Adriana E. sent in this video made by The Human Rights Action Center, featuring Tila Tequila, designed to inspire opposition to human rights abuses in Burma.  Like other organizations, such as PETA (see here and here), this PSA uses sex appeal to inspire activist outrage. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK8inPfHg_0[/youtube]

Ironically, as Adriana notes, Tila Tequila is famous for being bisexual, but really only interacts suggestively in this video with the boys.  I guess hypersexualizing a woman is all fine and good, but bisexuality would be a real turn off.

Do any of you think that this is effective in inspiring concern for Burma?

As Mary K. says:

…I doubt if war is a bore for those who are fighting it, those being fought against, or those on either side who’s loved ones are concerned about their safety.

The bag is for sale at Forever 21.

Thanks to Mary for the submission and to her friend, Steph, for modeling!

In U.S. culture, the stereotype of Black women includes being too loud, aggressive, etc (i.e., masculine).  Thus, to fit into the role of first lady, according to Reuters, Michelle Obama must “soften” herself.  Note that the text accompanying this headline emphasizes that she’s just going to be a mom.

In contrast, Cindy McCain already “fits” “with her elegant clothes and pefectly coiffed blond hair.”

Click on either image to enlarge.  Full articles can be found here and here. Via Jezebel.

See also this post where Michelle Obama is called an “angry black woman.”

p.j. sent in this radio clip from Howard Stern’s show. Some guy (not associated with Stern’s show, from what I can tell) went to Harlem to ask people if they supported Barack Obama. He would then present some of McCain’s proposed policies but say they were Obama’s and ask people if they agreed with the stance. People overwhelmingly agreed with McCain’s proposals when they were told the proposals were Obama’s. The guy hints that this is because Black people are voting for Obama simply because he’s Black.

Now, I’m sure that in some cases that’s true, just as it’s true that some White people are voting for McCain just because he’s White (hi, Mom!). And the lack of basic knowledge about the stances of the two candidates makes my head hurt.

But I suspect that if you did a similar experiment with other groups of voters, you would find a similar tendency–that is, I think lots of groups choose their prefered candidate based on all types of factors and may not have a thorough (or even vague) understanding of any specific policies. I am sure you could tell my grandma that *anything* was a Bush policy and she would say she supported it. I find it highly unlikely that this is something unique about Black voters, or even Obama supporters more generally. I would be willing to be that a decent portion of the electorate isn’t highly knowledgeable about the candidates’ stances and, once they’ve chosen a candidate (which might be because of race, but just as well might be because of the that they’re from, party affiliation, or that whole thing about being someone voters could “have a beer with”), would support whatever policy they were told the candidate supported. You can read that as voters being uneducated or stupid, but you could also see it as a rational reaction to the complexity of many issues: as a voter, you choose the candidate (or party) you believe in general has an outlook that will lead to the best decisions about public policy, and you assume that that candidate’s policies are probably preferable to what the other side would offer.

The other thing to keep in mind, which may be difficult for those of us who are political geeks and news junkies to really comprehend, is that not everyone is familiar with what phrases like “pro-choice” or “pro-life” mean. If you don’t care about politics that much, or about abortion as an issue, then those terms may be meaningless. I could be wrong here, but I bet my mom wouldn’t have a clear, immediate knowledge of which side of the issue each term refers to. So it’s possible that some of the individuals saying they liked Obama for being “pro-life” may not have even interpreted the phrase in relation to abortion.

This could be useful for a discussion of how things are attributed to race if non-White people are involved. On the way to work I was listening to a call-in show and a woman called in and identified herself as African American. She said that people keep thinking she’s voting for Obama just because he’s Black, but that they’re missing the important factor: she’s voting for him because he’s a Democrat, and she’d vote for a White Democrat over a Black Republican without hesitation. While I’m sure some of the people in the radio clip were loyal to Obama because of race, it’s also possible that some are just die-hard Democrats who vote for the Democratic candidate no matter what. I’m not saying that’s a good way to pick a candidate, just that the automatic assumption that African Americans who support Obama but don’t seem highly knowledgeable about his agenda are voting simply based on race might be inaccurate.

Thanks, p.j.!

Shoshannah F. sent in this clip (originally found here) from Bill Maher’s show, in which he makes fun of many stereotypes of African Americans by applying them to Whites and imploring viewers to not let their prejudice against Whites keep them from voting for John McCain:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iM0mUfATJk[/youtube]

It would make a great clip for discussing differences in how behaviors are attributed to race. Negative behaviors committed by African Americans (say, engaging in crime or being lazy) is often seen as an inherent trait of Blacks. When a White person does the same thing, his or her Whiteness is rarely brought up as a reason for the behavior. Whites are evaluated as individuals, while non-Whites find they are often evaluated as group members. Thus, the fact that the vast majority of the individuals involved in the financial meltdown is White is unlikely to lead to a stereotype that Whites are incompetent, bad with money, or inclined to engage in crime. Yet negative behaviors of non-Whites are often believed to provide evidence of what non-Whites are essentially like. For instance, I once had a conversation with a woman who told me about a coworker quitting without giving notice and then expressed her belief that it was because the woman was Black, and Blacks don’t have a good work ethic. Yet when I quit a crappy job at a college bookstore without giving notice back in college, I doubt it was attributed to Whites just not having a good work ethic.

This clip from “The Daily Show” also plays on some stereotypes about Blacks and Whites, as well as the idea that Obama isn’t “really” Black:

Thanks, Shoshannah!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

In her book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that increased access to mirrors in the 1800s helped spur middle-class Victorian obsessions with the body, particularly skin and the presence of acne on the face. Mirrors gave the average person more of an ability to imagine themselves through others’ eyes and to inspect every part of their body (and presumably find it lacking).

Samantha J. showed me the logical end-point of this association between mirrors and negative appraisals of one’s body: mirrors that don’t make you do the work of negatively judging your body, but just go ahead and do it for you.

The one on the left says, “Is this one of those CARNIVAL mirrors?!” and the one on the right says, “I’m MUCH too young to be this OLD” (found here). The mirror below (found here) says, “Are you really gonna wear that?”

Of course, if you want a self-esteem boost, or already feel really good about yourself, you could buy this one (found with the one above), which says, “I’m the fairest of them all…”:

Anyway, they might provide a (sort of silly) illustration to go with a discussion of how increased access to mirrors or other technologies (is a mirror a technology?) have affected perceptions of the body and our ability to scrutinize every inch of it (which could, of course, be part of a larger discussion about how changes in technology can affect cultural trends).

Thanks, Samantha J.!

In her book, The Averaged Americans, Sarah Igo talks about the development of statistical methods.  Their development allowed for the emergence of the idea of an “average American.”  An idea that carried moral weight; “average” was “good.” 

Looking at the famous “Middletown” study, the Kinsey Reports, and the invention of polling, she discusses how methods aimed at identifying the average Amerian often reproduced preconceived notions of who was a real American.  In the Middletown study, Blacks were ignored because the researchers decided they didn’t count as average Americans.  Similarly, polling methodology is aimed at getting a representative sample, but representative of who?  Deciding who is being over- or under-represented in a sampling strategy is always a choice.

The invention of the “average American” as an idea is interesting in light of the McCain/Palin rhetoric about “main street” and “real America” and the way in which being a “typical” American is being framed as morally good (image from Stuff White People Do)

 

As with Middletown, the idea of the average American used by McCain/Palin is still racially-coded.  We Are Respectable Negroes lists 69 terms–including “regular folks,” “responsible Americans,” and “good hard-working people”–used by speakers in this election to mean middle-class white person.  Here are Palin’s words:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob9vFvojN8[/youtube]

Which brings me to Joe the Plumber.  Joe the Plumber, of course, is supposed to represent an “average” American.  But every in-group needs an out-group and, like all incarnations of the average, Joe has to be differentiated from the extremes, the non-average, the tails of the distribution: the blacks, the traitors, the poor, the Muslims, etc.  Here he is making exactly such an argument about Obama:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw2Wczp9yOc[/youtube]

Indeed, convincing us that Obama is Other has been a central part of the McCain/Palin strategy (see here, here, a here, a here, here, here, here).

Nevada is a battleground state, and the state elections have gotten nasty (on both sides); the mailers I get every day don’t even pretend to be about issues any more, they’re just attack ads. I got this one, against a Democratic candidate, a couple of days ago:

I thought the photo they chose to illustrate “radical groups” was interesting. There were no specifics about what type of “radical” groups, or what they are radical about. To me, this image seemed like it was supposed to bring up the threat of radical (angry) feminists, but I don’t know if that was the specific type of radical this was meant to evoke or if that’s just what it makes me think of.

Anyway, it might be useful for a discussion of political discourses (for instance, how groups selectively use words like “radical,” “progressive,” “traditional,” “regressive,” and so on to depict change as either good or threatening), as well as what types of political agendas even appearances have become associated with “radical” politics (for instance, a woman wearing multiple necklaces and dreadlocks symbolizes radicalism).