Search results for gendering

NEWS:

I’ll be in New Orleans until June 23 and the big Island of Hawaii from the 23rd to the 1st.  It’s always fun to meet readers, so if you’re nearby please send us an email (socimages@thesocietypages.org) and we’ll have coffee or drinks!

A Louis Vuitton advertising campaign that we critiqued has been determined by the U.K. Advertising Standards Agency to be a violation of truth in advertising.  Check it out.  Thanks to Anjan G. and Katrin for pointing it out.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post everyday.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! May ’10):

Cara McC. sent along another example of a commercial separating normal from abnormal… this time it’s “normal” skin.  We added it to our post on hair.  On the same theme, Renée Y. took a photo of bike helmets in women’s and… um… helmet.  We also added more examples to our post on gendering default icons, this time bike traffic lights in Amsterdam.

We added breast cancer-themed grape tomatoes — yes, you read right — to our post on surprising things themed as such.  Sent in by Renée Y.

M.I.A.’s  “Born Free” video shows red-headed, freckled male adolescents being rounded up as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. We added it to our post on gingerism.

Orangina has a drink with grenadine in it called “Indien” that features an orange wearing a feathered headdress. We added it to our earlier post on the use of feathered headdresses and other elements of some American Indian cultures.

We updated our post on the CNN experiment on children’s attitudes toward skin color with a segment of a parent reacting to her child’s preferences. Thanks to Abeer K., Dimitriy T.M., and Alex P. for sending in the one we missed!

Ang B. snapped a photo of an advertisement for men’s and women’s haircuts with the phrase “Fuck your Gender Binary” written across it.  We added it to our post featuring small acts of resistance against gendered and objectifying advertising.

Andi S. sent a photo of Spanx for men, designed to shape his upper body.  We added it to our post on the push-up panty for the penis.  Relatedly, Michelle R. sent us another example of how the diet/nutrition industry markets products differently to men and women.

We added two videos of the “men are like this, but women are like that, hahaha!” variety to one of our posts on gender stereotypes.  Also, in case you haven’t had enough of pointlessly gendered products, we added an example of a gendered “find” game and another example of gendered earplugs to our post on the topic.  On the other hand, doggie poop bags are unisex. Good to know.

In case you’re looking for some polite, submissive women, we added an online ad for “beautiful Russian ladies” to our post about a website that sells the submissive Asian stereotype to (mostly) non-Asian men.

We updated our post on a child’s zebra-striped string bikini with a bikini pulled from shelves in the U.K. The bikini, meant for young girls, included a padded bra.

We updated our post on envisioning how highways would affect the city of the future with an exhibit from the 1939 World’s Fair that pointed out that benefits of being able to avoid slums.  Also on the topic of highways, we added an image sent in by Jayna T. to our post on teens, the elderly, and driver safety.

Stella P. sent in a link to the SIGG water bottle website, pointing to the fact that there are “women’s” and “men’s” collections. What’s interesting about the two collections isn’t just the reproduction of the gender binary and the gendering of water bottles, but the fact that the outcome of this bifurcation is actually less choice for men. There are 77 total water bottles in the women’s collection, but only 58 in the men’s. If you scroll through the options, you’ll see that women basically get to choose among ALL of the bottles, but men are not presented with any that (apparently) appear TOO feminine. This is a great example, then, of the way that patriarchy constrains men by pushing them away from items deemed girly.

Here are some screen shots of the men’s and women’s collections.

Men’s:

Women’s:

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.

We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework.  The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.”  Ah-mazing.  The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.

And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

Hat tip to Jezebel.

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 recent CBS/New York Times poll reveals how words matter. They asked 500 respondents how they felt about permitting “homosexuals” to serve in the military; then they asked a different 500 how they felt about “gays/lesbians” serving in the military.  It turns out, people like gays and lesbians more than they like homosexuals:

Also in words: frankenfoods, atomic, soda vs. pop, tradition, hispanic, feminism, woman, average, nurse, George Lakoff on metaphor, professional, Jon Steward on re-branding, development, organic, the third world, man vs. girl, natural, honorifics, Africa, dithering, terrorism, the rape and other violent metaphors, and flesh-colored.

And also see our post on the war against “gay.”  (Poll discovered via Montclair SocioBlog.)

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.

When American figure skater Evan Lysacek won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, he was the only man on the podium who had not attempted a quadruple jump in either of his two skating programs. The silver medalist, 2006 Olympic Champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia, was quick to point out that “a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn’t do a quad, well I don’t know… Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing.” Plushenko’s website later proclaimed (though the claim was soon redacted) that his superior performance had earned him a “platinum” medal. Figure skaters and others who heard his comment understood this wasn’t just sour grapes; by questioning Lysacek’s jumping ability, Plushenko was also questioning his manhood.

As Daniel, a former singles and pairs skater, knows from personal experience, when you look below the surface of figure skating, a coded gendering of the sport emerges. Figure skating has both athletic and artistic components, and traditionally these have been apportioned to men and women, respectively. Men are expected to be able to land enormous jumps. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to grab one of their feet and pull it up behind their heads, sometimes while spinning fast enough to set off a nose-bleed, as Mirai Nagasu did in Vancouver. Women’s programs also emphasize a great deal of emotion when they skate, while men are expected to display their athletic strength and power.

This is not to say that women are not expected to jump or that men can be soulless automata, but there are lower expectations for each in the other gender’s territory. A male skater who doesn’t emote passionately can be forgiven if he has a fantastic triple axel, and a woman can even win the Olympics with jumps that aren’t fully rotated. Artistry and flexibility are where women are expected to excel, while boys strive to jump higher and rotate more. To this day, only one woman (Japan’s Miki Ando) has landed a clean quadruple jump in competition, while it has become a mainstay of men’s event. This video shows Ando’s jump, at a 2002 competition:

In the aftermath of his silver platinum silver medal finish in Vancouver, Plushenko questioned the qualifications of Evan Lysacek to win gold without a quad. Aside from being poor sportsmanship, his approach highlighted the deep association of jumps with male figure skating. Though, in the women’s event, Mao Asada completed the technically difficult triple axel on three separate occasions, no fuss was made over her second-place finish behind the ethereal Kim Yu-Na. Kim has strong jumps, to be sure, but what sets her apart from her competitors is that she skates in a way that is graceful, balletic and undeniably feminine.

Ironically, one of the most promising things about a young Evgeni Plushenko when he arrived on the international skating scene in 1997 was his blending of artistry and athleticism. His style was avant-garde and overwrought, and his jumps were magnificent; he had, in skating parlance,”the whole package.” It might seem excessive to map gender onto his performances, but he is famous for being one of the only men to perform the Biellmann spin, in which the skater grabs the blade of one skate and pulls it up behind the top of his or her head.

This was a clear and unabashed case of gender-bending, as the spin had previously been the province of women. The figure skating world, after being sufficiently impressed by the flexibility of his hips, shrugged and moved on. No one thought any less of him for doing a “girly” spin.

Compare this to the skating world’s reaction to two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, who was often said to skate “like a man.” Witt had big jumps (and big thighs to go with them), and skated to the soundtracks of epic movies, a practice that was usually reserved for men, while other women tended to skate to classical ballet suites. Witt’s artistic style was also not typical of women skaters: while her competitors demonstrated flowing, balletic arm movements to match their floaty chiffon skating dresses, Witt opted for stronger, cleaner arm movements and famously skated in leggings and a tunic in a program set to music from Robin Hood. She also skated with a stoic bearing that was similar to that of Canadian Elvis Stojko, who won the silver medal in Lillehammer in 1994.

Despite the popular perception of figure skating as a uniformly “girly” sport, there exists within the figure skating world a unique and nuanced code for constructing and understanding gender. In the figure skating world, as in the rest of our culture, that code changes over time, with different representations of masculinity and femininity being rewarded, marked down, or phased out entirely as the sport evolves. And as Plushenko’s comments about Lysacek demonstrated, figure skating’s coding of gender can be invoked by skaters trash-talking their rivals in subtle, but complicated, ways. As yet, Plushenko has made no comment on Lysacek’s upcoming appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it’s not hard to imagine what he might have to say.

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Chloe Angyal is a Contributor at Feministing.com, where she writes about gender in popular culture. She is also a failed figure skater. Daniel Eison is a former nationally-ranked pairs and singles skater who retired in 2005. He is not a failed feminist.

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Gender differences in figure skating are also institutionalized in the form of costume requirements. Women are required to wear dresses, while men are not allowed to wear leggings or sleeveless outfits.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff says,

This isn’t true anymore; “this rule was repealed in 2004, allowing women to wear tights, trousers, or unitards” [1] ([1] http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/faq/rules.shtml)

Thanks for the correction!

Related posts: Johnny Weir and Canadian skating gets tough.

Lynne S. clipped this coupon for a “lovers special” at Cassano’s Pizza.  Notice it both presumes heterosexuality and genders meat as masculine and veggies as feminine.

We saw the same gendering of food in the Brick House Tavern Menu, TV dinner categories, and a vintage Campbell’s soup ad.

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.

Lynn S. sent us a link to a Carnegie Mellon story about a new robotic “nurse” for the elderly.  Her name is “Pearl.”

It should go without saying that robots do not need to be gendered male or female and that, in this case, gendering the robot female reproduces a wasp’s nest of stereotypes about who is responsible for caring for others.

I say it should go without saying but, in fact, it mostly does, in the most bizarre way.  The article is about trying to maximize Pearl’s effectiveness as a helper by testing various configurations of appearance, mannerisms, expressions, etc.  But they never address why she is female.  From the article:

To that end, a multidisciplinary team of roboticists, social scientists and interaction designers has drawn on theories of emotion from cognitive science and the principles of aesthetics to explore what happens when human characteristics are added—or taken away—from Pearl’s “persona.”
…
Appearance has a strong impact on a person’s expectations. Researchers want to learn whether facial characteristics will factor into the emotional reaction of people who interact with her. Pearl’s configurable head, the size and spacing of her eyes and the shape of her lips are all important elements in projecting a “persona.”

In the caption to this image, they mention the importance of her “configurable head” for her “persona,” but her gender remains conspicuously unexamined.

Only once in the entire article do they mention gender.  They say that they are “…studying people’s responses to a robot’s perceived gender by changing Pearl’s lips and voice.”  But they named her Pearl, so they seem to have rushed to a conclusion there.  It’s as if, despite the incredible range of concerns and experimentation, scientists are not seriously questioning her sex.

And I think they should!  Not only because it’s good science, and not only to avoid sexist assumptions, but because the robot is being designed for senior citizens, who are disproportionately women, most of whom have spent a lifetime caring for children and husbands; I’d bet they’d find a nursebot named Peter to be quite a treat!

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.

NEWS:

Lisa will be in New Orleans in February!  If anyone is interested in coming to a SocImages cocktail hour, email her at socimages@thesocietypages.org.

Also, this is your monthly reminder, you can always follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook, where we update with a featured post everyday!

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

In January of 2008 we featured a set of posters made by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy that labeled teens who found themselves parents as “pricks,” “cheap,” “nobodies,” “dirty,” and “rejects.” Nice.

And one year ago, in January 2009, I put up a series of photographs exposing the amazing convenience and luxuriousness of private plane travel.  It’s a classic “how the top 1% lives” kind of post.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! Jan ’10):

Food

Dudes.  I added an ad with a recipe for jello with tuna to our post on vintage recipes for savory gelatin.  I am not kidding.

We added a new commercial to our previous post on Orangina; this one includes interspecies S&M.

Edward S. alerted us to a commercial where a pig does the Flashdance.  We added it to our post on gendered and sexualized food (scroll all the way down).

We’ve previously posted on the historical association of men (and masculinity) with meat. Jon S. sent us an example, a Weight Watchers ad that promises men they don’t have to eat “like a rabbit,” accompanied by an image of a hunk of beef. ‘Cause men need steak and potatoes, even when they’re dieting!

Media and Marketing

Gwen and I were like: “We’re so NOT adding any more content to the evolution of Evony ads post unless someone sends in something that truly takes it a step further… and that’s impossible.” Right? Wrong. Chris M., Tinpantithesis, Chris M., and Ryan sent in the next step in the Evony ads. Believe it.

CNN asked us if Jon and Kate Gosselin were getting too much coverage while advertising CNN’s coverage of them. We added another example of media hypocrisy–Dr. Drew of “Celebrity Rehab” telling us we shouldn’t be so interested in celebrities.

What can we appropriate the feminist movement to sell in addition to bras? How about shoes?

We posted about the September 2009 issue of Glamour including a picture of a naked “plus-size” model (that is, a size 12). We updated the post with a similar photo of a group of women with less-than-model-thin bodies that is in the Glamour calendar.

Marc C. sent us a link to a slide show featuring 185 pictures of cheerleaders.  We added it to our post titled “What Warrants a Slide Show?”

Race

We added a photo from the liner notes of a Lady Gaga CD in which she and Kanye West are in a pose reminiscent of King Kong to an older post on the King Kong motif.  Thanks to Ruth D’R. and an anonymous tipster!

Sara L. sent us another example to add to our post about housecleaning services that present house cleaners as non-white and those having their houses cleaned as white.

Sex

Another month, another addition to our ejaculation imagery post.  Can you say “splooge halo”?  I did.  Thanks to Helene V. for the submission.

Someone-who-prefers-to-remain-anonymous sent us another example of a t-shirt that equates sexual penetration with domination in the sports arena, which we added to our original post on the topic.

Julia U. sent in some Calvin Klein ads that centrally feature the naked body of a black man.  We added them to our post on the sexual objectification of men.

We updated one of our posts about the sexualization of little girls with photos of baby bibs that say “flirt” and “single.”

Gender

We found a vintage ad for Plymouth Barracuda marketed specifically to women and we added it to our post on the awesome Dodge La Femme.

Liscadifretta sent in a photo of a clothes hanger meant to look like a woman’s legs and crotch.  We added it to our post featuring furniture shaped like (naked) women.

Joel P. sent us a link to the updated Diamonds or the Doghouse campaign by JC Penney.  Like last year, the message is that you can be a total dick to your wife, so long as you are willing to buy her diamonds, because diamonds make her incredibly stupid.

As always, we had more to add to our post about pointlessly gendered products, this time boys’ and girls’ organic body wash and Nivea chapstick.

And we updated our post on marketing beauty products to men to include On the Job, a line of lotions–or, if you prefer, polymer gloves–for men.

Anna K.-B. sent us another example of health-related activism aimed specifically, and unnecessarily, at women.

Jessica H. sent us another example of a business marketing its services with gender: The Occasional Wife, and The Handy Husband and, Jessica’s find, Boyfriend for Hire.

Remember when we posted about the gendering (and Whitening) of online degree programs? Ryan  sent us another example so we added it.

And we added another added to post on socializing kids with gendered toys.

More Stuff!

Ashleigh V. sent along another Twingo commercial. This one equates modernity with sexual permissiveness.

We added another batch of dolls with disabilities to our post on reactions to dolls with Down’s Syndrome.

We added another DDT product to our vintage post with ads advocating the household use of DDT, a pesticide that later turned out to be wholly toxic.