Toban B. sent in a link to UkraineDate, a website that lets men find hot Ukrainian women. Two images:

Of course, the site could be targeting men in any part of the world. However, it seems likely that it aims at men in wealthier nations in the West, particularly western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Incidentally, these are the same regions that are the source of the vast majority of male sex tourists. Immigration from the Ukraine to the U.S. has also increased in the past decade; Ukraine is now in the top 10 nations of origin for immigrants to the U.S., with nearly 23,000 immigrants in 2005. And here in Vegas, the number of women from the Ukraine and Russia found to have been trafficked into the country and forced into prostitution (as well as those who came willingly to work in a range of jobs) is increasing. That’s a bit of rambling, but the point is, women from the former Soviet Union are marketed to men in the West in a number of ways.

As Toban points out, the dating site plays on the exotic qualities often attributed to Ukrainian and Russian women. Toban says, “the Ukranian women are presented as sex objects — and in accordance with certain standards of sex and beauty.” Certainly the site makes it clear that men aren’t supposed to to be interested in these women because of their intellect, personalities, or anything other than their beauty.

It’s a good example of the way that certain nationalities, races, ethnic groups, etc., are exoticized and portrayed as particularly attractive and sexual. In some cases, as with Asian women, part of the attraction is the stereotype that they are submissive and undemanding. I’m not certain, but I don’t think that particular stereotype is applied to Ukrainian and Russian women–in fact, I’ve seen them portrayed as high-maintenance and materialistic…but worth it because they’re hot.

Thanks, Toban!

NEW! Elizabeth C. let us know about a protest against sex tourism in Ukraine, which included slogans such as “Ukraine is not a brothel.”

They did so, however, by adopting PETA’s infamous tactic of using scantily-clad women, which may or may not have helped make their point.

If you’re teaching methods this semester and go over pie charts or proportions, many of your students were raised on Bill Nye, the Science Guy.  They might get a kick out of this:

This one’s for you, Bill!

More fun illustrations for methods classes here and here.

(Found here.)

This website is simply a collection of pictures of women’s breasts.  Not models or actresses, just women.  It is a fantastic way to demonstrate the wide variety of natural body shapes.  Below the jump are a few of the many pictures, with histories, on the website:

“I’m 26 and never been pregnant. Even though my breasts are quite small they’ve had stretchmarks forever, even the smaller one. I sometimes wish they were bigger and perkier and I always wear a padded bra otherwise I feel like my stomach sticks out more than my boobs! But I’m grateful I can sleep on my front and I’ve more or less accepted how I am. I think the human body is always a beautiful thing, even if it’s hard to see our own one that way. ”

“I’m 24 years old and I have never had children. I was very happy with my breasts four years ago till they suddenly sprung from smaller B’s to larger C’s, I had priviously been taking birth control and my doctor said this was all “normal”. I come from a German/Dutch background so I assume it has alot to do with genetics. I have some pretty severe bacne and it often spreads to my chest and breats. As you can see one is larger than the other and these are my areola at their largest. .. I also have LOTS of enlarged pores in my cleavage, stretch marks near my underarms which are only just starting to disappear due to about 20lbs weight loss.”

“I’m a young woman from Athens, Greece that happened to run across your site.  I’m 25 years old, never been pregnant and considered neither slim nor obesse. I do have a couple of extra kilos on me. When I was a teenager my breasts grew rapidly and as a result of that I have fairly visible stretch-marks. I do sports and weight-lifting and maybe that has caused my breasts to be slightly pointing outwards. My right breast seems to be placed a bit lower on my chest, seeming shaggier that the left (in my opinion). A couple of years ago my breasts started growing (for no apparent reason-yet painfully) and from cup C I went to DD.”

“My breasts have always been small, some days I love them!! And some other times, I hate them!!! What I liked the least was the hair I had on my areolas. I’m getting laser hair removal now and it makes me feel a bit more comfortable about myself. I guess not having a stable relationship didn’t help much.”

“I am a 24 year old of a slim build. The fact that I have hated my breasts since childhood outrages me. I am healthy and beautiful and happy, but I have never looked at my breasts in the mirror without feeling sad. I am angry at a culture that makes women hate the beautiful uniqueness of their bodies, and learning to love my breasts will be a slow process that I am excited to tackle. All of the beautiful breasts on this website make me see how beatiful we all are! Bodies would be so boring if they all looked the same!”

“Hello. I recently found your site and it has made me feel alot better about my breasts. I started to develop breasts at 8 years old and they were small for a while and in just one year I went from an A to a C. I have stretch marks but they have faded. I was mostly worried about my areolas, I don’t think my breasts are done developing so I have learned to accept them how they are. I am 18 years old. I have gained and lost weight on and off my whole life. As you can see my areola is very light and I have blue veins, one which wraps around the left breast areola.”

See also these selections of bellies and vulvas, and this attempt to refigure imperfection.

Also in boobs, see boobs.

And don’t miss this post on how men, also, feel insecure about their “boobs.”

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.

A while back Laura M.D. sent us this image from the March issue of Teen Vogue (found at Jezebel):

Really? This is all it takes to have a cross-cultural experience these days? It’s also interesting to me that this is defined as “African-inspired,” because I’ve seen “Asian-inspired” items that have a very similar look (though not the dark-skinned person in a hammock; maybe that’s the African element). We see this a lot in fashion–the attribution of vaguely “ethnic”-looking things to some part of the world, or specific culture, that may or may not be particularly associated with the supposed traditional fashion or artistic style.

If they wanted to talk about this outfit as a global collision, they might have discussed where all the different items (and the materials for them) were manufactured compared to where they are sold and worn.

See other posts on representing Africa, “ethnic” fashion, and more “ethnic” fashion.

UPDATE: In a comment, jfruh says,

Can I just say that one of my very least favorite adjectives is “tribal” (in the top right corner), which seems to be used indiscriminately to refer to any art with the whiff of the primitive about it? Vaguely Polynesian-looking tattoos, vaguely African-sounding drums, etc. It’s bad enough that the political organizational structures of wildly disparate cultures are lumped together under the word “tribe” just because they’re at a smaller scale than modern nation-states; now any art form that resonates at all with any culture perceived as primitive gets labelled tribal as well.

Larry H. (of the L.A. Times‘ Daily Mirror blog) sent in a link to an interactive map at the NYT that shows December 2008 unemployment rates by county. Here’s a screenshot:

If you go to the link you can hover over counties and get their individual unemployment rates.You can also filter by manufacturing counties, rural counties, and counties that experienced a housing boom, as well as the 1-year change in unemployment rate.

Of course, you might want to combine this with a discussion of how unemployment is calculated–the 7.6% is most likely what is called the U3 rate, which is always lower than the more comprehensive U6. If we look not just at unemployment but at underemployment–people who can’t get enough hours to support themselves–and people who have given up looking for work, the rate would be higher.

The New York Times features an interactive graphic about the wage gap between men and women. It shows how different types of professions are distributed along the wage gap.  At the website, you can see click on each dot to see wage gaps for specific professions (e.g., female professors make 22% less than male professors).

Also about the wage gap, see posts here, here, here, and here.

Bloggers and journalists have enjoyed reporting the findings of a recent study that showed that people in socially conservative states subscribe to online pornography websites at a higher rate than people in socially liberal states.  Here is some of the data from the paper:

The paper goes on to discuss what variables are correlated with higher versus lower subscription rates, but ultimately concludes:

On the whole, these adult entertainment subscription patterns show a remarkable consistency: all but eleven states have betweeen two and three subscribers to this service per thousand broadband households, and all but four have between 1.5 and 3.5.  With interest in online adult entertainment relatively constant across regions, there’s little sign of  a major divide.

The reporting on this study, which emphasizes the findings, but not the low variance, is a nice illustration of how studies can be warped when they are picked up by both journalists and bloggers.

Other state-by-state comparisons: obesity, sodomy law, home vs. hospital births, incarceration rates, the marriage market, minority kids, and percent of women in state legislatures.

The Environmental Working Group’s interactive database lets you look up farm subsidies paid by the USDA. You can get all kinds of information–subsidy payments by county or congressional district, top 100 recipients of subsidies, breakdowns into particular types of payments (conservation, crops, disaster, etc.), and so on. It’s an interesting source of information, given that the Obama administration wants to drastically reduce farm subsidies and we’re likely to see a big argument over what the impact will be on farmers. Some groups argue that mid-sized family farms will be devastated by the loss of price supports. Others point out that subsidy payments are highly concentrated, with the top 20% of recipients getting the overwhelming majority of payments, and that if large industrial operations were forced to compete with family farms on an even playing-field without welfare payments, many of them would go out of business, leading to lower production and higher prices for other producers.

This was a big debate among rural sociologists when I was in grad school, and I guess we may be about to see.