed.  When we see criminal recidivism, or the return to crime after release from prison, we should consider the possibility that we are essentially forcing people to turn to the “underground economy” by shutting them out of the “above ground” one.

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.

Previously we’ve posted on the sexy makeovers recently given to Dora the Explorer, Strawberry Shortcake, Holly Hobby, and the Sun Maid.  Here we have three more.

Lisa Frank

Andy Wright at the SF Weekly recently posted about a new look for Lisa Frank art.  If you’re a woman in your 30s, like me, you probably remember this art vividly.  As Wright describes it, it “…was a branded line of school supplies consisting of Trapper Keepers and folders that looked like they were designed by a six-year-old girl on acid.”

When I was a kid, Lisa Frank didn’t include any people. But today it appears that they’ve added, well this:

Wright: “I have to wonder if little girls actually are more interested in bizarrely proportioned nymphets dressed like sexy hippies than a righteous day-glo tiger cub.”

Trolls, now Trollz

Remember Trolls?  Growing up, I remember them looking something like this (source):

But apparently now they look like this (source):

Cabbage Patch Kids

This is a vintage Cabbage Patch Kid from 1983 (source):

This is the front page of the website today:

They still make “Classic” Cabbage Patch Kids, but now they also make “Pop ‘N Style”:

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.