Rudo M. sent us a great example of how “normal” is socially constructed. The photos below are of the box containing a Vidal Sassoon hair dryer for “normal” hair:

It’s also, “good” hair, as is said, in so many words, the blurb on the box said so:

Not too fine or coarse,  normal hair is the most manageable hair type with the largest range of possible styles.  Though it’s fun to experiment, even the easiest-to-care-for hair requires a regimen of regular maintenance.  Proper styling tools with varying heats are crucial for keeping a healthy-looking shine, maintaining balance, and adding…

Yeah, so just in case it wasn’t clear already, “normal” hair is the bestest!  It’s “not too fine or too coarse,” has the “largest range of possible styles,” is “fun,” and is totally the “easiest-to-care-for”!

Rudo is an African woman who wears her hair natural, so she knew right away that Vidal Sassoon didn’t count her hair as “normal.”  So, what were the other options?  If you’re not normal, what are you? Well, according to Vidal Sassoon, you are, of course, “fine” or “coarse.”

But a lot of good this does Rudo, since even the models on the “coarse” box are white with essentially straight hair!  So much for a range of hair types!  Well, at least we know that even white women with straight hair can be abnormal!

And, just in case you didn’t know already that being abnormal means being WRONG, coarse hair is “hard-to-style,” fine hair is limp, and both tend to “frizz.”   What a difference from Vidal Sassoon practically falling over itself praising normal hair.

Here’s another example, sent in by @adentweets.  There’s “normal” and there’s “thick” hair.

Cara McC. sent us a Covergirl commercial selling foundation for “normal,” “oily,” and “sensitive” skin. Again, they include a range of skin types (and probably include women who represent three different races) in order to point to the diversity of skin types, but nonetheless label one “normal” (the one represented by the white woman).

For more examples of whiteness as normal and people of color as deviant (or, if we measure by Vidal Sassoon, non-existent), see our posts on Michelle Obama’s “flesh-colored” gown, Johnson’s lotion for “normal to darker skin,” bandaids and other “flesh-colored” things, why Sotomayor may be “biased,” families vs. ethnic families, and people of color add “spice.”

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.

Caroline P. sent in this stunning example of gendered socialization, gendered job segregation, and the social construction of skill.  Notice that the two photos below show an “electronic medical set” for a doctor and a nurse, with a photo of a boy and a girl, respectively.

Okay, so the jobs are gendered.  But more than that, notice that the sets contain essentially the same toys: a stethescope, pill bottle, syringe, thermometer, mirror, hot water bottle, clipboard, blood pressure thingy, and whatever that is in the bottom right corner.

So it’s more than just gendered jobs, it’s an acknowledgement that when boys and girls do the same job, it gets called something different and, more, better compensated when men do it.  We see this with other, real jobs that get split into gendered categories like janitor/maid.

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.

Michelle D. sent in this cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly featuring Sarah Murdoch, which includes the text “why she wanted an all natural covershoot”:

As Michelle pointed out, the woman has visible wrinkles, but she’s clearly wearing a significant amount of makeup (and teeth that are either bleached or covered with veneers), leading her to wonder what “all natural” means. As it turns out, it means that she wasn’t airbrushed or photoshopped. If you google “Australian Women’s Weekly Sarah Murdoch,” you’ll find a ton of stories about it.

Now, let me be clear: I’m not trying to minimize the courage it took for Sarah Murdoch to insist that her cover be un-touched-up or to speak in interviews about resisting the pressure to hide all signs of aging. Nor am I saying that wearing makeup is evil.

I’m just saying that, as I was reading the many stories in other news outlets about the cover, and looking at that “all natural” on the cover, and then looking at her face, I couldn’t help but think that it says something about the level of inhuman youthful perfection we currently expect of celebrities that this woman’s face, which as far as I can tell is flawless, would ever “require” touching up at all, and that showing herself looking like this is a major act of bravery and resistance because under normal circumstances, her face would be defined as unfit for a cover without technological “fixing”…and that all that makeup, teeth whitening, and eyebrow sculpting don’t undermine the claim to being “all natural” because we just take those things for granted now.

James H. (of Town Creek Poetry) sent in this vintage Avis ad:

So the company marketed its cars to implicitly heterosexual male customers with the possibility of flirting, and even sexual access, to its attractive female employees (that is, “girls”). I have no idea if female employees were expected to actually wink at people.

Also see our post on Singapore Girls.

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

Sociologist Stephanie Coontz, in her acclaimed, fascinating, and fact-dense book, The Way We Never Were, illustrates the way that what is considered “traditional” must be socially constructed. For example, when people say “traditional marriage,” do they mean marriage between a man and his property? Between a man and more than one woman? Is the ideal age for marriage 13, 20 or 27? Is it for love, political maneuvering, survival, babies, or kitchens?  How you answer these questions depends on when, exactly, in history you’re talking about.  (See here for some humorous takes.)

The point: Since all of history is potentially a source of tradition, identifying any given period of time as The Traditional, and therefore deserving of our nostalgia, is arbitrary.

The Daily Show did a great job of illustrating this idea this week:

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.

Jillian Y. sent a really interesting example of the gendering of housework. The example comes from a non-profit organization, Cleaning for a Reason, that assists cancer patients with house cleaning.

The organization is for people struggling with any type of cancer (not just breast cancer, as the pink ribbon suggests), but it still only assists female patients.

Jillian didn’t want to trivialize how useful and important such a service is, and I don’t want to either.  There are reasons why women may need this service more frequently than men.  The first reason is, of course, that women do the majority of housework in the U.S. and most Western countries (see also the links below).  So when a woman gets sick and she can’t do her job anymore, this organization steps in and helps.  When a man gets sick, the housework (apparently) keeps getting done with no problem because it wasn’t his job in the first place.

This, of course, assumes that everyone who gets sick is (heterosexual and) married (and able-bodied to begin with).  What about single people?  Who does their housework?  Much of the time their female relatives do some of it… but let’s assume that single people are especially vulnerable because they have no one to help them do the daily upkeep of the house.

I recently saw a study that stunned me.  It looked at the frequency with which married couples separated or divorced after a cancer diagnosis.  Get this:  If you are a man, the chance that your relationship will break up after diagnosis was three percent.  Three.  If you are a woman, the chance is 21.  Twenty-one.  One out of five women diagnosed with cancer (compared to one out of every thirty men) finds herself single.

So, yeah, maybe it makes sense to be especially aware that female cancer patients have a burden that many male cancer patients do not (whether by virtue of the fact that housework is gendered or the fact that female cancer patients are more likely to end up single).

That said, I don’t appreciate that the organization reinforces the idea that housework is women’s work; nor do I like that it excludes men who need help (largely by making single men or men with partners who cannot do housework invisible).

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See also our post on how health-related activism is sometimes for women only.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

Historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

And, of course, it’s hilariously funny to think that men would actually do housework:  see our posts on “porn” for new moms (also here), the househusbands of Hollywood, and calendar with images of sexy men doing housework.

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.

Keely W., Sophie J., and Austin C. sent in this 20-second commercial for KFC in which a white guy surrounded by black people makes the “awkward” situation all better by giving them fried chicken:

So, first of all, feeling awkward because you’re the only person with your particular racial make up in a group is called white privilege.  Most racial minorities find themselves the only or one of the only members of their group all of the time.  Calling the situation “awkward” just suggests that white people are, or should be, uncomfortable around black people.

But, second, is it racist that the guy soothes the situation by sharing fried chicken?  In the U.S., the idea that black people eat a lot of fried chicken is a stereotype (applied recently to Obama).  But this is an Australian commercial and KFC is saying that there is no such association in Australia.

I don’t know if that’s true.  But if it is, it raises interesting questions as to (1)  just how cognizant companies should have to be about various stereotypes around the world and (2) whether the biased histories of some countries must be more attended to than others.

A Guardian article quotes a professor arguing that the U.S. has “…a tendency to think that their history is more important than that of other countries.”

Ouch.  Does it hurt because it’s true?

I think these are tough questions.  What do you think?

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.

Chrissy B., Dmitriy T.M., and Lindsay sent in videos regarding Brit Hume speaking on Fox News about the Tiger Woods scandal, arguing that he needs to convert to Christianity, rather than his current Buddhist beliefs, if he’s going to get back on the right moral track:

Transcript of the main point:

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith, he’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so.. my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn your faith–turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a GREAT example to the world.”

It’s an interesting example of how many Americans treat Christianity as the default, “normal,” and the best religion for everyone. Can you imagine Fox News, or any other news outlet, intentionally giving air time to a person saying that Tiger Woods needs to convert from Christianity to Buddhism (or any other religion) if he’s going to change his behavior? Can you imagine the outcry if the suggested religion was Islam?

The Daily Show aired a segment that addressed this issue, and then a day later had another segment about Brit Hume’s claims that Christianity is under attack in the U.S.:

None of this, of course, even addresses the irony of suggesting that Christianity is the only religion that can help save you from infidelity, given the number of conservative Christian politicians who have been caught cheating on their wives in the past couple of years. But I don’t think irony is Hume’s strong suit.

UPDATE: Rosa S. of Newsy sent in this segment about the issue: