Jason S. sent in this clip of a convention for (parents of) infants, toddlers, and tweens called Baby and Tweens Celebration L.A. It’s an example of the hyper-consumerist mentality that now surrounds child-raising, at least for the upper-middle classes and higher. It’s also an example of the way that young children, especially young girls, are encouraged by some forces to think of themselves as “princesses.” Many parents (literally) buy into this idea of what a (girl) child should be like. It has not been this way throughout history and is not this way across cultures.
Mary M., of the fantastic blog Cooking with the Junior League, mentioned in one of her blog posts that the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a handy seafood guide that provides information on how various types are raised/caught, whether it is overfished, and the environmental impact. This page lets you click on different species and get detailed information about it; here’s a screenshot of part of the listing for abalone:
Or you can go to their U.S. map and click on a region to download a pdf guide to buying seafood in your region.
One year ago Gwen wrote an extensive post about the 1968 Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who used their medal ceremony to try to draw attention to racism and poverty in the U.S. Her post does an excellent job of describing and analyzing the protest and its aftermath. Visit it here.
NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS:
A representative from Reynold’s Kitchens sent us an email in response to our post on their new, recycled Reynold’s Wrap. See her commentary here. We’ve also added a link to a second source suggesting that our original post was wrong. Check it out.
Jay Smooth followed up on his excellent commentary about Asher Roth’s use of the term “nappy headed hos” and black rappers’ materialism. This time his video features Dan Charnas, a hip-hop industry insider. See their discussion about white privilege and racial humility here.
Jody B. sent in a Progressive Insurance commercial that many believe features two gay men. We added it to our earlier post about an Argentinian bank commercial that positively features a transgender individual; both could be useful for a discussion of when and how corporations choose to associate themselves with minority or marginalized groups, knowing it might offend other segments of society.
So the truth is we didn’t do much behind your back this month and, in fact, you may have noticed that we didn’t exactly keep up our normal prodigious Sociological Images schedule. But we have been doing stuff and, in case you are interested, it involved cows, lizards, and gators! After the jump (because most of you could care less) are some non-sociological images of things we’ve been up to behind your back this month.
Natasha L. sent in a link to the site The Plunge, a wedding planning site for men. She says,
I’m getting married in a month. My facebook knows this, and usually gives me wedding-related ads. Today it had one that said, “Give us your fiance, and we’ll give you a groom. A wedding site written by men.”
Here’s one page:
The site accepts the whole “wedding planning is women’s responsibility, and your wife is going to turn into an insane bridezilla” and “this is the end of your life, buddy” ideas so popular in our culture at the moment; this isn’t a site advocating for men to really be involved in planning weddings, or interested in them. The tone is of a fellow guy who knows how annoying it is that you have to pretend to go through all this shit and pretend you care:
How do you try to convince men that it’s ok for them to read something as stereotypically feminine as a wedding planning website? By implying that not reading it is unmanly, of course! Notice the last paragraph here:
So it’s actually masculine to read the planning site, because by doing so, you are showing that you are clueless about weddings, unlike women–since our “innate, feminine” selves know immediately how to plan them. That’s why you never see wedding magazines or websites designed for women–we instinctually know how to plan them, so there’s no market.
Well, ok, there is a site for women. Here The Plunge differentiates itself from The Knot:
The site gives you helpful tips for avoiding “emasculation”:
There’s a whole page on tips for convincing a woman to take your last name if she’s reluctant to do so. Of course, since this is an enlightened period, The Plunge first tells you that you should maybe just accept your bride-to-be’s wishes…
…but then provides a whole list of tactics, including playing on her future mom-ness by pointing out the kids will have a different name than her and that will be confusing and weird (who’s ever heard of children with a different name than one of their parents?). If she tries to turn the argument back on you by saying that if it’s no big deal to change last names, why don’t you take hers, then…
What I find tiresome about this site is that it pretends
NOTE: Apparently WordPress didn’t post everything I wrote at the end, which is why the post ends abruptly with the above half-written sentence. I’m sure what I originally wrote was brilliant. I know I mentioned that what I hate is that the site pretends to reject all this traditional wedding stuff, but it really totally buys into the idea that weddings are women’s things, and men should do as little as possible. And it’s pretty selective about what parts of modern weddings and marriage it criticizes–it can point out how absurd some of the prices of things are, but not equally mention that it might be stupid to get hung up on your bride-to-be not wanting to take your name?
I don’t remember what else I said, except pointing out that the site helpfully provides tips for if you sleep with someone else before your wedding. Their advice: do not come clean about it, unless a) it happened repeatedly or b) it was with someone the bride knows and she’s gonna find out. Also, it’s not quite as bad to cheat with a stripper as a “random girl.”
In the documentary Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video, Sut Jhally investigates how images of sex and violence, and sexualized violence against women, are used in music videos, and how music videos help shape ideas of what is sexy. Here’s a clip:
The entire, unabridged version of the film is available here.
Elle sent in a link to the video for Lady Gaga’s song “Paparazzi,” which features one extended scene of sexualized violence (starting at about 1:45) and several other glimpses of women throughout the video who appear to be dead (it’s really worth watching the entire video–it’s something else):
Of course, Lady Gaga would probably argue that this video is in fact opposing violence against women, since in the end the evil paparazzi boyfriend gets killed. But there’s the same imagery Sut Jhally discusses: the mixture of sexuality with violence and hints of brutality, and of injured or dead women in glamorous, sexy clothing. Notice that in the opening sequence, the “normal” sex doesn’t look too much different than the violence that follows.
Toban B., Elisabeth, and Mark sent us a link to a post at jozjozjoz about the Nikon S630 digital camera. As Joz explains, “As I was taking pictures of my family, it kept asking ‘Did someone blink?’ even though our eyes were always open.”
Apparently the camera perceives “Asian” eyes as closed.
Does anyone know about how cameras are programmed to do things like recognize blinking? Does the program include specific measurements to look for to define an eye as open or closed and then prompt the user with a question about blinking? It would seem that the program doesn’t know how to deal with Asian features, which makes me wonder about the “typical” faces or facial features used to write the program–who was used as the “neutral” model?
Anybody know more about how these types of programs are written and how specifications are chosen to provide the camera a baseline for determining that the face in a photo requires “fixing” of some sort?
UPDATE:Commenter Elizabeth says,
I just got back from vacation with a friend who has this camera (we are three white women) and after every photo, it asked us, “Did someone blink?” It became a running joke because the sensor asked this question whether or not there was a person (or blinking person) in the shot.
Several of our other commenters had some info on how face-recognition programs work and what the problem might be, and that a) they generally suck and b) might suck slightly more for some groups than others, but still are overall pretty crappy at this point no matter what.
NEW!Racialicious posted about the Microsoft Natal game, which seems to have some problems recognizing the movements of people with dark skin (and maybe dreadlocks):
Research into the issue resulted in a study concluding that near-infra-red cameras did indeed struggle to read movements from those with darker skin. However, Microsoft has responded to these worries, telling Gamezine that all ethnicities will be able to use the technology.
The post has a really good discussion about race and “neutral” avatars in games, including some in which you have to pay extra to get a non-White character.
I’ve suggested that the fact that men do not feel compelled to wear make-up is a “triumph of gender ideology over capitalism” (see here). Companies that sell make-up, after all, have halved their profits by giving up on selling to men. We should expect, then, a tug-of-war between the profit motive and a gender ideology that suggests that men and women are opposite. On the one hand, if men and women are opposites, then the requirement that women primp and preen (with the help of dozens of products) would imply that men do not. On the other hand, if they accept this gender binary, companies lose half their customers.
Accordingly, Gwen and I were shocked to see an ad at Jezebel, sent in by Frank D., overtly marketing scrotum shaving.
We have seen this a bit with products aimed at men and their hair already (see here, here, and here), but I’m still surprised to see this. I can’t imagine anything harder to shave on anyone’s body, male or female.
So how are they trying to convince men to do it?
They are using the same tactics that they use against women. They are either (1) shaming men into thinking that they are disgusting and no woman (or man) will have them unless they alter their body (see here, here, and here) or (2) naturalizing shaving such that it is just a fun thing that all men inevitably participate in (see here, here, here, and here).
Did you know that women like men who shave down there? Having silky smooth balls is a lot nicer than finding a huge bush or choking on your pubes! Today’s trend is to have it clean or at least trimmed. This helps both aesthetically and hygienic wise as well.
They are also using a gendered logic. We’ve seen this with other examples of companies trying to sell self-maintenance to men. They hyper-masculinizing the product. For examples, see our posts on hair product for men (with “stand tough” hair gel), make-up for men ( with “blo-job bronzing powder”). We see this with other feminized products and activities too (for example, ice skating and chocolate). In this case, they don’t say, “If you don’t shave your balls, you won’t be pretty.” They say, “When there’s no underbrush, the tree looks taller.”
Yeah, no. I’m not paraphrasing:
One thing we might discuss is whether this this represents a “female gaze” that matches the “male gaze” that requires women to always be a pleasurable object for others to view… or that, alternatively, this is just the male gaze being applied to men. Some of the marketing for men’s body shaving appears to be clearly marketed towards gay men (see this website, especially here).
Another interesting thing to consider is the extent to which the social invisibility of the pubic area facilitates marketer manipulation. If you’re straight, unless you’re willing to ask a partner, you have to trust the advertisers to tell you what “today’s trend” is. What a great deal for the companies.
Oh, and, I’m wondering which you think is going to win this tug-of-war: the companies with their profit motive or gender ideology and a resistance to the feminization of men?
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