Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight discusses the “Cash for Clunkers” program. There has been a fair amount of criticism of the fact that the program, which is supposed to stimulate the economy partly by providing a boost to the auto industry, has been used by consumers to buy a large number of non-U.S.-made cars (which, of course, is a slippy definition–there are Toyota and Honda plants in the U.S. and Ford plants in Mexico, but by “U.S.-made,” people generally refer to Ford, GM, and I guess Chrysler).

But the other point of the Cash for Clunkers program was to increase the gas mileage of the U.S. auto fleet overall.  The new car you can apply the federal aid to has to get at least 22 mpg. And because of choices the U.S. auto companies have made in the past about what kinds of cars and trucks to emphasize, a smaller proportion of the models Ford, GM, and Chrysler offer qualify for the program:

Of course, this graph doesn’t tell us how popular each of the models are–if GM only had one model that got more than 22 mpg, but that one model was incredibly popular, the company might have an average fleet fuel efficiency that was relatively good. And if Chrysler had a lot more models available than Honda, it might have more 22+ mpg models total even though they’re a lower percentage of all Chrysler cars.

Still, I found the graph shocking; 22 mpg seems like such a low benchmark, I never would have guess than less than 1 in 5 U.S. models manages to meet it. Hopefully the Cash for Clunkers will have a longer-term effect of encouraging the U.S. automakers to emphasize fuel efficiency to a much greater degree than they’ve been doing (and U.S. consumers to buy their fuel efficient models).

This ad from 2000 (found here) is an opportunity to differentiate between types of objectification, in its most literal sense.  Instead of making a product into the shape of a woman (see here and here), the woman is made into the product.

See also this post on where there’s a similar example in which a woman’s curves are meant to reflect the curves of a kitchen counter, this one in which a woman is made into a glass of beer, and, to a slightly lesser extent, this ad in which a white and black woman are used to represent a boring and tasty beverage respectively.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Ever since it occurred to me a few years ago, I’ve been deeply disturbed the two meanings that the word “fuck” has in U.S. culture.  We use the word when we want to hurt someone really, really bad; and we use it to describe what may be the most physically intimate thing two people can do together.  The fact that the word has that double meaning, I think, speaks volumes about our fucked up relationship with sex.

Illustrating this, Caroline H. pointed me to a June 2009 Playboy slideshow of politically conservative women that readers want to “hate fuck.”  After protests, Playboy took the slideshow down, but RedState captured screen shots. You can see them all here. I post a selection below.

The first slide:

Megyn Kelly:

Amanda Carpenter:

Elisabeth Hasselbeck:

Dana Perino:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The graphic below is interesting to me in light of the discourse about greenhouse gas emissions.  We often hear about emissions from cars and sometimes about emissions from industry.  I was surprised, then, to see that electricity and heat was such a large contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.  And I feel like land use change and agriculture hardly get discussed at all.

Graphic borrowed from ChartPorn, which also has an interactive graphic that breaks down emissions by country (via Simoleon Sense).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Jerry F. sent us a link to a neat interactive website where you can look at global GDP per capita by country, region, predominance of Buddhism/Islam/Christianity, language spoken, and so on. The data come from the 2008 CIA World Factbook.

The country with the highest GDP per capita? That would be itsy-bitsy Liechtenstein:

Much of Liechtenstein’s economy is linked to its popularity as a place to register holding companies because of low business taxes, so the exceedingly high GDP is probably a result of that. With a GDP of $103,500, Qatar is the second wealthiest nation.

Compare that snapshot of part of the Europe graph to this one for countries in the Horn of Africa:

From what I could tell, the lowest per capita GDP is in Zimbabwe: $200. Only one country on the entire African continent (Equatorial Guinea) breaks $20,000. The shockingly low GDPs in Africa, which indicate a continued lack of industrial (or any other) development, is the most striking pattern. Poor countries in Asia and South America seem downright wealthy by comparison.

As with any international database, I’m sure there are weaknesses with the Factbook–if nothing else, the difficulty of collecting meaningful, comparable data for all countries. I’d pay attention to the overall pattern rather than the specific dollar amount for any one country. If any of you have specific knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the CIA Factbook, let us know in the comments.

And also, of course, these numbers tell us nothing about how national wealth is distributed within each country. The average standard of living might be better in a country with a lower GDP where wealth is more evenly distributed across the population than in a “richer” country where a small group controls a highly disproportionate amount of wealth.

Related posts: military spending as a % of GDP, map of global use of electric lights after dark, carbon dioxide emissions per country, questioning the developed/undeveloped binary, international disproportions, and inequality in affluent nations.

On the heels of our Frito Bandito post, comes this (I think) 1975 ad for Tequila Gavilan.  Slogan: “One taste…and you’re not a Gringo anymore.”

If I’m reading this ad correctly, both the woman and the man in this ad are supposed to be Mexican. What’s interesting, then, is the different social construction of Mexican men and women. While the male is the familiar “Frito Bandito,” sombrero-wearing fool, the female is a hot, spicy Latina.  Today the Mexican fool is a risky stereotype to pull out, but the hot spicy Latina is still a very common trope.

From another angle, this reminds me a bit of the history of colonization and war. All too frequently, male ethnic others in war are considered enemies, while female ethnic others are considered the spoils of war. So the idea that the racially-othered men are disposable, while “their” women are desirable has a very long history in Western thought (see, for example, Joane Nagel’s great book, Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality).

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Time magazine offers readers a history of the bikini in which they offer these two interesting tidbits:

First, the two piece bathing suit was, in part, justified/necessitated by war rationing during World War II. There simply wasn’t enough money to buy all that fabric.

Second, the bikini got it’s name from the oooh and awe resulting from a nuclear test at Bikini Atoll. Louis Réard, to whom the invention of the bikini is credited, followed the nuclear-loving fashion of the day.  He named it after the location, hoping that “his invention would be as explosive as that test…”

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.

Critics of multiculturalism argue that, far too often, multiculturalism ignores addressing head on the tension caused by racial and ethnic inequality, in favor of cute, simple tokens of diversity.

Jessica G. sent us this screen shot of the Juicy Juice website. It is suggesting that we can teach our children about “diversity… by preparing ethnic meals.”

In the bottom left corner, it reads:

Tacos can take you to the Mayan pyramids of Mexico! Baked Ziti to the Tower of Pisa in Italy! Help your child discover the world through a meal you make together.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think there is anything wrong with teaching a child about Mayan pyramids and the Tower of Pisa. It is, however, going too far to suggest that you can teach children about the promise and perils of “diversity” by instituting “dinner without borders.”

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.