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Sometimes we save up submissions on a particular topic so we can show several examples at once. And today, ladies and gents, I thought I’d present a few items that, to greater or lesser extent, glamorize brutality toward women or use images of dead women as props. Yes, I know — happy day!

On the less graphic end of the scale, way back in June 2010, Rei sent in these two trailers for the A&E show The Glades, where women exist just as props who manage to remain sexy, despite the deadness:

And some time ago Stefan Mesch, who writes for Die Zeit, let us know about the promotional website for Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel, Imperial Bedrooms. The website includes an interactive game where you’re a casting director and interact with a young woman who wants a part. From the homepage:

So theoretically, you have a choice — you can “exploit your position” or “do the right thing,” which presumably means not degrading or using a woman just because you can. But as Stefan explains, the options in the game are actually quite limited:

The game gives you options to talk to (and “encourage”) her, but they all lead to abuse, sexual harassment…The game rewards you for harassing the girl, and you’re supposed to drive up your personal score of “evil” by making her submit as much as possible.

Here are your first set of options:

I selected “encourage her.” The game then plays out a few seconds of dialogue and then leads to a second decision point, where I have these choices:

At least the first time I had one option to be a decent human being, other than not hiring her at all. I suppose that, in theory, giving someone booze might be a nice thing to do, but I think in this situation, probably nothing good can come of it. I selected that option; the director encourages her to drink when she doesn’t want to, and to drink more than she wants to. And then…

The “make her strip” option isn’t quite as bad as it might seem; when I chose it, she takes off her cardigan, but nothing else. At that point I felt like I’d pretty much gotten the point of the game, and wasn’t particularly interested in exploring how much of an asshole I could theoretically be, so I quit.

But both of those pale in comparison to our finale, readers. Dmitriy T.M. and Hope H. told us to check out Kanye West’s video for “Monster,” in which, among other things, Kanye casually rearranges the lifeless bodies of two women in bed with him:

Images of dead-looking women’s bodies appear throughout the video (which also features Jay Z and Nicki Minaj). I’m putting the rest of the images after the jump, as they might be particularly upsetting to some readers:
more...

We’ve posted before on the tendency for female, but not male, athletes to be featured in glamorous or sexualized ways that highlight their femininity instead of their athleticism.  See, for example, our posts on WNBA player Candace Parker and the Florida State University’s women’s basketball team.  Kirsten W. sent in another nice example.  In this case, it’s two tennis players at the height of their careers: Roger Federer and Anna Kournikova.

Federer is pictured as we might expect, doing what he is famous for doing, playing tennis:

(source)

In contrast, Kournikova is pictured like this:

(source)

Kirsten writes:

[Kournikova]… is presented in a very typical “female” way, with her long hair down (it would generally be pulled during a game), flowing over a pink frilly nightgown that suggests she’s in bed, and potentially waiting for company.

In 2000 when this issue of Sports Illustrated was released, Kournikova was on fire.   She was ranked 8th in singles and 4th in doubles… in the world.  Yet, Sports Illustrated decided to portray her not as an amazing athlete, but softly: as a beautiful, perhaps receptive woman.

Later Kournikova would abandon tennis for modeling.  Many argue that she did so because she failed as a tennis player, I wonder if she went into modeling, in part, because her appearance made people take her less seriously as an athlete.

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.

On today’s SportsCenter, ESPN closed out showing their “This is SportsCenter” commercials. As described on ESPN’s official YouTube, “This is SportsCenter” channel:

This is SportsCenter is the name of a series of comical television commercials run by ESPN to promote their SportsCenter sports news show. The ads are presented in a deadpan mockumentary style, lampooning various aspects of sports, and sports broadcasting. The commercials debuted in 1994.

As of tonight (December 24, 2010), ESPN’s YouTube channel profiles 77 of these short videos. Not every “This is SportsCenter” commercial is profiled, but I’m just going with what is up on this page now as the sample data set. I generally enjoy these commercials. Many of them are witty, and they are all short (around 30 seconds). Here are a few examples:

As can be seen, the commercials typically profile a famous athlete and/or a SportsCenter anchor, and on occasion a non-sports-related celebrity (e.g., Richard Simmons). In examining what athletes the commercials profile on ESPN’s YouTube page, a highly predictable trend emerges. Here are the individual athletes the commercials profile (note: when no athletes are profiled and only anchors, gender of anchors profiled noted instead):

1. Dwight Freeney (football; male)
2. Derek Jeeter (baseball; male)
3. Floyd Mayweather (boxing; male)
4. Tim Lincecum (baseball; male)
5. Wayne Gretzky (hockey; male)
6. Dwight Howard (basketball; male)
7. David St. Hubbins (musician; male)
8. Arnold Palmer (golf; male)
9. Oregon Duck (football; gender neutral)
10. Usain Bolt (track & field; male)
11. Larry Fitzgerald (football; male)
12. Matt Ryan (football; male)
13. Brett Favre (football; male)
14. Adrian Peterson (football; male)
15. Joe Mauer (baseball; male)
16. Adrian Peterson (football; male)
17. Manny Ramierz (baseball; male)
18. Josh Hamilton (baseball; male)
19. SportsCenter Anchors (all male)
20. Jimmie Johnson (car racing; male)
21. SportsCenter Anchors (all male)
22. Manny Ramirez (baseball; male)
23. David Ortiz & Jorge Posada (baseball; male)
24. David Wright (baseball; male)
25. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
26. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
27. Ladanian Tomlinson (football; male)
28. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
29. Tony Romo (football; male)
30. Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, & Ray Allen (basketball; male)
31. Michael Phelps (swimming; male)
32. Ladanian Tomlinson (football; male)
33. Jim Kelly (football; male)
34. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (car racing; male)
35. Chad Ochocinco (football; male)
36. Stephen King (writer; male)
37. Michael Phelps (swimming; male)
38. Jimmy Rollins (baseball; male)
39. Richard Simmons (fitness pro; male)
40. Maria Sharapova (tennis; female)
41. Steve Smith (football; male)
42. Jose Reyes (baseball; male)
43. Pat Summit (basketball; female)
44. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (car racing; male)
45. Carmelo Anthony (basketball; male)
46. Chris Paul (basketball; male)
47. Keyshawn Johnson (football; male) & Kobe Bryant (basketball; male)
48. “Moving the Franchise” (all male anchors)
49. “Yahtzee” (male anchors)
50. Kerri Strug (gymnastics; female)
51. “Talent Search” (male anchors)
52. Globetrotters (basketball; male)
53. Dan O’Brien (track & field; male)
54. “Journalistic Integrity” (male anchors)
55. “Sportscaster Celebrities” (male anchors)
56. “Live on the Set” (predominantly male anchors; female anchor at end)
57. Michael Andretti (car racing; male)
58. Gordie Howe (hockey; male)
59. “Reading Lips” (all male anchors)
60. “Makeup Buddies” (all male anchors)
61. “Athletes Bribing” (multiple male athletes from different sports)
62. George Mikan (basketball; male)
63. Mary Lou Retton (gymnastics; female)
64. “Tour” (all male anchors)
65. “One Track Mind” (predominanty male anchors; female anchor at start)
66. “Shoot” (female anchor)
67. “Paws” (all male anchors)
68. “Serious Journalism” (all male anchors)
69. “Write Your Own Stuff” (all male anchors)
70. “Sweet Science” (predominantly male anchor; short appearances by a female anchor)
71. “Potty Talk” (male anchor)
72. “Memories” (all male anchors)
73. Keshawn Johnson (football; male) & Kobe Bryant (basketball; male)
74. Glenn Robinson (basketball; male)
75. Barry Melrose (hockey; male)
76. Landon Donovan (soccer; male)
77. Jimmie Johnson (car racing; male)

When going through the data set, we find that out of the 77 commercials, women only appear 8 times (10.4%), in some cases in relatively peripheral roles. When looking specifically at athletes, only 3 female athletes are profiled, all 3 of whom represent historically “acceptibly feminine” sports: Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug (both gymnasts) and Maria Sharapova (tennis). One commercial profiles Pat Summit, the famous women’s basketball coach from the University of Tennessee. All other commercials featuring athletes have males.

Examining the content of the commercials is also important. For instance, the commercial with Sharapova clearly relies on Sharapova’s status as a femininized beauty figure in athletics. And while all the commercials are “presented in deadpan mockumentary style,” the humor clearly calls upon dominant notions of heterosexual masculinity — take for example the commercials that mock femininity among males, such as those in which the male anchors share makeup and mock Richard Simmons as a conditioning coach.

The trends shown here are highly predictable. It is hardly surprising that males are over-represented numerically in the commercials, both as athletes and anchors. Likewise, it is unsurprising that the humor utilized in these commercials so often mocks femininity among males in the sporting world or uses female athletes as sexualized figures.

What we see here in ESPN’s “This is SportsCenter” commercials is the typical way that gender is constructed in sport — patriarchy is reified within an institution historically reserved for heterosexual males.

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David Mayeda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at Hawaii Pacific University.  His recent book publications include Celluloid Dreams: How Film Shapes America and Fighting for Acceptance: Mixed Martial Artists and Violence in American Society.  He also blogs at The Grumpy Sociologist.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

The cover of January Cosmo is as sexed-up as ever — on newsstands at least. But we got a copy of the version the mag sends to advertisers, and it’s significantly more chaste. What’s going on here?

Note the miraculous disappearance of “60 Sex Tips” and “Orgasm Virgins” — suddenly, Cosmo‘s appropriate for your grandma! Or your grandma’s favorite retailer — a tipster suggests that the cleaned-up cover is meant to be “more appropriate for conservative [advertising] clients, which the ad sales team is hoping to fool.” If so, they’re not doing a very good job — the table of contents in the ad-friendly version still lists both the sex tips and the orgasm piece as cover stories.

A spokesperson for Cosmo offered this terse comment in response to our queries: “It is common for magazines to have different versions of the cover.”  We decided to see if this was indeed common at other publications. Caroline Nuckolls at Teen Vogue told us the magazine usually has just one version of the cover — but of course, Teen Vogue has a cleaner image to start out with, and less to hide. So we called Maxim, known for its lad-mag raunch — a source there told us they too produce just one cover, which goes out to newsstands, subscribers, and advertisers alike. This isn’t to say that no magazine does what Cosmo‘s done, but it’s not an industry-wide standard.

Of course, it’s not a surprise that a publication feels it needs to put its best foot forward to attract ad dollars — still, creating whole new cover lines is a pretty big step. Which coveted advertising account merited such a drastic cleanup? Some high-fashion brand? (Current Cosmo advertisers include Dior and Chanel.) Mainstream car or consumer products companies? (January’s issue includes an ad for Chevrolet.) Maybe they’re gunning for that Candie’s account? Whatever the brand, Cosmo assumes the ad buyers don’t read very carefully, and don’t know that the mag’s been providing sex advice and orgasm pointers to eager middle-schoolers for decades.

Send an email to Anna North at annanorth@jezebel.com.

A couple of days ago, Lisa posted about the sexualization of young girls, specifically in a fashion spread in French Vogue. Erica B. found another striking example on the reality show Toddlers & Tiaras, a show about young girls entered in beauty pageants. In this case, 2-year-old Mia’s mother has her perform wearing a tiny version of Madonna’s famous cone-bra bustier from her Blond Ambition tour:

The whole performance (and note the video is titled “Mia Living Doll”):

M/p>

For another video of her doing the routine, watch the 2nd video at this Jezebel post.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Most of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women.  In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched and perhaps even superseded by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine.  We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing sports, being a doctor, being self-sufficient) are imagined to be good for everyone (we encourage both our sons and daughters to do these things), but feminized things (playing with dolls, being a nurse, and staying at home to raise children) are considered to be good only for women.

This means that men are teased and ostracized for doing feminized things, as we have demonstrated in advertising for McCoy Crisps, Hungry Man, Solo, Chevy, dog food, Miller beer, beef jerky, cell phones, Dockers, the VW Beetle, and alcohol (see here, here, here and here).

This tendency towards androcentrism means, also, that companies can count on both women and men buying masculinized products, but only women buying feminized products.  It’s smart business, then, to masculinize everything.  In a New York Times article, for example, Patton reports that Mercedes masculinized its SLK in response to a finding that “too many” women were buying it, something that threatened to feminize the car:

Mercedes says that 52 percent of the registered owners of first-generation SLK’s are women and 48 percent are men; the company would prefer the figures to be more on the order of 60 percent men and 40 percent women…

The standard thinking in the industry is that lots of women will buy a car that appeals to men, but many men — certainly those who wish to avoid the girlie-men label — won’t buy one associated with women.

This logic helps explain the, admittedly tongue-in-cheek (I think), hyper-masculinization of the Honda Odyssey in this commercial, sent in by Nancy N. She writes:

The choice of the black car, the music, and lighting all direct the viewer to think, “this isn’t just a mini-van, this is a man-van, and you aren’t a pansy if you buy it.”   …[It is] “technology packed “… with distinctly harder edges. Overall, Honda is trying very hard to override the notion of a “mom car” to sell to a broader audience.

See also: “how to give the perfect man hug” and “how I sit on the bus”.  And for more examples of androcentrism, see our posts on the phenomenon in  sports (see here and here), cartoons, schools (see here and here), and Cosmo.

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.

Lester Andrist, at The Sociological Cinema, alerted me to a 9-minute short film revealing “Hollywood’s relentless vilification and dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims.”   Created by Jaqueline Salloum and Dr. Jack Shaheen’s book, Reel Bad Arabs, it is a stunning and disturbing collection of clips.  The depictions are grossly prejudiced and relentlessly violent.  Andrist summarizes:

The Media Education Foundation also made a full length documentary based on Shaheen’s book.  The 5-and-a-half-minute trailer is a good indication of its content.  It contains many similar disturbing depiction, including a discussion of Disney’s Aladdin, but also points to how Arabs are frequently shown as buffoons (“rich and stupid,” “oversexed,” and “uncontrollably obsessed with the American woman”).

See also our posts on how Arabs are portrayed in video games and Reel Injun, a documentary about the representation of American Indians in Hollywood.

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.

Anna J., a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, sent in this vintage ad for Spirella girdles that provides a good reminder of how women are repeatedly told that our bodies are never, ever acceptable as they are, but are always in need of “improvement” through the use of products (found at The Great Fitness Experiment):

But hey, if you don’t feel like wearing a girdle, perhaps some tapeworms are your solution:

UPDATE: Reader Syd says the tapeworm ad is a hoax, though other readers disagree, and the practice itself definitely occurred. I don’t know how to find out, but since there’s at least some question about it, I’d take it with caution. However, commenter Angela pointed out that Tyra Banks recently had a story on tapeworms on her show:

As Anna points out, “It’s really interesting how ads have changed over time, but the expectation of culture that women be dieting has remained the same.”  Certainly more people wouldn’t tell women to eat a tapeworm — sanitized or not — these days, but plenty of questionable products out there still promise weight loss with “no diet” and “no exercise,” and my bet is you could pick up any women’s magazine currently on the shelf and get a range of advice on how to make sure you lose any weight you might have gained over the holiday season.