Nanette D. informed us about the site Books that Make You Dumb, which uses a questionable methodology to correlate SAT scores at various colleges and universities with the books Facebook users from those schools list as their favorites, taking the 10 most popular from each school (there’s an explanation of the methodology at the website; the width of the bubble the names are in indicate the standard deviation in SAT scores). By seeing which books are listed by people at schools with higher overall SATs, we supposedly find out which books make people smarter or dumber:

So Their Eyes Were Watching God, by the fabulous Zora Neale Hurston, makes you dumber than Gone with the Wind or A Million Little Pieces? Really?

Nanette says,

I think it reinforces a lot of ugly stereotypes about what type of person reads what type of literature, and the inherent “quality” of particular genres.

It’s a good point. There’s something interesting about designating certain types of books as “genre fiction,” which seems to be kind of a negative label, in general. Isn’t all literature technically part of a genre?

It’s all very Bourdieuian, really. To a great extent, what we read is a reflection of our class and our class is the number one predictor of our SAT score. So what is being measured (if anything) the way that class determines both our “taste” in literature and (or by way of) our educational achievements.

Aside from those issues, you could definitely have some fun talking about meaningless statistics and methodological issues with this graph. Just because you can find some statistics to correlate doesn’t mean they’re actually useful.

[Note: For the record, yes, I get it that the author was being kind of silly, and that he didn’t make up the genre classifications. The reason I find it interesting is that I think it reflects to some degree what a lot of people think–that certain types of books are inherently indicators of bad taste. I have friends who read fantasy and science fiction and get annoyed that it’s considered “genre fiction,” which they feel carries a negative connotation. Black authors have similarly complained about their books automatically going into the “African American literature” section at some bookstores rather than the mainstream “regular” fiction section. So mostly the image was a jumping off point for me thinking about how we often judge people by the types of books they read. And believe me, I’m not immune to this. When a relative gave me a set of three romance novels for Christmas a couple of years ago because I “like books,” I was perplexed. Though part of my confusion came from the fact that they were romance novels set among the Amish, and the concept of Amish romance novels had never in my life occurred to me. And then it turned out the relative didn’t know what they were; she had looked at the cover, saw a woman in the bonnet, and thought they were Little House on the Prairie books, which then left me with the question of why you would buy the Little House books for a 33 year old. But, you know, the thought that counts, etc. etc.]

Genderkid, Andrea J., Laura S., and Jessica C. all sent in links to the Fallen Princesses photographs. About her project, photographer Dina Goldstein writes:

These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The ‘…happily ever after’ is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues… Disney’s perfect Princesses [are] juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction and self-image issues.

You may want to check out a discussion on Racialicious about presenting Jasmine in a war zone and Women’s Glib‘s discussion of the representation of fatness as “fallen” (and the stereotype that fat people gorg on fast food).

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

I found this graph illustrating levels of migration to several countries from 1960-65 to 2000-05 at the Migration Policy Institute:

Keep in mind, these are total numbers, not weighted by the size of the population of each country, so a country with a relatively small number of migrants compared to other countries may have a much larger percent of the population made up of migrants. But it is interesting to see the increases and decreases of migration over time in each country. The large increase in immigration to Spain especially caught my attention; see also our post on Spain’s voluntary return policy.

Other posts on immigration: the “Muslim demographic threat”, immigration and spouses, volunteer U.S. border guards, the “Battle for Britain”, refugees, immigration streams to the U.S., a horrid Border Patrol video game, Asian Americans and marriage, refugees in the U.S., anti-Puerto Rican statehood movement, pro-environment anti-immigration video, early German assimilation in the U.S., do immigrants work harder?, Muslims in Europe, world stats, and emigration from Mexico.

Jeffrey T. found this page on Amazon suggesting gifts for different people in your life. He thought it nicely illustrated not only “…gender roles in our society, but also of age roles and, perhaps, class roles as well.”

Here’s the page (below are close up screenshots and quick, snarky comments):

What is a woman’s lifecycle like?

Girlfriends and wives are apparently obsessed with fashion.  They want nothing else:

By the time you’re a mom, your interest in fashion is accompanied by escapism and the need for a freakin’ break (jewelry would be nice though):

Grandmas love flowers and they fill their days doing crafts, scrapbooking, and listening to showtunes:

Is it different for men?

After work, husbands/boyfriends take off their dress shirt so they can rock out and play games:

Dads are still into “action and adventure,” but they need a break too and, also, they suddenly feel a pressing need to know more about waging war:

By the time you’re a Grandpa, you just want to find a nice room away from Grandma’s show tunes to listen to classic music, watch documentaries (about war?), and read Time magazine with a safe, clean shave:

People who “have everything” (I think that means rich people), just need totally random unnecessary stuff (except for cocktail accessories, those are obviously a necessity):

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

AdFreak drew my attention to a South African liqueur called Wild Africa Cream.  The advertising suggests that drinking it will “unleash your wild side.”

We have posted before about the tendency to associate black people, especially black women, with animals (see here, here, here, and here), as well as the historical roots of this discourse.  But, in this case, the advertising uses both black and white, male and female models.

I think what is interesting here is the association of Africa itself with animalism and primitiveness (an association that no doubt also colors our thinking about black people).  (Notice that the first and only Disney film to be set in Africa, The Lion King, included only animals.)  Catherine MacKinnon coined the term “anachronistic space” to refer to the idea that different parts of the globe represent different historical periods.  See other examples of representing Africa in this way here, here, here, and here.

In line with this tendency to think in this way, in this advertising it’s almost as if black Africans are meant to represent white humans’ own more primitive past (ergo the drink “unleashing your wild side,” whoever you are).

I like to point out to my students that Americans are not more modern than Africans (purposefully eliding the abstract meaning of “modern” in a way that tends to surprise them out of their easy associations).  It is 2009 there, also, and human evolution has progress no further from the “wild” in either place.

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

In Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, they are dedicated to the development of a multicultural population.

Two points:

First, as Angry Asian Man asks, why is the Asian child in a rice paddy hat?  This anachronistic representation reminds me of what we do to American Indians all the time.

Second, the sign reminds me of the pitfalls of using euphemisms. What do they really mean when they say “multicultural”? They probably actually mean multiracial, but they don’t want to use a word with such harsh connotations (in the U.S.).  So instead they use the word culture because it sounds nice and is often imagined to be restricted to things like language, food, clothes, and dancing (as opposed to inequality, oppression, and exploitation).

If they actually meant multicultural, then maybe the hat actually kind of makes sense!  But I think they mean multiracial. In which case, see point #1.

Via Racialicious.

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

Will M. sent in these spots, by Rethinking Autism, designed to counter misinformation about autism:

Sex sells, I guess. Or, as we’ve discussed before, women’s sexual objectivity and men’s sexual subjectivity sells.

Also see these controversial faux-ransom notesaimed at drawing awareness to autism and other cognitive conditions.

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

Ryan G. alerted us to a commercial for First Response pregnancy fertility tests. He noticed that the commercial cuts off the pregnant mother’s head, turning her into a faceless baby incubator (like in these editorial cartoons and not unrelated to this photography).  Ryan writes: “It’s clear what’s most important in this picture.”

While Ryan couldn’t find the commercial to embed, he did take down the narration and sent in some screen shots.  Here is the text of the voiceover:

The moment we pass from womanhood to motherhood, we cross a threshold. For many of us, that step is filled with wish and worry, hope and how, wonder and when. Fertility is a woman’s most sacred birthright. For over twenty years, First Response has been there, helping women answer the most important questions of their lives. Now we bring you new help: the First Response fertility test for women.

Ryan offered commentary, so I’ll rely on him.  He writes:

…”womanhood” and “motherhood” are presented as two separate things, with motherhood trumping womanhood. I’m assuming this is partly because a woman is not allowed to have a sex drive after she becomes a mother, and we all know that a woman without a sex drive is the higher form of woman.

He continues:

“Fertility is a woman’s most sacred birthright.” God knows the most important thing any woman can contribute to society is being a baby farm. Strangely, I never see Viagra commercials arguing that knocking people up is a man’s most sacred birthright.

“[H]elping women answer the most important questions of their lives.” The most important question in a woman’s life doesn’t involve her own personal needs, but the needs of her children and soon-to-be children.

Finally, Ryan writes:

And of course, there’s no father pictured here, or even a passing mention of one. Why would there be?  Conceiving, planning for, and raising a child is exclusively the job–ahem, the “sacred birthright”–of the mother.

Thanks for the excellent and provocative analysis, Ryan!

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