Compared to some European countries, the United States has a weak tradition of labor-based activism.  All too often, this leads to the invisibility of labor issues.  Take for example, this commercial for Simply Orange® brand orange juice. In an attempt to present their product as a natural alternative to other brands, Simply Orange juxtaposes images of natural orange growth with common phrases relating to the structure of a manufacturing organization. The tree is their “plant” (a marvelous pun), the orange blossoms are the “workers” that produce the fruit, and the sun itself becomes “upper management.”

Even though this commercial is humorously centered on the process of producing orange juice, there is not a single human being present in any of the images. It is a story about making a product in which nobody actually makes anything! This message cleverly sells the product, but it also obscures the real labor that went into growing, picking, and juicing the oranges and downplays the contributions to the process made by real people. All that productive effort is condensed into the image of an orange blossom, as if it can be assumed that such production will just naturally occur like an annual blooming.

The reality of orange juice production is much less sunny. According to statistics recently compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are roughly 20,000 undocumented workers in Florida that are subjected to harsh working conditions as growers compete with imported oranges in a “race to the bottom” for a cheaper production process. The illegal status of many of these workers makes them easily exploited for substandard wages, because they are often afraid to challenge the policies of their employers.

In a Marxist theoretical perspective, the way that these workers are rendered invisible by the public image of the commercial is a prime example of alienation: a tension in modern capitalism in which the workers in a mass-producing industry are separated from the fruits of their labor. Where at first it was merely the physical product that was taken from those who produced it to be sold in the market, now the credit for even participating in the process is being abstractly torn away.

This commercial also challenges the realities of the labor process, associating modern concepts of work organization such as “the plant” and “upper management” with images of natural growth. These associations allow the commercial to imply that their methods of labor organization are somehow rooted in a simpler way of doing things that is more harmonious with the natural order. By hearkening back to these roots, the organization is rendered harmless, as if to say the complexities of modern labor relations do not apply to the simple production of orange juice. All together, the choice to portray the associations in this commercial serves to hide the realities of agricultural production in the United States and limit the viewer’s potential curiosity about the way the process really works.

Evan Stewart is a Ph.D student at the University of Minnesota studying political culture. He is also a member of The Society Pages’ graduate student board, and you can follow him on Twitter. 

In the U.S., we tend to organize politically according to identities.  For example, we have a Gay Liberation Movement, a Women’s Movement, and the Civil Rights Movement, to name three big ones.  All of these are personal characteristics made political.

The cartoon below, by Miriam Dobson, does a great job of showing one of the downsides of fighting for progressive social change in this way.  For one, it can make people who carry multiple marginalized identities (for example, gay black men) feel unwelcome. And, two, it makes it seem like people without the identity can’t be part of the movement.

One solution is to think about oppressions in terms of intersectionality: we are all a mix of identities that resonate with each other in complicated ways.  This is a rich idea, but one lesson that it has taught us is that the strategy of divide-and-conquer has been an effective way to keep multiple groups marginalized.

Instead of emphasizing identities, we could identify issues. And if our issue is oppression, we can join-to-resist.  As the graphic explains: “oppression of one affects us all.”

Via Sociology Source, Another Angry Woman, and The Sociological Imagination.

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.

If I have one thing to say about Holly Grigg-Spall’s new book, Sweetening the Pill: How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control, it’s that it brings together ideas in creative ways and comes out with conclusions that are new to me.

The book is an interrogation of the popularity of hormonal birth control in the U.S.  In one argument, Grigg-Spall begins with the fact that women’s bodies are a fraught topic. For hundreds of years, the female body has been offered as proof of women’s inferiority to men.  Feminists have had two options: (1) embrace biological difference and claim equality based on essential femaleness or (2) reject difference and claim equality based on sameness.

Largely, Grigg-Spall argues, the latter has won out as the dominant feminist strategy. Accordingly, all things uniquely female become suspect; they are possible traitors to the cause.  This includes ovulation, menstruation, and the mild mood swings that tend to accompany them (men have equivalent mood swings, by the way, they’re just daily and seasonal instead of monthly-ish).

Hormonal birth control, then, can be seen as a way to eliminate some of the things about us that make us distinctly “female.”  “Science is making us better,” the message goes.  By getting rid of our supposedly feminine frailties, “we are [supposedly] becoming better humans…”  A quick look at birth control pill advertising reveals that this goes far beyond preventing pregnancy.  Commercials frequently claim other benefits that conform to socio-cultural expectations for women: reduced PMS, clearer skin, and bigger breasts.  This Yaz commercial, for example, claims that the pill also cures acne, irritability, moodiness, anxiety, appetite, headaches, fatigue, and bloating.

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.

The partial U.S. map below shows the proportion of the population that was identified as enslaved in the 1860 census.  County by county, it reveals where the economy was most dominated by slavery.

A new paper by Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen has discovered that the proportion of enslaved residents in 1860 — 153 years ago — predicts race-related beliefs today.   As the percent of the population in a county accounted for by the enslaved increases, there is a decreased likelihood that contemporary white residents will identify as a Democrat and support affirmative action, and an increased chance that they will express negative beliefs about black people.

Avidit and colleagues don’t stop there.  They try to figure out why.  They consider a range of possibilities, including contemporary demographics and the possibility of “racial threat” (the idea that high numbers of black people make whites uneasy), urban-rural differences, the destruction and disintegration caused by the Civil War, and more.  Controlling for all these things, the authors conclude that the results are still partly explained by a simple phenomenon: parents teaching their children.  The bias of Southern whites during slavery has been passed down intergenerationally.

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.

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.

Last month I had the pleasure of writing a really fun essay about sexual dimorphism for Salon.  The phrase refers to the degree to which males and females of a species are different.  I offered a bunch of fun examples of strong dimorphism and imagined what humans would be like if we were like those animals.

Men would be 11 feet tall, for example, if we were as dimorphic as the elephant seal; they’d be the size of a walnut if we were like the blanket octopus.  And don’t we all think that glistening iridescent skin, like the feathers on male birds, would make men more fabulously attractive?  It’s a no-brainer.

In any case, coincidentally the New York Times put together an animated video about one of my favorite examples: the green spoonworm.  The male spoonworm is very small compared to the female, equivalent to a human male being about the size of a breath mint.  And he lives his entire life inside of the female’s digestive tract.  Now that’s sexual dimorphism!  Enjoy:

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.

SocImages Meet Up in Minnesota!

Today I’m enjoying a visit to Carleton College and looking forward to spending the next two days at Macalester.  If you’re in the Twin Cities area, I’ll be at the W XYZ bar at the Aloft hotel in Minneapolis (900 Washington Ave S) on Thursday Oct. 3 at 8:30pm.  I would love to meet you and, more importantly, I would love to introduce you to each other!

Posts that Killed It:

We had an extraordinary month in September thanks to Sezin Koehler’s post on the lyrics of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.”  Many had called the song “rape-y” and the video misogynistic, but Koehler took it a step further, aligning the song’s lyrics with the words of actual rapists.  This struck a chord, making stark the discomfort many felt with the song.  The post has 163,000 “likes” and 1,600 comments and counting.  It was also cross-posted or discussed at Al Jazeera, Ms., Feministing, xoJane, Pacific Standard, and Jezebel.

We had some other super popular posts this month too!  Here are the highlights, starting with Koehler’s amazing work:

• From the Mouths of Rapists: The Lyrics of Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines (163,000 likes)
• Gender and the Body Language of Power (20,000 likes)
• Surprise! Your Flight Attendants are All Strangers! (15,000 likes)
• Men Feel Bad Around Smart, Successful Women (7,400 likes)
• Wrinkle-Washed: Female Faces in Film Marketing (2,500 likes)

And y’all seemed to like our list of professors’ pet peeves too (5,000 likes)

New Course Guides:

• Sociology of Work and Occupations, by yours truly (highlighting my minor obsession with flight attendants)
• Family and Society, by Marcie Hambrick, MSW of Georgia State University.

You can see all of our course guides here.  We hope they’re useful!

Elsewhere on the Net:

This month I had the fun opportunity of writing two original essays for Salon and one for Alternet.

• On testosterone: I responded to the study saying good dads have small testes by reviewing the way that men’s testosterone levels respond to social cues (like driving a Porsche, winning a video game, or becoming a father).
• On sexual dimorphism: I had fun with the idea of sexual dimorphism, imagining how different men and women would be if we were like highly dimorphic species.  Elephant seals, blanket octopi, spoon worms, the resplendent quetzal, primates, and the platypus all make an appearance.
• On sexual anatomy: And I dusted off my master’s degree in human sexuality and wrote up seven little-known facts about sexual anatomy for Alternet.

Social Media ‘n’ Stuff:

Finally, this is your monthly reminder that SocImages is on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest.  Lisa is on Facebook and most of the team is on Twitter: @lisawade, @gwensharpnv, @familyunequal, @carolineheldman, and @jaylivingston.

In Other News…

Contributor Philip Cohen can cross another thing off his bucket list.  And the rest of us will live vicariously.  His pup was featured at the joy-spreading Cute Overload.  I’m so jealous!

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.

Every once in a while the internet is abuzz being horrified by vintage ads for Lysol brand douche.  The ads seem to suggest that women are repulsing their husbands with odorous vaginas caused by neglected feminine hygiene.  In fact, it only looks like this to us today because we don’t know the secret code.

These ads aren’t frightening women into thinking their genitals smell badly.  According to historian Andrea Tone, “feminine hygiene” was a euphemism.   Birth control was illegal in the U.S. until 1965 (for married couples) and 1972 (for single people).  These Lysol ads are actually for contraception.    The campaign made Lysol the best-selling method of contraception during the Great Depression.

Of course, we’re not wrong to be horrified today.  Lysol was incredibly corrosive to the vagina; in fact, it’s recipe was significantly more dangerous than the one used today.  Hundreds of people died from exposure to Lysol, including women who were using it to kill sperm.  It was also, to add insult to injury, wholly ineffective as a contraceptive.

Here’s to safe, legal, effective contraception for all.

Via Buzzfeed and @CreativeTweets.

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.

Two recent events had a strikingly similar theme.  Kenichi Ebina won America’s Got Talent and Nina Davuluri won Miss America.  In both instances, other Americans objected to their victories, claiming that they were not really American because Ebina and Davuluri are of Japanese and Indian origin respectively.   Still other Americans objected to this reaction.  And yet, as I’ll argue below, most of us share their bias.

First, thanks to Public Shaming, we have examples of the reaction on Twitter.  Reactions to Ebina’s win:

Reactions to Davuluri’s win:

These are stark examples of people who believe that only white people count as American.  It’s a bizarre position, of course, because people of European descent are immigrants to America, and an overtly racist one as well.  I don’t lose any sleep over publishing their identities on this blog.

But, the truth is, the majority of us — even those of us who oppose racism and embrace the idea that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants — hold the belief that America = white.  We just believe this subconsciously.

Project Implicit is an online psychological test that measures implicit beliefs, ones we hold that we’re not necessarily conscious of holding.  One test is of the association of Asian-ness with American-ness.  It works by measuring how long it takes us to sort Asian and European faces and American and Foreign famous sites into the proper categories.

First they ask you to sort faces and places with Asian and Foreign together on the left and European and American together on the right. Like this:

Then they switch the bottom designations so that Asian and American are on one side and European and Foreign are on the other.  For most people, the harms their ability to sort faces and places: it slows down and includes more errors, revealing that their brain implicitly sees Asian and foreign as one category and American and European as another.

Here’s the aggregate data.  Almost a quarter of people make no association either way, 60% implicitly believe that Asians are less American than Europeans, and 17% think the opposite.

The take home message is: even though it’s easy to condemn the twits making overtly racist comments, this is a problem that is much more pervasive and pernicious.  Even those of us who are horrified by those tweets likely carry the bias behind them.

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard.

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.