Search results for pink

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.

NEWS:

Lisa was quoted in an Associated Press article that, much to her chagrin, rather uncritically celebrated the recent rash of untouched photos released by celebrities.  You can read it here and compare it to her unfiltered thoughts about it at her own post.

We added a new example of an assignment drawing on Sociological Images that instructors can use.  This one asks students to think critically about the whole project and is, thus, very interesting.  See #7 of our Sample Assignments.

This is your monthly reminder!  You can follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook where we update with a featured post every day.  We are, by the way, having lots of fun watching reactions to our posts on Facebook.  Thanks to all of you who have friended us and contribute to the conversations and the “like”!

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

Neat, Cute, Ew, and Cool

In a comments thread a Reader, ckilgore, linked to her grandma’s cabinet fridge from the ’50s.  We added it, along with another example of an ad, to our vintage ad for the same.

We added a picture of pair-bonded female albatrosses to our (adorable) post on gay animals.

Tom M. sent in a billboard for Penthouse features a very suggestive… eye.  We added it to our post featuring ads with not-at-all-subtle visual sexual innuendo (NSFW).

I added an image of the Korean peninsula at night, linked in a comments thread by Brendon, to our post comparing the a map of the lights of the world at night and population density.

Race-Related Updates

We added a representation of “users” from WordPress that represented people as coming in different skin colors to our post featuring default avatars.

Jessica S. and Lucia M.M. sent in links to companies selling pretend teepees.  We added it to our post on American Indian-themed toys for kids.

Skada sent in another example in which white people are just people but black people are b-l-a-c-k, this time on Netflix.

Gender-Related Updates

We added lollipops, identical deodorants, and disposable cameras to our post on pointlessly gendered products.  We also added a new “girl talk” version of Jenga to our post on gendered versions of classic board games.  The first two were found by Sunlight Snow and the latter by Kathe H.

We also added a “drama queen” sign for girls to our post on babies’ and kids’ items that reinforce the “girls as spoiled divas” stereotype.  Thanks to Coley for sending it in!

Alex N. sent in a Fruit Loops commercial that genders doctors and nurses (in the direction that you would expect) and we added it to a post on that topic.

We updated our post on scrapbooking sticker sets of words about boys and girls with wall decals for boys and girls. In case you didn’t know, boys like hip-hop derived terms, while girls like any and all abbreviations.

Lizz Q. sent us another example of an anatomical illustration that featured a man facing straight forward and a woman posing rather sexily.  We added it to our burgeoning collection.

We added another great example of hygiene products being marketed to men by arguing that it enhances, instead of detracts from, their manliness.  In this one, sent in by Lucia M.-M., truly manly body wash is contrasted with sissy manly body wash.

Sofia R. sent us another example of Twix commercials that depict men as immature idiots.

We added a third example of shirts being sold in “unisex” and “women’s,” sent in by Mindy J.

Dmitriy T.M., Beth W., Abby D., and Jillian Y. sent in links to a video game called RapeLay.  We added it to a previous post on rape-themed video games (TRIGGER WARNING).

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:

A new intern! We are proud to introduce a new Sociological Images intern, Lauren McGuire.  Lauren is a liberal arts graduate working as an assistant to a disability activist who blogs at The Deal with Disabilty.  She lives with four boys, one bathroom, and a dog in Pasadena, CA.  She is also an enthusiastic amateur in writing, blogging, sewing, photography, and general creative buffoonery.  Look for her first Guest Post soon.

An award!  I am so pleased to have been awarded the Early Career Award for Innovation in Teaching Sociology from the Pacific Sociological Association!  If any of you would like to celebrate with me, I will be at the PSA conference in Oakland, CA, on the evening of Friday, April 9th.  Email me at socimages@thesocietypages.org for details.

A new partnership!  We are so excited to have entered into a partial syndication agreement with Jezebel!  You may see some of our posts re-posted there, and vice versa.

SocImages in the news!  This month Gwen was quoted in Adweek (on children’s toys); Gwen and Lisa were both quoted in ABC News (on the pricing of black and white barbies); and Lisa was quoted in Women’s ENews (on the sex of traffic signals), interviewed on WEOL am 930 with Les Sekely, and her top ten favorite blogs were featured at blogs.com.

Social networking!  Don’t forget: 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! Mar. ’10):

To our post about laws and taxes forbidding yellow margarine, we added another fascinating vintage ad.

Caity sent us a video than an Australian bank created to try to explain why they were increasing interest rates. We added it to our post of a cartoon that explains the credit crisis.

Race

A nice example of the way that people of color are frequently chaperoned by a plurality of white people was sent in by Caitlan V.d.W.  I added it to my post on the topic, one of a series on how people of color are included in advertising aimed primarily at white people.

Previously we posted a popsicle sold in Spain with an Asian caricature on the package. Now we’ve added ice cream that came in a container shaped like a stereotypical Asian character, also sold in Spain.

Anina H. sent us a New York State Department of Health flier encouraging breast feeding that featured women of different races, but had the white woman modeling ideal motherhood.  We added it to our post on materials that include a diverse group of people, but somehow always manage to put the white person up front or on top.

Sarah G. found another example of black dolls being sold for less than white dolls, we added it to our post on the recent Walmart scandal.

We recently posted about the objectification and fetishization of Asian women on the dating website Classy Asian Ladies. Rachel K. sent us a t-shirt that illustrates this obsession with Japanese women, in particular, so we added it.

Martha sent us a commercial for MetroPCS that featured two Indian men with strong accents. We added it to our post on two ads that ran during Super Bowl 42 that featured characters with thick accents (Indian and Chinese).

We updated our post on contemporary blackface in the fashion world with a mini-movie by Karl Lagerfeld that includes White actors made up to appear Asian.

Sex

Christina W. sent us another great contribution to our post: selling the most unlikely things with sex!  It started with organ donation, but this addition involves cheese.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a flyer for a techno party that is a great addition to our ejaculation imagery post. And Kristyn G. found an Australian commercial in which white liquid squirts all over Pamela Anderson and another woman. Thanks, D. and Kristyn!

We updated our post on reframing the abortion debate to associate abortion with genocide by adding a Polish billboard that claims Hitler introduced abortion to Poland. Might be mildly unsafe for work — there are images of bloody aborted fetuses.

Joe told us about the video game Mass Effect, which allows heterosexual or lesbian couplings but not gay male ones. We added a link of a scene where a female character does a sexy dance for a male character to our post about the video game Sexy Beach, which is about what you’d think it is. Probably NSFW.

To our post in which we asked whether a store display seemed to imply violence or consensual bondage we added a photo SOM took of a shoe store window display showing a woman’s bound feet.

Gender

Renée Y. and Corina sent us two more examples of breast cancer research fund raising that privileges saving boobs over saving women.

We added images of chocolate Easter bunnies and pink computer cables to our ever-growing post on pointlessly gendered products.

We added a commercial, sent in by Emma H., in which a man is humiliated because he loves ice dancing to our post of ads telling men that they better eschew femininity or else.

More mocking of the Disney princesses!  Courtesy of Kristyn G.

We added three more examples of beer advertising that compares beer to a “good woman.”  See both here and here.  Thanks to John for one of the examples!

We added another image, this one a photo of Reille Hunter from GQ, to our post featuring infantilized women.  Thanks to Jeff H. for the suggestion!

Katie P. sent us a pair of gendered onesies: one said “I’m Super” and the other, “Super Cute.”  Guess which one was pink.

Halley M. and Ryan both sent in additions to our recent post showing how anatomy is gendered.  One is another educational image and one is the image of humanity attached to the Pioneer spacecraft in case any extraterrestrials ran into it and wanted to know what we’re like. We added them to the original.

We  added a product called Shrinkx Hips, a product to “guide” your hips back to their “pre-pregnancy position,” to our post on the BeBand.

Mindy sent us a video she was shown at a couples retreat that demonstrates how men and women are so different! We added it to our post on medicalizing gendered marriage.

French Elle‘s April 2010 issue has a long feature dedicated to women with larger bodies. We added it to our post on some recent images from Glamour of women’s bodies that don’t fit the size-zero model ideal.

Katrin sent us a video about a marketing campaign for Lynx (the British version of Axe). The campaign, called LynxJet, presents sexy women as sexually-available airline stewardesses, eager to please. We added it to another post on Axe/Lynx products.

We updated our post on the sexualization of female employees in an Avis ad with an ad for Ansett Airlines that shows a female flight attendant in just a towel.

Martha sent us some images from the book Who Killed Amanda Palmer? in which Palmer is posed as though she’s been murdered. We added them to our post on images that show dead-looking women.

Ryan let us know about a video of Filipina activist Sass Rogando Sasot speaking to the United Nations about the need for more recognition of transgender rights. We added the video of her speech, “Reclaiming the Lucidity of Our Hearts,” to our post of a spoken-word performance about being transgendered.

We updated a post on the sexualization/adultification of children with some images from the clothing company Zara that have similar themes.

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.

Prolific sender-inner Dmitriy T.M. sent in some maps found at F.A.D. that illustrate where various agricultural items are produced. This one shows the population density of cows (pink), pigs (yellow), sheep/goats (turquoise), chickens (blue), and turkeys (green); the darker the shade of each color, the higher the density. Note that the data is broken down at the county level:

You can see a larger image here, where it’s easier to read the info at the bottom about the highest population density for each animal, per square mile: Cows = 700, pigs = 2,800, sheep/goats = 85, chickens = 75,000, turkeys = 5,500. I suspect the highest density for cattle is based on a county with a lot of feedlots, which put many more cattle in a small space than you’d see on grazing lands.

Notice the high levels of production of chickens throughout the southeast. This is a relatively new occurrence; poultry producers moved into the region due to lower wages and fewer environmental regulations compared to other areas, making it less likely their huge containment facilities would lead to a lot of opposition.

The low densities of sheep/goats are due to a few things. Most obviously, there isn’t nearly as much of a market for sheep or goat meat in the U.S. as for other meats, so they aren’t produced in large numbers. Beyond that, they’re more likely to be raised by people with a small amount of land, or even in a back yard, because they don’t need a lot of space, so you don’t have to have a lot of grazing land devoted just to them the way you do with cattle (though in the western states there certainly are very large herds).

Random bit of info: in the U.S., wool production is just a by-product of sheep meat production in most cases. I worked on a sheep ranch for a few months; they sheared their sheep just to reduce the weight the sheep had to carry around and the chance of overheating. The amount they got for the fleeces just barely covered the cost of hiring a shearing crew. The real profit was in selling the lambs for meat.

Also: you think lambs are super cute, with the jumping and baa-ing and all, but when you have to bottle-feed 40 of them twice a day, they quickly lose their allure. [Note: since commenters are already getting worked up about this being my way of justifying my brutality toward animals, I’ll just state that I’m a vegetarian, so that line of reasoning isn’t going to get you far. That is entirely irrelevant to how exhausting it got to feed lambs.]

Here we have % of land in each county devoted to corn (gold), wheat (green), soybeans (pink), cotton (blue), hay (yellow), and fruits/nuts/veggies (red):

Larger version here.

Dmitriy also sent in an image from GOOD that shows where the various elements that go into a taco in the U.S. come from, and how far they travel on average. I can’t get it large enough here to read the info on the various ingredients, but there’s a larger version here.

From the article on GOOD:

The various spices in the Adobo seasoning, for instance, had traveled a combined 15,000 miles. The avocados had traveled from Chile, home of the world’s largest avocado grower (a company that was said to produce 300 million fruit per year). The rice was imported from Thailand, despite an abundance of California-grown rice, and was packaged under an array of brand names.

Related posts: feeding a city, Unilever encourages local eating, and the global distribution of Starbucks and McDonald’s, ownership of organic brands.

Just a reminder: being a girl means wearing pink and thematically attiring yourself in cooking and baking implements! Erica Glasier, who snapped and sent in the photo, writes:

The message is clear: little girls, you’re going to grow up cooking, and you’re going to like it. Needless to say the little blue jammies had no such future drudgery being celebrated on their fabric.

The pjs are Joe Fresh brand, sold at Superstore.

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.

Christopher R. noticed that the sibling sites www.youngwomenshealth.org and www.youngmenshealthsite.org had nearly identical advice for being vegetarian or vegan, except for one small detail.  He writes:

Both pages are generally the same (pretty much word for word), except for the last section on convincing parents to let you be vegetarian. The female version includes the suggestion “read vegetarian cookbooks or nutritional information with your parents and offer to help with the shopping and cooking,” as well as an extra article titled “What are some healthy meals that I can prepare?” I guess the difference between male and female vegetarians is their ability to cook and shop.

Screen shot of the male version:

Screen shot of the female version:

Also, pink and blue!  Of course!

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 few weeks ago I snapped this photo of a set of Surprise Newborn Twins Cabbage Patch Kids. The “surprise” is that you don’t know if the dolls are girls or boys; they come with yellow and purple accessories instead of blue or pink and aren’t noticeably marked as male or female:

You find out the sex when you open the birth certificates and see their diapers–blue for a boy, pink for a girl, of course. I looked at a lot of websites selling them, and they all say something along the lines of “You won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl until you see the diaper.” (Also, apparently this is the “Hispanic” version.) I couldn’t find any photos of the babies in their diapers or “surprise outfits.”

I think this is a pretty great example of how we socially construct gender to emphasize differences between men and women. Like most babies, these dolls aren’t identifiably male or female…until we provide signals to differentiate them by buying the appropriately-colored clothing, putting bows in little girls’ hair, decorating their rooms with butterflies or race cars, and on and on and on. People treat kids differently depending on these gender signs, and they expect (and justify) different behaviors based on them.

And we do this to, essentially, make ourselves feel more comfortable; since we believe a person’s sex is so important to know, even little babies need to be clearly identifiable. And as this toy helps illustrate, this is a social process that accentuates (or even creates) differences in a way that makes the similarities between boys and girls, men and women, largely invisible.

See also: a wig to make your infant look more feminine.

Katrin sent along links to visual portrayals of how much money goes, or could go, to various causes.  While sometimes it’s hard to comprehend what a billion, or 300 billion, dollars amounts to, these images give us perspective on just where our priorities lie.  The segments below are clipped from the visuals for the U.K. and the U.S. at Information is Beautiful.

The British example nicely illustrates how little social services like education, police, and welfare cost in the big scheme of things.

It also reveals how easy it would be to wave all of the African countries’ debt to Western countries. Just £128 spread out over the West.  Shoot, that’s the money for just a couple of corporate bailouts.

The U.S. example reveals how costly (just) the Iraq war has been.  All of our spending pales in comparison to that expenditure., with the exception of what we have spent bailing out the U.S. economy.

It also reveals that the U.S.’s regular defense budget is almot enough to feed and educate every child on earth for five years, and/or about the same as the revenues of Walmart and Nintendo combined.

If we diverted the money spent on porn, we could save the Amazon… almost five times over.  For that matter, if we gave our yoga money to the Amazon, that would just about do it.

Bill Gates could have paid for the Beijing Olympics and had money left over.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in an interactive breakdown of the US Budget for 2011.  In the figures below, the sizes of the squares represent the proportion of the budget, but the colors refer to changes from 2010 (dark and light pink = less funding, dark and light green = more).  These figures will give you an idea, but the graphic is interactive and there’s lots more to learn at the site.

See also our posts on how many starving children could be fed by celebrity’s engagement rings and where U.S. tax dollars go.

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.