These displays, featuring mannequins posed as if they are being attacked by an invisible assailant, could be seen in the windows at Barneys New York this week:
They were disassembled when shoppers complained.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
This image from the FAIL blog nicely illustrates the distinction between tanning to have darker skin and being born with darker skin– when is dark skin acceptable/desirable and when isn’t it? Presumably, this advertisement comes from somewhere near the U.S./Mexico border, and although it is probably meant to be funny, the point it makes is real. A white person (the blond pictured in the ad) can tan until they’re dark– which is acceptable and often highly desirable (which still surprises me in the day and age of skin cancer). But, getting a very dark tan, or being born with darker skin in the first place, means that near the border you might be “held by security” (although with the blond on the billboard, I doubt that mistake would be made).
And here are some images of desirable tans from tanning company websites:
In this video clip, Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and other works on globalization and economic change, discusses what she calls “disaster capitalism,” or the use of disasters or “shocks” (whether natural or human-caused) as an opportunity to impose a certain type of global free-market capitalism that often would be impossible during “normal” times. At the beginning she’s discussing the specific example of the Iraq War, but that’s just one of many examples you could use.
Klein’s argument is that globalized free-market capitalism didn’t spread around the world by some natural process, or by simply winning in a “battle of ideas,” but rather was often opportunistically extended by companies in the wake of disasters, when nations and citizens were often in no position to debate or resist economic change in the face of more immediately pressing matters.
If you are very interested in the topic, here’s a lecture by Klein:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg[/youtube]
See also our post on The Story of Stuff, Mickey Mouse Monopoly, and old pro-capitalism propaganda.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Angela B. and Jessica B. sent in this photograph of a baby doll toy called the “Lots to Love Baby.” Angela notes that “lots to love” is a slogan of the fat acceptance movement. So, apparently these babies are extra fat (aren’t babies supposed to be fat?) and, also, we’re not supposed to be concerned about that because “it’s just baby fat.” Is it me or is this a bizarre projection of unrealistic BMI expectations and, simultaneously, fat phobia onto infants?
(And also, is that a potty training seat? I think Freud would be horrified.)
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
We often talk about things being gendered or racialized on this blog, but we haven’t talked much about how race is gendered and gender racialized. In a previous post, I wrote:
According to American cultural stereotypes, black people, both men and women, are more masculine than white people. Black men are seen as, somehow, more masculine than white men: they are, stereotypically, more aggressive, more violent, larger, more sexual, and more athletic. Black women, too, as seen as more masculine than white women: they are louder, bossier, more opinionated and, like men, more sexual and more athletic.
Conversely, Asian people, both men and women, are often stereotyped as more feminine than white people. Asian men are seen as small and less muscular than white men; Asian women are seen as more passive and deferential than white women.
Interracial marriage rates bear out this asymmetry: black women are less likely to marry white men than vice versa and Asian men are less likely to marry white women than vice versa (see here and here).
The idea, specifically, that Asian women are more passive and deferential than white women, has been used to explain white men’s fetish for Asian women, Western men’s sex tourism in Asian countries, and Western men’s use of Asian mail-order bride services. Some of these men, it is argued, want a subordinate partner and they find it difficult to meet a white/American woman who is willing to play that role. You can actually hear a male sex tourist make this argument in this post.
I introduce all of these ideas in order to frame a screenshot sent in by Megan S. The screenshot is of the front page of a website (antimisandry.com) devoted to fighting misandry, or the “hatred of males as a sex.” The website purports to “cur[e] feminist indoctrination.” You’ll see that it is also advertising a dating site specializing in matching up white men with Chinese women:
So… I’m going to guess that, in this case, “anti-misandry” isn’t so much about encouraging women to stop hating men as it is about telling men they are entitled to a woman who will defer to them.
Either that or… unfortunate random ad placement.
Megan also thought this post on men choosing fictional female characters as lovers was related; you might also check out our post on the documentary Guys and Dolls about men who have relationships with expensive and “functional” (if you know what I mean) life-size dolls.
UPDATE: The comments thread on this post is closed. I strongly suggest reading them, especially if you think that this post was reaching. Very interesting.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Sam Yoon is running for mayor of Boston. Yoon is Korean Korean-American. It only makes sense, then (*sarcasm*), that the Boston Phoenix illustrated a story about his race against incumbent Mayor Tom Menino with the follow picture:
Screen shot for context and posterity:
Race is made to matter. Sotomayor can’t just be a judge, Gates can’t just be a suspect, and Yoon can’t just be a candidate. If you are not white, then your race will likely be used to denigrate you, make fun of you, or question your competence and entitlements. This may not happen all the time, but it will happen often enough.
Via Resist Racism and Slant Eye for the Round Eye.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Many of us live in consumption economies unlike any in human history. Consuming is a daily chore. Acquiring is easier than ever.
What do you have? How much of it do you need? Do you have things that you don’t want? How do you manage the stuff that enters your home? Does it go? Or does it stay? Do you dispose of the disposable and semi-disposable goods? Or do you try to recycle them, even if only within the boundaries of your home? How do the shelves and drawers, the nooks and crannies of your living space, obscure our answers to these questions? What would it look like if we had to look at it all, all at once?
Chinese artist Song Dong convinced his mother to allow him to display every item of her home as an art exhibit (article here). She had lived in the same house for nearly 60 years. He arranged her belongings, in a museum, around a dismantled piece of the house. The result raises questions about consumption, economy, and the things in our lives.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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.
Andrew Gelman over at FiveThirtyEight posted a map (larger version here) that estimates support or opposition of groups with various characteristics to school vouchers, by state and broken down into five income groups. The overall national average is 45% in support of vouchers. Orange indicates that more than 45% of a particular group supports vouchers in that state, while green indicates that less than 45% support them. So, for instance, looking at row 2 (White Catholics), we see that as income goes up, support for vouchers in most states increases, particularly in the $150,000+ income group; on the other hand, row 4 shows much less overall support among White non-evangelical Protestants, even in the highest income group.
Note that if a particular category (the characterstic for the row at any particular income level) makes up less than 1% of voters in the state, the state is left blank on the map. The data is from 2000, based on about 50,000 respondents. There’s a map of the raw data and a discussion of Bayesian statistical modeling in the original post, if you’re all into that.
As Gelman admits, he needs to add more details about what level of support/non-support the lightness or darkness of the colors indicate–what’s the difference between a very pale green and the darkest green? How many percentage points is that? However, the maps give a general sense of how different racial and religious groups feel about school vouchers, and how income influences that.
One thing I do have a problem with is that the categories are mutually exclusive, meaning Hispanic is treated as a race that does not overlap with Blacks or any of the subcategories of Whites (I also don’t know why all Hispanics and Blacks are put together in one category each). But most people labeled Hispanic in the U.S. see their race as White, with Hispanic as an ethnic, not racial, category–that is also how the U.S. Census defines “of Spanish origin.”
