Victoria A. sent along this ad for Cafe Press:

Okay, okay, I know it’s just Cafe Press and anyone can make anything on Cafe Press and, heck, these undies probably come in both variations… but even so!

I mean really! Can we just think a second before we make an ad that includes a pair of men’s underwear that say “Loved by…” and a pair of women’s that say “Property of…”? I mean, can we just NOT do that when women actually are the legal property of men in some places and were at one point in history in many?

It’s not a joke. Women who, by virtue of being owned by someone, could not own property themselves; could not vote or enter into contracts; women whose children were taken away if they separated; who, when raped, deserved no compensation because she belonged to a man who, not incidentally, DID deserve compensation because his property had been tarnished. Can we, like, just not make this ad quite this way? Please?

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.

For this past Christmas my niece received The Three Musketeers “Barbie” and “Ken.” The series really pushes the idea that girls and women can be physical dynamos… and yet.  I photo’d their boxes because of the thought bubble in the corner of each.

The boxes:

Barbie’s thought: “This riding outfit is the cutest!”

Ken’s thought: “I want to be an inventor!”

I’m just sayin’, is all.  We’re not making this stuff up.

Thanks to my sister, Holly, for noticing and pushing the boxes into my hands, saying “you will love this!”  Indeed.

NEW (Mar. ’10)! Katie P. found these boy and girl onesies for sale.  The boy version reads “I’m Super” and the girl version… “Super Cute”:

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 BBC TV show Newswipe makes hilarious fun of common, trite elements of news reports in this video, which has replaced the tickle kitten as my current favorite video:

House and Garden magazine, 1961 (Copyranter):

What? Do you have a more hilarious and awesome example of social construction?  (I mean, other than tuna in jello?)  I want to see it.

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.

A few weeks ago I snapped this photo of a set of Surprise Newborn Twins Cabbage Patch Kids. The “surprise” is that you don’t know if the dolls are girls or boys; they come with yellow and purple accessories instead of blue or pink and aren’t noticeably marked as male or female:

You find out the sex when you open the birth certificates and see their diapers–blue for a boy, pink for a girl, of course. I looked at a lot of websites selling them, and they all say something along the lines of “You won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl until you see the diaper.” (Also, apparently this is the “Hispanic” version.) I couldn’t find any photos of the babies in their diapers or “surprise outfits.”

I think this is a pretty great example of how we socially construct gender to emphasize differences between men and women. Like most babies, these dolls aren’t identifiably male or female…until we provide signals to differentiate them by buying the appropriately-colored clothing, putting bows in little girls’ hair, decorating their rooms with butterflies or race cars, and on and on and on. People treat kids differently depending on these gender signs, and they expect (and justify) different behaviors based on them.

And we do this to, essentially, make ourselves feel more comfortable; since we believe a person’s sex is so important to know, even little babies need to be clearly identifiable. And as this toy helps illustrate, this is a social process that accentuates (or even creates) differences in a way that makes the similarities between boys and girls, men and women, largely invisible.

See also: a wig to make your infant look more feminine.

These days, if you live in the West, thinking about Asia–whether it be Chinese labor, Japanese inventions, Indian demographics, or Korean politics–is taken-for-granted as part of knowing about the world.  During the colonial era, however, when “mass media” was largely limited to print, Americans and Europeans experienced being more-or-less newly introduced to different cultures.  This spurred an entire industry in which “Africa,” “the Orient,” and the “Middle East” were presented to curious Westerners.  These presentations, more often than not, were objectifying.  Westerners were able to enjoy reveling in the seemingly bizarre and unfamiliar people and customs of these Other places (with a capital “O”), as if Other kinds of people were new species of animals over which to fawn.  This accumulation of documents with which the average Westerner could try to understand their “foreign” counterparts were produced not only by travel writers, but anthropologists, artists, imperial employees, novelists, and others.

Edward Said, in his powerfully influential book, Orientalism, first articulated the way that efforts of these actors coalesced into a mythology about “the Orient.”  A mythology in which the East and the West were set in opposition and the East was used by the West to define its own, superior identity.

Katrin sent in one example of this traffic in Orientalism.  It’s a postcard from the early 1900s that depicts a “Burmese Beauty.”  It was painted by Robert Talbot Kelly and originally published in his book, Burma (1905).  The caption reads:

A Burmese Beauty. The Burmese women are generally attractive, much more so than the men, and present a pretty picture as they walk about attired in their gaily coloured skirts and shaded by their quaint umbrellas. All the ladies smoke in Burma, large cigars being the favourite ‘weed.’

Here, the people themselves are seen as objects for a (distant) touristic gaze, kind of like the generic mostly-naked-woman-in-tropical-paradise postcard that we still see today.  More examples of colonial era Orientalist postcards depicting Burma (from Images of Asia):

1908:

1910:

1905:
1910:

1905:

1912:

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.

Dmitriy T.M. and Claire C. sent in a link to a photo of an NBC cafeteria menu in honor of Black History Month (that’d be February) that featured stereotypical African-American foods:

It’s not the first time.

Many argued that the menu was offensive because it reproduced stereotypes, but I think an interview (no longer available) with the chef who devised the menu complicated the story a bit.

Honestly, I think the main problem here is that Americans live in a racist society and so we have no idea how to celebrate Black History Month (how about with relaxer?).   The rest of the year, we make fun of black people for eating fried chicken. And yet, these are traditional Black southern dishes. So how exactly do we celebrate the holiday?   Do we pretend to valorize the same traditions that we make fun of during the rest of the year?  It makes no sense!  But it makes no sense because we’re still racist.  And we need a Black History Month because we’re still racist.  So, what to do!?

Perhaps the lesson to take from all of this is:  Undermining racism is hard work.   A month dedicated to Black history is a (flesh-colored) band aid, at best.  If we don’t do the other stuff (e.g., challenging the web of racist institutions that preserve class and race privilege), then no amount of fried chicken will make the difference.

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.

Recently Lisa posted a video listing suggestions for how not to write about Africa, pointing out the ubiquity of a number of stereotypes and tropes used in novels or memoirs set in African countries.

That video came to mind when I saw this one about the book My Maasai Life, written by Robin Wiszowaty (and sent in by Randy McL.):

So she goes to Kenya to experience “simple life” to help her deal with the angst she felt in the U.S. You have the romanticization of the Maasai: they laugh openly! Judgment doesn’t exist!

She recalls asking herself, “How did I end up here?” How did you end up there? Um, you intentionally decided to go there to get away from everything you know, presumably with the money to do so. And in that simple place where happiness and tolerance reign, and people laugh openly, you figured out who you are.

I know I’m being snarky. Yes, she did some volunteer work, and from the video it looks like she worked in some schools. Certainly those benefited some specific people, regardless of what I think about her attitude. But you can help some individuals while still perpetuating stereotypes that may be harmful to groups of people in the long-run.

And this is another example of the limited number of perspectives authors tend to take when writing about African countries/people. Either it’s a desolate, violent, hopeless place filled with human misery, or it’s the home of happy, smiling, tolerant people (or “tribesmen”) who, through their simple lifestyles, show all of us in developed countries how much better things would be if only we could follow their example, except with clean water, and also TV.