This two-minute clip from Toddlers and Tiara’s (a reality show about child beauty pageants), sent in by Dmitriy T.M., is a great example of how mothers teach their daughters that beauty hurts… and that pain is a price they should be willing to pay:

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.

We’ve written several posts about how the words “nude” and “flesh” tend to be used to refer to colors associated with light-colored skin.  For examples, see our posts on “flesh-colored,” Michelle Obama’s “nude” colored dress, the new in-color, “nude is the new black” (and by black we mean white), lotion for “normal to darker skin,” and color-assisted medical diagnosis.  Readers have sent in an additional example and several counter-examples.

Catherine M.P. snapped this photo of an ad for Ripley in Santiago, Chile (she says English is often used to make a product seem “edgy”):

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.

Last week I posted photos of the Justin Bieber/Kim Kardashian photoshoot for Elle. I compared it to my earlier post on the sexualization of Jaden Smith. In both I argued that we accept the sexualization of boys at younger ages than girls, seeing it as adorable and proof that they are sufficiently heterosexual and masculine rather than that they are in danger of sexual exploitation.

Yesterday Rob W. sent in a photo that I think illustrates this point well:

Who is the adult woman wearing this shirt? That’s Karissa Shannon, who is dating Hugh Hefner.

Imagine, if you can, if this were an adult man associated in some way with a famous producer of pornography widely known for dating groups of much younger women, and that adult man’s shirt had this same message but about two teen/pre-teen girls (or, for that matter, imagine a famous gay man wearing this exact shirt).  And then imagine the concern and horror that would ensue, the apologies through the man’s agent, and so on.

A short google search did turn up a post (re-posted in several other places) calling the shirt inappropriate, but given that Shannon is referred to as “sloppy seconds” in it, I’m not sure how to take it (since “sloppy seconds” reaffirms a sexual double-standard itself). A lot of other sites, on the other hand, found it adorable and/or funny, and asked readers to weigh in on Team Justin vs. Team Jaden.

Teresa L.-M. sent us a link to an article at Color Lines about a survey of 3,413 people conducted by several groups, including Time magazine and the Center for American Progress, about attitudes toward a variety of issues including changes in women’s work and family roles. Overall, we see that every group said that women’s increased participation in the paid workforce has been good for the U.S., but not surprisingly, some groups were more enthusiastic than others:

This includes those who said it has been “somewhat” or “very” positive.  The % for Latinas was highlighted in the original because the memo focused on the fact that Latinos and Latinas, despite stereotypes that they hold more “traditional” gender attitudes, reported more positive feelings about increased workforce participation than did men and women as a whole. Hispanics were somewhat oversampled — that is, more were included than you would expect relative to their proportion in the U.S. population — because the organizations conducting the survey wanted to get more detailed information about Latino/a attitudes. The results indicated that “Latino attitudes were basically in line with those of other groups on nearly every indicator in the survey. Some minor differences did emerge in terms of the intensity of these beliefs and the degree of consensus about an issue.”

Also, obviously the categories above are not mutually exclusive, they just illustrate some interesting differences when you sort on various characteristics.

One area where Latinos/as differed was that they were more likely to report having an “interesting career” as the most important thing for their daughters to have, and less likely to say marriage and family is the most important, compared to all men and women, which is the opposite of what stereotypes of Latinos and Latinas would predict:

But I can’t help but note the wording there: “Everyone naturally wants the best of all things for their children…” That’s sloppy survey writing there, because it’s leading — it implies that a certain attitude or desire is universal and normative, and implies that everyone would agree that the three items they include in the question are examples of “the best.” It’s not that I’m saying most parents want their daughters to have miserable marriages or shitty jobs they hate. But you always want to be careful about wording questions in ways that take beliefs or values for granted, and thus set up a situation where contradicting them puts the respondent in the position of feeling deviant or fearing disapproval from the interviewer. I don’t know that in this particular example, that wording would have a huge impact on responses, since participants had to rank 3 specific items relative to one another. But I’d be very concerned if they had then been asked how important each item was (rather than asked to rank them), since the wording might lead people to rate items more highly than they would otherwise, because that’s what parents “naturally” want for their kids.

Anyway, moving on. Latinos/as were less concerned about children growing up without a full-time stay-at-home parent than were men  and women overall, with Latinas expressing significantly less negative attitudes than women overall and Latino men (this includes those who answered “very” or “somewhat” negative):

Back to methodological quibbling, this next graph is a great example of slippage between what the graph shows and what the heading claims it shows. As we see, the title says it indicates that Latinos are “more likely to turn to one another for decision making and financial support”:

But that’s not what the data are about at all. The question wording makes it clear this is both hypothetical (including people who don’t have a romantic partner and thus may be answering based on what they suppose would be true if they did) and is about how they value these things (“how important you feel it is for you personally…”), which is very different than if they regularly do them. The fact that you feel that it’s very important to have a romantic partner who provides financial support does not mean you are, in fact, turning to another person for financial support.

Of course, the heading for the table was written after the data were gathered and analyzed, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate that the data themselves are problematic. And yet, along with the wording issue above — and these are just two things I noticed in the memo that summarizes a few of the findings — it makes me a bit hesitant. The topic is interesting, and the results, which seem to undermine stereotypes about Latinos/as, would be great to use…except the methodological issues are overshadowing what might be perfectly valid, useful, and insightful findings. So ultimately, I present the images here less as information on attitudes about women’s roles and more as a cautionary tale.

And, you know, feel free to let me know if you think I’m over-reacting.

Chen and Kristyn both sent in examples of gendered chemistry sets.

Chen found this example at Nemo, a science museum in Amsterdam.  Notice that the kit with boys on it a boy in the foreground and a girl in the background is “Disgusting Science” and the kits with only girls on it are “Perfumery” and “Spa Science”:

Meanwhile Kristyn spotted these Cosmetic Science kits in Auckland, NZ.  There were apparently at least four different kits aimed at making beauty products for girls.

Cleansing Pack 2, featuring Pearly Shampoos and Face and Body Cleanser:

Rejuvenation Pack 3, featuring Soothing Cream and Body Mist:

Enhancing Pack 4, featuring Glitter Hair Gel and Silvery Shimmer Lotion:

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.

Sociologist Geographer David Harvey’s analysis of the current economic crisis is engagingly illustrated in this 11-minute video.  Harvey evaluates individual, institutional, ideological, cultural, and policy explanations for the recession.  He then explains Marx’s insights into the “internal contradictions of capital accumulation”:  capitalists want to pay low wages, but if they’re paying low wages, then no one can buy their stuff.  If both high wages and low wages translate into no profits, where does that leave capitalism?

From Cognitive Media via BoingBoing and Karl Bakeman.

Buy Harvey’s book, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism.

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.

Dimitriy T.M. and Keith Marszalek sent in a video by Isao Hashimoto, posted at Wired. The video, titled 1945-1998, shows the location of all known nuclear tests during that period, as well as the nation conducting the tests. It starts off slowly (with the U.S. test during World War II and the two bombs dropped on Japan), and the U.S. has a monopoly on nuclear weapons for several years. By the early 1950s the number of tests starts to increase and the U.K. and Soviet Union start testing. By the late 1’50s and through the ’80s, the flashes indicating tests (with different sound effects to indicate different nation) are pretty much constant, and then drop off quite a lot by the ’90s.

The Wired article points out that there have been two more nuclear tests since 1998 (when the video ends), both by North Korea.

I found this graph over at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization website:

Broken down by type of test; since 1963 almost all testing has been underground:

They also have an interactive map that includes information such as who has signed the test-ban treaty, where tests have occurred, and locations of facilities under the international monitoring system. Here’s a map showing the status of the test-ban treaty; green nations have ratified it, light blue ones have signed but not ratified it, and red ones haven’t signed it (sorry I couldn’t quite fit the whole map on my screen at once, so the screenshot cuts off some areas):

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Deepa D. sent in an interesting post from Racebending about the race/ethnicity and gender of stars who get top billing in Paramount movies. Three volunteers at Racebending analyzed relevant data on movies produced or distributed by Paramount Pictures since 2000, as well as those currently in development. They focused on top billing — that is, which stars are most frequently highlighted in promotional materials, whose names appear highest in the credits, and so on. This both reflects power and status in Hollywood (the more prestige you have, the higher you’re likely to be credited compared to lower-status stars with similar screen time) and contributes to it (higher billing leads to more exposure and attention. Racebending explains:

Various types of Credit include Main Title Credit (before the movie starts), End Title Credit (after the movie is over), Paid Advertising Credit (mention during commercials and publicity), Above-the-Title Credit (name shows up on top of the movie name in promos and on screen), and Billing Block Credit (the block of text on posters and trailers.)

Their methodology:

For our review, we simply looked at which actor is listed first on imdb.com. Even if several actors have received top billing or above the title billing, someone is always listed first…

Our review of actors in top billing was necessarily subjective, but the cultural ethnicity and gender of most of Paramount’s top-billed actors like John Travolta, Angelina Jolie, and Samuel L. Jackson are well established in the public sphere. For animated characters like Shrek the Ogre, Spongebob Squarepants, and Eliza Thornberry we looked to the gender and ethnicity of the voice actor. We simply tallied the first actor billed, (for example: Malin Ackerman in Watchmen, Chris Pine in Star Trek, Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears, Jamie Foxx in The Soloist, Noah Ringer in The Last Airbender.)

The analysis found that the vast majority of top-billed stars in Paramount films from 2000 to 2009 are male, while movie audiences are about 45% male:

An even higher proportion — 86% — of top-billed stars are White (the green bars show each groups percent of the overall U.S. population):

The category White there specifically includes White non-Hispanics. No Latinos had top billing in Paramount movies during this time period. Also,

Out of 133 movies either produced or distributed, 17 had a black lead actor and only one had an Asian actor–Parry Shen in the film Better Luck Tomorrow (2002). However, Paramount did not produce Better Luck Tomorrow, the company distributed the film to theaters after the film made the independent film circuit.

When the data are broken down by race/ethnicity and gender, we see that the vast majority of top-billed stars who are non-White are men. Non-White women are almost entirely shut out:

The chart on the right represents films currently under development. While Whites predominate in the starring roles in these projects, notice that White women make up only 6% of top-billed stars, and non-White men make up about twice that proportion.

This is, of course, just one studio. If you have links to similar data on other studios, or on movies more generally, send them in!

Related posts: the Bechdel test, the real stars of Glee, underrepresenting women in Hollywood, the Smurfette principle, whitening Heroes, White actors in yellowface, casting cheat sheet, Hollywood’s discomfort with Asian lead characters, race in Transformers II, gender in Pixar films, racist Disney characters, and the gender hierarchy in Bee Movie.