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NEWS

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Germany! I’ll be in Munich for the month of September!  If there are any Sociological Images fans in the area, I’d love to have a cocktail hour!  Email me at socimages@thesocietypages.org and we’ll set it up.

Our New Look:  We’d like to thank Jon Smajda, our IT and all-around tech fix-it guy, for the great redesign of the site. As you may have noticed, it’s now easier to search for posts, comments are threaded, and the page looks less cluttered overall. Jon, your work is greatly appreciated!

Better Searchage! We updated some of our tags to make it easier to search for posts. There were two major changes:

(1) While we still have a generic “race/ethnicity” tag, we also created tags for the major racial/ethnic groups recognized in the U.S.  You can now search for “race/ethnicity: Asians/Pacific Islanders” and so on. In some cases we struggled with how to define groups or which labels to use. We settled on terms that are generally recognizable and that were short enough to fit in our tags box.  Most posts that are labeled with the “race/ethnicity” tag are now also assigned to at least one specific racial/ethnic tag.

(2) Previously we had individual countries listed alphabetically in the tags list. We decided it would be better to have them all listed as “nation: [specific country]” so they show up together as a group rather than scattered throughout the tags list. So, for instance, Egypt is now listed as “nation: Egypt.”

Changes to Comment Moderation Policy: We have always taken a hands-off approach to reader comments so as to not stifle discussion.  First, while we try to read every comment, we prefer to focus on putting up new content and we found that readers did a pretty good job of responding to each other.  Second, we often found even hateful and mean-spirited comments useful for illustrating some of the points we were trying to make, particularly how groups who fear loss of privilege will lash out and attempt to invalidate any critiques of their social position.  Finally, we have pretty thick skins and don’t really get too worked up about people insulting us.

However, as we posted about earlier in the month, we had an incident in which readers of an anti-feminist website left extremely hateful and threatening comments targeting a specific reader, including posting personal information (such as location) and encouraging physical violence against her and her dog. As a result we rethought our attitude toward comments. We’re not adopting a formal policy, but we decided some moderation is necessary. In general, comments that are hateful or threatening toward other commenters, or that are mean-spirited toward particular social groups (i.e., “I hate Black people”) and do not in any way contribute to a discussion of the issue will be deleted. We will undoubtedly miss some comments or not notice them immediately. We certainly won’t delete comments just because they disagree with us or are rather snarky, and we of course can’t protect readers from any comment they might find unpleasant or offensive–the comments section would have to be shut down completely. Basically, our policy toward comments is: Don’t be an ass, and if you are, we’ll delete your comments when we have time.

We also decided not to provide direct links to racist or misogynistic sites. We’ll provide the web address in posts about such sites so readers know where images came from but won’t have a link; this prevents their administrators from tracking back to our site and posting a barrage of threatening or overtly offensive comments.

We know these changes in how we handle comments won’t please everyone, or maybe anyone–some will want us to moderate more and others would prefer that we don’t moderate at all. But it seemed like the best compromise for preserving the ability for readers to discuss–and criticize–posts while not allowing some commenters to intimidate other readers to the point that they fear commenting.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: AUGUSTS

In light of the recent scandal over Caster Semenya’s sex, we thought we’d resurrect a post from August 2008 about the sexualization of female Olympic athletes.

And, to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we’d love for you to visit our post from August 2007 about racist interpretations of survival strategies in the aftermath of the storm.

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

You might have noticed that when we revamped the website (thanks Jon!), our names appeared in the right-hand column alongside neutral avatars which, as we’ve discussed many times, are actually male avatars (there is some delicious irony here).  It turns out that WordPress not only has the male as default, but there is no female option at all.  You can, however, choose to be a monster.  We eventually went with no avatar at all.  We documented the saga, including all of the options offered by WordPress, in our post on default avatars. Scroll down. [Gwen notes: I kinda want to be the monster.]

Sex

Sea Monkeys!  We added new ads for sea monkeys to our post on heteronormativity and a new collection we’re starting on ads that use sex to sell the most unlikely things.

Speaking of, remember our post full of ads that place the product or tagline in front of a woman’s crotch?  We thought so.  We added an ad for London Fog, sent in by Dmitriy T. M.

Oh geez. We added more examples to our ejaculation imagery ad. We’re sorry, but there was no getting around it. The new material includes images from a campaign for The IceCreamists and an ad for a water gun called the Oozinator (you’ve got to see it).

We also added another image to our recent post on using women’s bodies to symbolize HIV infection.

Race

We found a rodent control ad comparing the Chinese to rats and added it to our long list of anti-Chinese propaganda circa 1900.  We also added an image of lemon ice cream marketed with a caricatured Asian image to a prior post about Italian candies in a blackface-reminiscent wrapper.

Jason K. sent us another example of Obama depicted as a pre-modern and/or savage African, this time a poster showing Obama as a “witch doctor,” so we added it to our post of him presented as a Barbarian and a cannibal.

To our post discussing how people of color are often included in ads as symbols of flavor, color, or spice, we added a comparison of two McDonald’s french fry containers sent in by Joshua B.

Kids

Emily M. sent us another laxative ad in which a small child finally gets the loving mother she deserves because of the wonderful powers of laxatives, which we added to our earlier post on the topic.

You can also check out the vintage ad for Lane Bryant girls’ clothing that we added to our post on fashion for “chubby” girls.

Gender

We added more gendered products–masculinized ear plugs, ahem, “ear screws,” feminized tape “Just for girls!” and boys’ and girls’ sandwich bags–to our post on pointlessly gendered products.

Relatedly, both Danielle F. and Sara S.-P. sent us a link to the new Playstation Portable for omg! girlz!  We added it to our post on girlified games (like the Ouija Board).

Moving on to creepily gendered products, we added a photo of the storefront of Sweet Taters Cafe, sent in by Dmitiry T.M., featuring a “hot” potato, if you get my drift, to our post on sexualized food.

Evony has released more cleavage-fixated ads so we updated our post on the evolution, and increasing boob-centricness, of their recent ad campaign.

Kyle M. alerted us to the advertising campaign for the sci-fi show Surrogates. We added it to our post looking at how gender intersects with (real and fictional) robotics.

Ronni S. found a “Thank God you’re a man commercial” in which a woman becomes hysterical and men drink beer.  We added it to our post featuring ads that suggest that being a woman sucks.

And also in overtly sexist, we found another commercial that portrays women as batshit insane, this time for shoes.  It’s delightful.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to an AdWeek post reporting that Miller Beer began advertising in Vietnam last week with this commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG9H5_oKVd0[/youtube]

Some sociologists who study international relations apply the idea of the brand to nations.  Nations, they argue, can be seen as a product in a global marketplace. Australia, for example, is marketed as a rough and tumble place where we can get back to nature and find our true selves. Insofar as they can can control their brand, countries can draw tourism and increase demand for their exports (see here and here for Australian examples).

The ad above is an excellent example of Miller capitalizing on the American brand: “It’s American Time. It’s Miller Time.” Notice also that the ad is in English and doesn’t feature anyone that looks Vietnamese. The whiteness of the ad is purposeful. Miller is selling a specific version of “America” characterized by white people, urban life, sex-mixed socializing and, also, really bad music.

UPDATE!  In the comments, Adam linked to this ad which ran in the Phillipines:

You can also think of the California happy cows commercials as a form of state branding.

See here, here, and herefor posts showing the social construction of America as white.

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 in the past about how cigarettes have been marketed to women: as ways to lose weight, a form of personal liberation (more examples of this marketing theme here and here) as a way to calm down stressed moms, and doctor-approved methods of clearing up skin problems.

A while back Emily M. sent us a link to an article at the Onion A.V. Club that shows how men have been portrayed in cigarette ads. They provide a nice comparison to female-oriented marketing campaigns.

A recurring theme is that of a men as rugged individualists who go out and explore wild, remote, presumably dangerous places on their own. The Marlboro Man is the most familiar example, but Camel’s “where a man belongs” campaign also stressed this image:

Another major theme we see is cigarettes as facilitators of male bonding:

Other times we see men smoking as they do Really Intense Work:

Also see our post on Tiparillo cigarettes as a way to get hot women and Skoal use as male bonding that will get you out of a speeding ticket.

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

PARTY!

Please join us for the first ever Sociological Images party! We’d love to see all of you–sociologists and non-sociologists alike–in San Francisco on Sunday, August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish House.   We want to meet you and we think it’d be super cool for you to meet each other, too.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Sociological Images was born in July of 2007.  In honor of our birthday, we point you to our very first post ever:  Faith Hill re-touched for the cover of Redbook.

One year later, we published a fascinating example of the white man’s burden.  This time, however, it’s a white woman’s burden in the form of a Pampers commercial.  It’s something; you should check it out.

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

We added a third PostSecret postcard where someone confesses thoughts about race, while explaining that they are not racist.  Ponder them here.

Our post about an Icelandic cartoon that portrayed Barack Obama as a cannibal now includes an image of the comic book graphic novel Barack the Barbarian, thanks to sender-inner Lindsay.

Phil Howard had some updated graphs on concentration of organic brands, so we updated our post on who sells organics.

To our post featuring ads that portray men as animals, we added an advertising campaign by Jim Beam that suggests men are “stags” (has there ever been a word with more meanings?).

In another food-related update, Amanda C. and Dmitriy T.M. both sent us material that we added to our post about sexualizing food.

Natalie sent us links to some images of kids’ t-shirts with sexual slogans, which we added to our existing post on the topic.

At the suggestion of Glenn R., we added ads for Caramba Tequila to our not-so-subliminal sex and ejaculation imagery posts.  We also added an image to the latter post sent in by Jeff G. and a commercial for Creme d’Or ice cream Jay L. brought to our attention. The commercial is a doozy.

We added some very scandalous ads for hearing aids to our “sex sells” post.

Rachel McC. J., from Deeply Problematic, sent us another example of efforts to protect women by telling women to protect themselves instead of targeting badly behaving men.  We added it to our previous post telling women to stop men from sexually harassing them in the subway.

Tricia V. sent us another example of resistance to advertising that objectifies women.  In this one, from Haiti, someone scrawled “Women’s bodies are not merchandise” across a full-sized billboard.

The Huffington Post featured a slide show of billboards in New York called “Sex in the Sky.”  Kiera S. thought it would make a good addition to our “What Warrants a Slide Show” post.  We agreed.

We added a Volkswagen ad to our post on vintage advertising suggesting that women are horrible (horrible!) drivers.  See it here.

We added a vintage ad marketing Zippo lighters to “modern mothers” to our post featuring ads in which babies tell their moms to smoke Marlboros.

Before the “obesity epidemic,” kids were just chubby.  We added two additional material to our post featuring vintage ads selling clothes for “chubby” kids, one of them sent in by Holly M.

Women LOVE to clean!  We added a vintage ad to a previous post about the joy of women’s work.

We recently posted about a business called the Occasional Wife.  A blogger at The Grand Narrative pointed us to several companies along the theme of Hire-A-Hubby.  We added them to our original post on the social construction of “wife.”

We updated a post on gendered marketing of products with images of pink and blue scooters for the mobility impaired and a cordless screwdriver marketed to women by including a manicure set. Turns out it wasn’t very popular.

We often talk about things being gendered or racialized on this blog, but we haven’t talked much about how race is gendered and gender racialized.  In a previous post, I wrote:

According to American cultural stereotypes, black people, both men and women, are more masculine than white people. Black men are seen as, somehow, more masculine than white men: they are, stereotypically, more aggressive, more violent, larger, more sexual, and more athletic. Black women, too, as seen as more masculine than white women: they are louder, bossier, more opinionated and, like men, more sexual and more athletic.

Conversely, Asian people, both men and women, are often stereotyped as more feminine than white people.  Asian men are seen as small and less muscular than white men; Asian women are seen as more passive and deferential than white women.

Interracial marriage rates bear out this asymmetry: black women are less likely to marry white men than vice versa and Asian men are less likely to  marry white women than vice versa (see here and here).

The idea, specifically, that Asian women are more passive and deferential than white women, has been used to explain white men’s fetish for Asian women, Western men’s sex tourism in Asian countries, and Western men’s use of Asian mail-order bride services.   Some of these men, it is argued, want a subordinate partner and they find it difficult to meet a white/American woman who is willing to play that role.  You can actually hear a male sex tourist make this argument in this post.

I introduce all of these ideas in order to frame a screenshot sent in by Megan S.  The screenshot is of the front page of a website (antimisandry.com) devoted to fighting misandry, or the “hatred of males as a sex.”  The website purports to “cur[e] feminist indoctrination.”  You’ll see that it is also advertising a dating site specializing in matching up white men with Chinese women:

So… I’m going to guess that, in this case, “anti-misandry” isn’t so much about encouraging women to stop hating men as it is about telling men they are entitled to a woman who will defer to them.

Either that or… unfortunate random ad placement.

Megan also thought this post on men choosing fictional female characters as lovers was related; you might also check out our post on the documentary Guys and Dolls about men who have relationships with expensive and “functional” (if you know what I mean) life-size dolls.

UPDATE: The comments thread on this post is closed.  I strongly suggest reading them, especially if you think that this post was reaching. Very interesting.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Remember the hymen? The hymen is that flap of skin that “seals” the vagina until a woman has sexual intercourse for the first time. Supposedly one could tell whether a girl/woman was a virgin by whether her hymen was “intact.” (It bears repeating that neither of these things are true: it doesn’t “seal” the vagina and is not a sign of virginity at all.)

Because an intact hymen signaled virginity, and virginity has been considered very important, preserving and protecting the hymen was, at one time, an important task for girls and women. You can imagine how tricky this made the marketing of that brand new product: the tampon. Early marketing made an effort to dispel the idea that sticking just anything up there de-virginized you. It worked. (In fact, some partially credit tampon manufacturers for the de-fetishization of the hymen that’s occurred over the last 60 years.)

We still see tampon marketing addressing the question. Here’s a link to a website where it’s a FAQ and here’s an example of an advertisement from the ’70s ’90s:

Selected text:

I really wanted to use tampons, but I’d heard you had to be, you know, ‘experienced.’  So I asked my friend Lisa.  Her mom is a nurse so I figured she’d know.  Lisa told me she’d been using Petal Soft Plastic Applicator Tampax tampons since her very first period and she’s a virgin.  In fact, you can use them at any age and still be a virgin.

See this post, too, on the marketing of tampon to women in the workforce (wearing pants!) during World War II.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

NEWS!

In addition to friending us on Facebook, you can now follow us on Twitter!

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

April last year:  This fascinating Italian anti-immigrant poster suggests that, if immigration to Italy is allowed, immigrants will persecute the native Italians like U.S. colonizers did American Indians.  It’s a pretty amazing tactic.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (bottom of post may not be safe for work!):

Total Drek revised an xkcd cartoon on the difference between causation and correlation.  So we added it to our original post.

Sex sells ‘n stuff:

Sarah Haskins makes fun of euphemistic references to female genitalia.  We added her video to our post on our efforts to avoid using the real terms.  

Related to discomfort with women’s genitalia, Taylor D. sent in a link to even more vintage ads for Lysol as a douche, which we added to this post.

We added a vintage ad to our sex sells post.  This one tells men that if they don’t buy Firestone tires, they won’t get laid.  Women?  Well I guess they don’t drive.  

Also in sex sells, we updated our post on the sexualization of food, this time with a Max Factor ad and a not-to-be-missed Hardee’s commercial featuring Padma Lakshmi having quite the sensual experience with a bacon burger (scroll all the way to the bottom). 

We also added another image to our post with examples of sex as “scoring.”

Now to sperm: We added three more images affirming the idea that we were all once a mighty sperm (eggs, apparently, just add nutrition, if that) to this post on the weird ways in which sperm are socially constructed.  In one of them, a condom ad suggests that one condom could have prevented the holocaust by dressing a sperm up as Hitler.  Another example dates back to the beginning of the idea in 1694.

On race and ethnicity:

We added material to two posts in our series on how and why people of color are included in ads aimed at white people.  First, we added a set of photographs taken by Joshua B. at Office Max to our post showing how people of color are often portrayed as being more, eh em, colorful.  Second, we added an image to our post on how people of color are literally background or arranged so that the focal point (visually or through action) is the white person or people in the ad.

We added images of sculptures that comically/stereotypically (depending on your point of view) represent European countries to this post about stereotyping nationalities. The installation was supposedly by 27 different artists, but it turns out to be a hoax; all of them were created by a single Czech artist.

Also in ethnic stereotypes, we added a cartoon from Life magazine suggesting that monkeys are insulted by being given Irish names.  We added it to our collection of anti-Irish sentiment from the 1800s.

And visit this post to see our newest example of using the notion of the “savage” to sell in the 1950s.

Miguel sent us an image of a “White” Obama, which we added to our post that asks “What do Black and White look like, anyway?”

Philip D. sent us a set of Crown Royal ads that reportedly target a “general” and a specifically African American audience, respectively, which we added to our post about marketing products to different groups. 

On gender: 

Elizabeth M. sent us a link to fashion designer Nina Ricci’s new line of shoes.  They’re high high HIGH heels!  We added it to some other real hobblers here. 

Women cannot be counted on to hold it together in the face of low calorie sweets… or at least that’s what another commercial tells us. 

Ben O. sent us a link to a company that makes pink protective gear for female construction workers.  We added it to our post featuring pink handcuffs for cops.  

There’s now another image up from the Evan Williams bourbon “The Longer You Wait” ad campaign. 

Keely W. sent in a link to the new Fling candy bar, just for girls.  We added it to our post on gendered candy marketing.

The Daily Show spoofed the obsession with Michelle Obama’s clothes.  Andrea G. sent in the link and we added it to our collection of examples of this obsession.  We also added a picture of the cover of a new book: Michelle Style: Celebrating the First Lady of Fashion.

We added a picture of a sink that looks like a woman’s lower half to our post about urinals shaped like women’s bodies. 

And, finally, does a month go by where we don’t update our BOOBS! post?  Rarely.  This time, though, we’ve got something special: Jezebel offered us a photo essay of a boob shaped milk cartoon, from fridge to trashcan.  Visit our updated post here (scroll to the bottom) and enjoy this teaser:

NEWS:

Last month Lisa posted about some interesting, if subtle, differences in a Spanish- and English-language pamphlet for pregnant women at Kaiser.  Siobhan O’Connor at GOOD put up her own blog post about the pamphlets and called Kaiser to see what was up.  A representative, Socorro Serrano, visited our site and replied in the comments.  Check out her reply, now in the post, here.  Thanks for chiming in, Socorro!

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NEW FEATURE!  FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Sometimes we get nostalgic for our old posts.  So, each month we’re going to resurrect a post from one year ago.  (In July we turn two-years-old and we’ll start resurrected two!)

From March 2008:  The marketers behind the Brazilian yogurt ads in this post counted on their viewers being disgusted by, gasp, fat women!  But some of us thought the women looked great.  What do you think?

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS:

We added another Postsecret postcard to our post on confessions of true feelings about interracial sex.  Also in race and sex:  We updated our post on Resident Evil 5 again, this time adding an image of an African woman from the game attired in a sexualized animal-print outfit.

Nearly a year ago we argued that a promo poster for Gossip Girl represented the “pornification” of everyday life.  The stars are on the new cover of Rolling Stone and, well, we still think it’s pretty porny.  Speaking of: Breck C. sent us another image of things shaped like boobs, which we added to our extensive boobs post.

We published a post about a Dutch bus-stop bench that is a also a scale and publicly displays your weight when you sit on it.  We went back and added images of a design for a toilet seat that does the same thing. 

We added images of a man’s electric back hair shaver and a Nads commercial about a woman whose life was transformed when she was able to wax away her beard to this post about our growing disgust with body hair, even on men.  Also in hygiene: Kim D. sent us in another vintage Lysol douche ad, which we added to a post with several others.

Bri a sent in four ads to add to one of our posts discussing how people of color are included in ads aimed primarily at white people.  See the whole series starting here or check out the newly enriched post that discusses how people of color are used to represent “spice,” “flavor,” and, literally, “color.”

Bri also sent us an awesome Ralph Lauren ad that romanticizes colonialism, we added it to a previous fashion spread that did the same.  Relatedly, to our post about using third world people in fashion ads, we added a set of images advertising Suit Supply, sent in by Geerte S.

Matt W. sent us a map that overlaid concentrations of rural poverty with rates of religious adherents, and we added it to our post about religion and geography.

We added a floral-print hammer to this post about gendering products.  Speaking of gendering products: We added another strip from the Sheldon Comics “Make-up But for Dudes” series and an SNL sketch about make-up for men to this post.

We added an advertisement for Cessna’s fleet of private jets to this post in which private air travel is linked with ideal fatherhood.

Our post on what “organic” means now has a link to the Cornucopia Institute’s photo gallery, which has lots of photos from large containment livestock facilities that sell to Horizon and other companies.

We, of course, had a new ad for our post on sexualizing food, this time a Three Olives vodka ad about your “O Face” sent in by Tiffany L.  We also added more images of how the green “female” M&M is sexualized (sent in my Kristi) to this post.  Also related to food: We added a link to the mock commercial for Powerthirst 2 to our original post about this hilarious send-up of energy drinks and masculinity.

Finally, to our post about various companies trivializing women’s power, we added print ads for Nuvaring (“Let Freedom Ring”) and Spanx’s new “power panties.”   We also added another image of women sexually dominating men to our post on the theme.  It’s a doozy, too.