Some people, especially men of color, report being harassed by police officers.  They often feel that police are not for them, as they are for some members of our society, but against them… making their lives more risky, more dangeous, even deadly.  Attesting to this, Jay at MontClair SocioBlog posted a graph he put together based on this article about the NYPD.  It shows that, sure enough, when the police stop people on the street in New York, it almost always results in… nothing:

See also this post that shows, with data, that racial profiling doesn’t work.

From the Pew Center on the States report, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections, “Adding up all probationers and parolees, prisoners and jail inmates, you’ll find America now has more than 7.3 million adults under some form of correctional control. That whopping figure is more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas put together, and larger than the populations of 38 states and the District of Columbia. During Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, 1 in every 77 adults was under the control of the correctional system in the United States. Now, 25 years later, it is 1 in 31, or 3.2 percent of all adults.”

See the press release for a quick summary and the full report for much more data.

Those scamps at Patrón have come up with the following ad from their ” Some Perfection Is Debatable” campaign:

The following items apparently all represent perfection (debatably):

1. X-Ray Glasses: Dresses, locker rooms, bathroom stalls…the possibilities are limited only by your desire to look at the naked bodies of unconsenting women!

2. PMS Patch: Finally, a treatment for women whose behavior is intolerable because their hormonal levels are closest to men’s.

3. Shopping Harness: Presumably this would prevent shopping for girly stuff like purses and tampons.  Buying video games and flat-screen TVs would be unaffected by the Harness.  (When I pointed this out in class, a student told me “Women shop. Men purchase.”)

4. Silent Clone: At last, a woman who will only engage in sexual and domestic chores, without all of that troublesome talking!

5. Anti-Cuddling Device: Because after a rigorous, masculine bout of penile-vaginal intercourse, the last thing you want to do is something as gay as cuddling, am I right?

In addition to the obvious points the ad attempts to make about the inferiority of the feminine, it might be useful in a discussion about the smirking, elbow-in-the-ribs assumptions that are often a part of the enforcement of masculinity.

That’s the refrain anyway.

But whose sex is sold?  And to who?   If it was simply that sex sold, we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture.  Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men.  So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”   We’re selling men’s sexual subjectivity and women as a sex object.  That is, the idea that men’s desires are centrally important and meaningful, and women’s are not (because women are the object to men’s subjectivity).

That women’s object status and men’s subjectivity is sold to women in women’s magazines (for example, Cosmo and Glamour always feature scantily clad women on the cover) in no way undermines the idea that men’s sexual subjectivity is being sold.  It’s just that it’s being sold to all of us.

For example, if this ad was selling Tango with sex, they’d both end up naked in the fourth frame, no?

The new ad spots for M&Ms also illustrate this nicely. m&ms have been anthropomorphized in advertising for some time. There is only one female m&m and she is, by no accident, the green M&M. If you remember from elementary school, green is for horny. That, also, is no accident.

So male M&Ms come in multiple colors, flavors, shapes, and personalities, but female M&Ms are just sex objects.

In the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue this year, M&Ms went with the theme (found here):

The ad campaign extended beyond Sports Illustrated:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDoJNymbU1Q[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubChW7SLhKE[/youtube]

To sum, if it was simply “sex sells,” we’d see an even pattern of sexualization. But we don’t. More often than not, it is women who are sexualized. What is being sold, really, isn’t sex, but the legitimation and indulgence of (supposedly heterosexual) men’s sexual desires.

Kirsti M. alerted us to an M&M advertising campaign in Australia, where you could vote for your favorite color. All but one of the M&Ms are depicted as males (again, the female is Miss Green).

Here is a screenshot of the page for Red, a satirical take on a Marxist revolutionary:

Some highlights from the text:

Favorite quotes: “The revolution is now!”

Favorite books: “100 Steps to World Domination”

Weight: “Perfect for my shell”

A poster:

Here is a screenshot of the page for Miss Green (notice the others aren’t Mr. Blue or Mr. Red; only the female M&M has a title):

Highlights from the text:

Miss Green, working the polls.

About me: I may have a pretty hard shell, but I assure you I’m sweet on the inside.

Favorite quotes: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.”

Favorite books: “How to Work the Polls”

Interests: Right now I’m focusing all my attention on the top position.

Campaign policy: All beaches to be nude beaches.

Age: Let’s just say I’m experienced.

A poster:

So again we see the sexualization of the female M&M (she’s “experienced,” focusing on the “top position,” she’s “working the polls” while wrapping her go-go-boot-clad legs around a tree in the manner of a stripper on a stripper pole, her arms and legs are much longer and thinner than the other M&Ms’ are).

In this vintage ad (1970s?), it is clear that it is his “plans” for her that are being appealed to:

NEW! These ads for hearing aids are apparently aimed at men only:

Other great examples include these posts with ads promoting organ donation, an air conditioning technical school, selling pasta, vegetarianism, aviation, cars, war, travel, dentistry, food, more food, houses, and mortgages.  (To see the reverse dynamic, click here and here.)

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.

Elizabeth C. sent in an English and Spanish version of a pamphlet for pregnant women from Kaiser. Here they are:

Translation (by member blogger Jeffrey):

A healthy pregnancy and care of your baby

You are going to have a baby!

We want to help you with your pregnancy, and therefore we invite you to the following classes:

1) Series of prenatal information. Information about labor, birth, and care for your baby, breast feeding, taking care of you after labor, and your recovery.

2) Take a look at the hospital.  Make an appointment with us to see the facilities. Please register for these classes by the fourth month of your pregnancy.

3) Tubal sterilization. Includes all that you need to know if you do not want to have more children. Take this course by the fifth or sixth month of your pregnancy.

Notice the difference?

The English version of this pamphlet lists a series of options for pregnant women (“our classes include”), including Lamaze classes and classes on tubal sterilization.

The Spanish version says here are the three things we’d like you to do (“we invite you to”): prenatal info, hospital tour, and tubal sterilization.

In sociology, we call this targeted anti-natalism. Targeted anti-natalism is an effort to reduce the reproduction of certain populations and not others.

UPDATE! Socorro Serrano, representing Kaiser, posted a reply in our comments thread:

Greetings everyone: The initial posting on this topic is incorrect. Any suggestion that there was an intention to coerce Spanish-speaking women to take a tubal sterilization class is patently not true.

As bloggers Elena, Jaya, and Nora Ann have pointed out – This class is listed on both the English and Spanish flyers. And whether we say in English “Our classes include,” or in Spanish “le invitamos a las siguientes clases (we invite you to the following classes),” our goal is to provide information for a “Healthy Pregnancy & Baby Care,” or “Un embarazo saludable y cuidado del bebé.”

Also, please note that the hospital tour and free English and Spanish-language classes cover the same curriculum, including childbirth preparation (parto) and breast-feeding (lactancia materna). There has been no interest from Spanish-dominant parents for Lamaze classes, but if this changes, we would be happy to add this to our schedule of offerings.

Providing health care to our members in the language they prefer and in a manner that is respectful and culturally responsive is a core value for Kaiser Permanente. That is why your input and that of the communities we serve is so very important to us.

NEWS

Please welcome Julianne Monday, our first Sociological Images intern! 

Be our friend!  We have a facebook page.

Gwen was quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the New York Post editorial cartoon scandal.  Check it out here.

Gwen would also like to say that she missed the chance to be interviewed by a reporter at the New York Times because she was at lunch when they emailed her and by the time she got back to her office they’d found someone else to be their expert commenter.   She missed a chance to be quoted in the NYT for a stupid portabello mushroom-and-poblano pepper taco plate.  She wasn’t even all that hungry. 

That said, no one called Lisa this month at all.  I’m just saying.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS

Our post about racist Disney characters was updated with a comparison of an image of Goofy to a traditional “Sambo” caricature and a discussion of whether Goofy is necessarily meant to be a racial archetype.

We added some of the coverage of the policing of Jessica Simpson’s weight to our post chronicling fat scandals.

We found another example of “chaperoning,” or never letting non-white people outnumber white people in ads, and added it to this post (scroll down).

To our post on “subliminal” sex in advertising, we added a vintage lipstick ad suggestive of oral sex (scroll down).

We found another ad suggesting that men use alcohol to get sex and added it to our post on the theme here (scroll down).

We added a video by Jay Smooth from Ill Doctrine [who we are totally crushing on] to this post about the use of the phrase “no homo.”

We added the hoax site Porn for Women by Women to this post about how images of men doing housework or being thoughtful is often jokingly portrayed as women’s equivalent of porn.

In the video game My World, My Way, players take on the role of a spoiled female character who uses pout points and selfishness to win.  We added a video about it to this post about several other video games (note: the post isn’t safe for work).

We added more t-shirts to this post about portrayals of American Indians.

We added another image to our extremely popular post on the objectification of men (scroll to the “bottom”).  We just can’t figure out why it attracts so much traffic.  Hmmmm.

We have an extensive post demonstrating the sexualization of food, but they keep on comin’.  Scroll all the way down for our burger boobs and Doritos undies.

Someone thought it’d be neat to fashion a female mannequin torso into an ipod stereo.  We added a picture of the product to our post featuring furniture in the shape of female bodies.

Finally, we updated a post about “ethnic” fashion with an image of “tribal” sandals.

Andrew over at FiveThirtyEight posted about the association between religious attendance and voting behavior. Looking at the 2008 Presidential election, Pew data indicates that frequency of religious attendance is strongly related to likelihood of voting for McCain:

But looking more closely at the data, we can see that the relationship is more pronounced for some groups, such as born-again Protestants and Catholics, than others, such as non-born-again Protestants:

From the original post over at FiveThirtyEight:

The size of each circle is proportional to the number of people represented in the survey. In particular, most of the people who attend church more than weekly are born-again Protestants.

Another interesting thing to look at is the how income interacts with religion to influence voting patterns. These graphs show the McCain vote by income among various religious groups:

Notice that among Jews and the non-religious, increased income didn’t substantially increase the chances of voting for McCain (and those in the “other” category are just confusing). For these groups, being rich doesn’t appear to have been enough to draw them to McCain, whereas for most Christians we see a clear trend: the richer adherents were, the more likely they were to vote Republican. Both Jews and non-adherents started out much less likely to vote for the Republican ticket, and their opposition was strong enough that it trumped what we would expect to see if people voted on a narrow interpretation of self-interest (i.e., “I make $300,000 and Obama says he’ll raise income taxes on incomes above $250,000, so I’ll vote for the other guy”). Presumably Republican positions on social issues, or close association with evangelical Christians, put off some wealthy non-religious and Jewish voters who might otherwise be likely to vote for them based on fiscal policy, but that’s just a guess, since we don’t have data here on voters’ explanations of their candidate preferences.

A great example of how humor can be used to reveal the absurdity of certain social patterns that we take-for-granted:

“I can’t explain it,” said Nakajima, dressed in a pleated miniskirt and pure white knee socks. “There’s just something about American men who are at least twice my age and nearly three times my body weight that totally drives me wild.”

Added Nakajima, “They’re so hot.”

…

“I like it when they dress up like middle managers,” said Nakajima, twirling her girlish pigtails with one alabaster finger.

…

Drawn by her curiosity, Nakajima has scheduled a vacation to St. Louis for early March.

More at The Onion.

For a very real example of the flip side  of this fetish, see this post on sex tourism in Thailand.