Search results for white privilege

We recently critiqued Facebook’s “neutral” avatar for appearing both white and male.  Both Abby J. and Noah Brier pointed us to the fact that Rob Walker at Murketing has been collecting default avatars.  His collection is really interesting.  First, it demonstrates that the avatars don’t need to be gendered at all.

Flikr:

Hotmail:

Google:

Vimeo:

My space:

Friendfeed:

Yahoo:

Youtube:

Second, it demonstrates that the avatars don’t have to human at all:

Twitter:

Posterous:

Third, his collection also suggests that, when the avatar is human and discernibly gendered, it usually appears to be male.  There’s the Facebook avatar, as well as…

EBay:

Car Domain:

Topix:

Yammer:

The avatar tends to be male, unless the company produces a default male and a default female.

Blip FM:

Goodreads:

This collection reveals that the appearance of a company’s default avatar is by no means inevitable or accidental.  Companies must make choices and they are, indeed, making choices about what kind of person is the default person.

Check out his whole collection.  It is growing.

Jamie R. sent in a link to a video that presents a lot of attention-grabbing statistics (which may or may not be accurate). At first it appears that the avatar could be unisex, but then at about 1:18, we see the “female” avatar:

Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.

At no other place in the video do we see the female avatar except when the “neutral” one is presented as married…indicating, from the context of the video, that it is not unisex or neutral, but male.

MORE! You may have noticed that our revamping of the site involved putting our names up.  Lo and behold, these male avatars popped up next to our names.

So we went into the admin page to see if we had some other option, like maybe something non-human or a female avatar if necessary.  These were our options:

First, blank is really the avatar you see in the first screenshot, it’s neutral which, in reality, is male.  So there is no way to opt out of having an avatar (our tech guy, Jon, is still working on it).

Second, there is no female avatar option.

Third, though there is no female avatar, there is a Monster and a Wavatar option, whatever the hell that is.   So WordPress is allowing you to represent yourself as a Wavatar, but you’re not allowed to be a chick.

Amazing.

NEW (Apr. ’10)! Keri sent a screenshot of her WordPress menu which, she noted, represents the users with two different skin colors.  It’s a nice counterpoint to much of what we see above:

For more on how certain kinds of people get imagined as just people, while others get imagined as certain kinds of people, visit our posts on the Body Worlds exhibit, “flesh” colored products, Pixar films, gender and clothes, and Plan and Playmobile toys.

Toban B. wrote in with an observation about Facebook avatars. The default avatar is “white” and appears to be male:

In contrast to the individual avatar, Facebook’s illustration of global connection uses orange avatars of both sexes:

“Evidently,” Toban writes, “the orange is supposed to be a sort of compromise skin colour.”

So when Facebook wants to represent global humanity, the avatars are orange and of mixed sex; when Facebook is charged with representing an individual, the avatar is white and male.  This is not random or accidental.  Globally, as Facebook, ironically, reminds us, people are not “white.”  Representing people in this way centers men, Western countries, and whiteness (because there are non-white people in Western countries, too) and marginalizes women, non-Western countries, and non-whites (though one might argue that at least ALL of the avatars aren’t white and male).

UPDATE: I write this update in August of 2010.  Since then it appears that Facebook has added a generic female avatar.  This one was sent in by Amber F. (it’s her mom, Ginger’s, profile):

See our other posts on how whiteness and maleness are the characteristics we attribute to “person,” unless there are reasons to do otherwise, here, here, and here.

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.

Naama Nagar sent in these images from a “booklet that was intended to assist male bosses in supervising their new female employees at RCA plants,” according to the National Archives, Southeast Region (found via Michael Zilberman’s history blog; sorry it’s in Hebrew):

Text:

When you supervise a woman…Make clear her part in the process or product on which she works. * Allow for her lack of familiarity with machine processes. * See that her working set-up is comfortable, safe and convenient. * Start her right by kindly and careful supervision. * Avoid horseplay or “kidding”; she may resent it. * Suggest rather than reprimand. * When she does a good job, tell her so. * Listen to and aid her in her work problems.

Text:

Finally–call on a trained woman counselor in your personnel department…to find out what women workers think and want. * To discover personal causes of poor work, absenteeism, turnover.  * To assist women workers in solving personal difficulties. * To interpret women’s attitudes and actions. * To assist in adjusting women to their jobs.

Text:

When you put a woman to work…Have a job breakdown for her job. * Consider her education, work experience and temperament in assigning her to that job. * Have the necessary equipment, tools and supplies ready for her. * Try out her capacity for and familiarity with the work. * Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation arrangements. * Place her in a group of workers with similar backgrounds and interests. * Inform her fully on health and safety rules, company policies, company objectives. * Be sure she knows the location of rest-rooms, lunch facilities, dispensaries. * Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.

These are interesting from a gender perspective, of course, but they’re also sort of fascinating for what they tell us about changing assumptions about what the workplace is (or should be) like. While there were many problems with the World War II (and post-war) workplace, there was also a certain assumption that companies would take care of their employees to some degree in return for employees’ loyalty and hard work. This comes through in instructions such as “Assign her to a shift in accordance with health, home obligations and transportation work” and “Don’t change her shift too often and never without notice.” The idea is that workplaces, including factories, should think about their employees’ lives and how their work schedules fit in with their other obligations, as well as provide things like dispensaries. Now, I’m sure many companies didn’t actually meet these ideals, but this booklet sent out to managers at least acknowledges that they exist. Today, most workplaces don’t even pretend to aspire to such ideals. While some privileged white-collar workers may have options like flexible hours or working from home, many workers find that their hours and schedules change from week to week, making it difficult to arrange child care or work around other obligations. McDonald’s is well known for making workers sign out during slow periods during their shift to keep payroll down (workers are expected to be available, however, should business pick back up) and Wal-Mart has been sued for failing to pay overtime or for asking workers to work off the clock, again to reduce payroll costs.

So these might be useful for a discussion of work and what we expect from the worker-employer relationship. Is it simply a contractual financial exchange? Do workers and employers owe each other anything besides an hour of work and an hour of pay at the agreed-upon price? How have employers pushed concerns about schedule disruptions and payroll reductions off on workers, forcing them to accommodate the company’s needs?

Thanks, Naama!

The other day I noticed this sticker on a van:

I took a picture of it, just to remind me to look it up, but I didn’t know if it was meant as a joke (a satirical version of gay pride stickers) or what. But it turns out there’s an organization called Straight Pride. The website says they are not homophobic and do not hate gays. This t-shirt leads me to suspect that though they may not “hate” them, they’re not too keen on them, either:

This t-shirt implies that heterosexuality is patriotic:

People are encouraged to send in photos of themselves wearing Straight Pride products. So far the gallery only has a few photos, all of men. The photos are very small, so it’s hard to see a lot of detail, but this one seems to link heterosexuality to a certain type of masculinity; they appear to be holding paintball guns:

I thought they might be useful for a discussion of homophobia and attitudes toward homosexuality, particularly the element of “we don’t hate gays, we just support being straight.” There’s a notion of false equivalency here: that “straight pride” is just the same as “gay pride” (similar to what some individuals in “White power” organizations say–they aren’t anti-Black, they’re just proud of being White!). You might discuss this idea of equivalency: given the privileges and benefits that are made available only to straight couples (including, in most states, the right to marry, and as of Tuesday in Arkansas, the right to foster or adopt children), is “straight pride” really the same as “gay pride”? Is it possible to advocate heterosexuality without being homophobic? What is the motivation for advocating it, if it’s not a sense of unease with homosexuality? The gay pride movement aimed to reduce the stigmatization of gays and lesbians, as well as increase access to the rights and benefits straight couples have. What, exactly, is the goal of a straight pride movement, if not to keep gays and lesbians from getting those rights?

In this election, no one wants to be “elitist.” You know, the kind of person who went to an Ivy League, speaks perfect English, and avoids processed foods like high-fructose corn syrup.

Ben O. sent us these two ads, made by the Corn Refiners association, in which two historically marginalized groups–women and blacks–get it over on historically privileged groups–men and whites respectively–by exposing their obsessive-health-food-mania. Ben writes:

…the implication is that critics of [high-fructose corn syrup] HFCS are privileged (white and/or male) people who are condescending to inform black and/or female people that HFCS is bad, although they’re not only paternalistic but ignorant. And in both ads, standing up for the supposed virtues of high-fructose corn syrup appears to be an empowering action.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxH[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-ByUx552s[/youtube]

Nice observation, Ben!

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.

How do we feel about this campaign, by Keep A Child Alive, to encourage people to donate money to Africa on the basis that we are all African? (Apparently we only care about ourselves, so if we suggest that Africa is ourselves, then we’ll donate?)

Do Americans, many of whom are white people with privilege based in race, class, and nation, get to claim Africa as theirs? Do white people now get to have blackness too?  Is this insulting? Some people think so. Here is a larger version of the poster with Gwyneth Paltrow (scroll down for a response):

I borrowed this image from Blackademic.

NEW!  Julie C. noticed that the Canadian Centre for Diversity put out a similar campaign.  There’s something very interesting about it, but I’m having a hard time putting it into words.  Click here to watch the short commercial.  What do y’all think of it?

I LOVE this image. It’s a fashion spread.

Question:
Who’s taking care of those little tow-headed boys behind the white picket fence when both mommy and daddy go to work?

I use this picture to talk about the way in which middle- and upper-class women are “getting equal” with men by transferring their caretaking responsibilities to less privileged women… who are, as in this ad, invisible.