Search results for pink

Tilly R. sent in the clip below of Bill Maher attempting to illustrate the oppressiveness of the burqa by staging a fake fashion show in which every model comes out in an identical burqa. You only need to watch the first couple models to get the idea (starts at about .20 sec.):

The comedy is tasteless, at best. And it brings out two interesting assumptions: that measures of women’s liberation include (1) the right to show skin and/or your body’s shape and (2) the choice to express your individuality through your clothes.

It is with a focus on the latter that I introduce a website submitted by K.L. The website, Zarina, sells burqas. While most of the burqas we see in Western media are blue or black, this website sells burqas of all stripes.

A blue, embroidered burqa:

A “hot pink” burqa:

A saddle brown burqa:

A Turkish flag burqa:

An Afghan flag burqa:

An American flag burqa:

A camouflage burqa:

I have no idea if this website is legitimate (though it seems to be) and I have no idea whether women in (which) different burqa-requiring/encouraging societies can actually choose to wear these. I really have no idea.

But I do think it prompts us to interrogate our own assumptions about what women’s liberation looks like and if being able to choose your own style really is a good measure of it.

I’d bet that most Western women feel like being able to choose her clothes is a central part of her sense of freedom. Does that translate in this context? That is, if women were required to wear burqas, but could wear any burqa they like, does this mediate how oppressive the burqa seems to you? Conversely, does the seeming freedom that comes with choosing your clothes become less convincing once you think about it in this context?  I know this is tough to think about, but I think it’s an interesting thought experiment.

For related posts asking us to think about the relative freedoms represented by the burqa and the power of the male gaze, see here, here, and here.

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:

Lisa will be in New Orleans in February!  If anyone is interested in coming to a SocImages cocktail hour, email her at socimages@thesocietypages.org.

Also, this is your monthly reminder, you can always follow us on Twitter or friend us on Facebook, where we update with a featured post everyday!

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

In January of 2008 we featured a set of posters made by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy that labeled teens who found themselves parents as “pricks,” “cheap,” “nobodies,” “dirty,” and “rejects.” Nice.

And one year ago, in January 2009, I put up a series of photographs exposing the amazing convenience and luxuriousness of private plane travel.  It’s a classic “how the top 1% lives” kind of post.

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

Food

Dudes.  I added an ad with a recipe for jello with tuna to our post on vintage recipes for savory gelatin.  I am not kidding.

We added a new commercial to our previous post on Orangina; this one includes interspecies S&M.

Edward S. alerted us to a commercial where a pig does the Flashdance.  We added it to our post on gendered and sexualized food (scroll all the way down).

We’ve previously posted on the historical association of men (and masculinity) with meat. Jon S. sent us an example, a Weight Watchers ad that promises men they don’t have to eat “like a rabbit,” accompanied by an image of a hunk of beef. ‘Cause men need steak and potatoes, even when they’re dieting!

Media and Marketing

Gwen and I were like: “We’re so NOT adding any more content to the evolution of Evony ads post unless someone sends in something that truly takes it a step further… and that’s impossible.” Right? Wrong. Chris M., Tinpantithesis, Chris M., and Ryan sent in the next step in the Evony ads. Believe it.

CNN asked us if Jon and Kate Gosselin were getting too much coverage while advertising CNN’s coverage of them. We added another example of media hypocrisy–Dr. Drew of “Celebrity Rehab” telling us we shouldn’t be so interested in celebrities.

What can we appropriate the feminist movement to sell in addition to bras? How about shoes?

We posted about the September 2009 issue of Glamour including a picture of a naked “plus-size” model (that is, a size 12). We updated the post with a similar photo of a group of women with less-than-model-thin bodies that is in the Glamour calendar.

Marc C. sent us a link to a slide show featuring 185 pictures of cheerleaders.  We added it to our post titled “What Warrants a Slide Show?”

Race

We added a photo from the liner notes of a Lady Gaga CD in which she and Kanye West are in a pose reminiscent of King Kong to an older post on the King Kong motif.  Thanks to Ruth D’R. and an anonymous tipster!

Sara L. sent us another example to add to our post about housecleaning services that present house cleaners as non-white and those having their houses cleaned as white.

Sex

Another month, another addition to our ejaculation imagery post.  Can you say “splooge halo”?  I did.  Thanks to Helene V. for the submission.

Someone-who-prefers-to-remain-anonymous sent us another example of a t-shirt that equates sexual penetration with domination in the sports arena, which we added to our original post on the topic.

Julia U. sent in some Calvin Klein ads that centrally feature the naked body of a black man.  We added them to our post on the sexual objectification of men.

We updated one of our posts about the sexualization of little girls with photos of baby bibs that say “flirt” and “single.”

Gender

We found a vintage ad for Plymouth Barracuda marketed specifically to women and we added it to our post on the awesome Dodge La Femme.

Liscadifretta sent in a photo of a clothes hanger meant to look like a woman’s legs and crotch.  We added it to our post featuring furniture shaped like (naked) women.

Joel P. sent us a link to the updated Diamonds or the Doghouse campaign by JC Penney.  Like last year, the message is that you can be a total dick to your wife, so long as you are willing to buy her diamonds, because diamonds make her incredibly stupid.

As always, we had more to add to our post about pointlessly gendered products, this time boys’ and girls’ organic body wash and Nivea chapstick.

And we updated our post on marketing beauty products to men to include On the Job, a line of lotions–or, if you prefer, polymer gloves–for men.

Anna K.-B. sent us another example of health-related activism aimed specifically, and unnecessarily, at women.

Jessica H. sent us another example of a business marketing its services with gender: The Occasional Wife, and The Handy Husband and, Jessica’s find, Boyfriend for Hire.

Remember when we posted about the gendering (and Whitening) of online degree programs? Ryan  sent us another example so we added it.

And we added another added to post on socializing kids with gendered toys.

More Stuff!

Ashleigh V. sent along another Twingo commercial. This one equates modernity with sexual permissiveness.

We added another batch of dolls with disabilities to our post on reactions to dolls with Down’s Syndrome.

We added another DDT product to our vintage post with ads advocating the household use of DDT, a pesticide that later turned out to be wholly toxic.

If you’re designing a cover for a book by a Chinese or Japanese writer, or with a Chinese or Japanese setting, it seems that there are some compulsory elements which must be included. For variety’s sake, there are four elements, but you MUST use at least one of them. Advanced designers, of course, may use two or more.

Element 1: Blossoms (preferably cherry, but anything red or pink will do)

Element 2: Fans (preferably held so as to partly obscure a woman’s face (or genitals), and if you can get blossoms on the fan, you get bonus points)

Element 3: Dragons (for use only on crime novels, or other exciting tales)

Element 4: Female Necks (preferably that of a geisha, but any female neck will do in a pinch)

For more on this trend, see this article from Hyphen Magazine, which features a brief interview with ace designer Henry Sene Yee. It was that article which also drew my attention to two covers featured above, those for On a Bed of Rice and The Street of a Thousand Blossoms.

(To be fair, I ought to note that several of these covers are actually very nice–it’s just that they lose rather a lot of their impact because of the familiarity of the elements used.)

James Morrison (jrsmorrison@yahoo.com.au) is a writer, editor and graphic designer who lives in Adelaide, Australia. He writes about book covers and book design at causticcovercritic.blogspot.com, and used to write about novellas at Book Slut.  He blogs at Caustic Cover Critic. Thanks to Lisabee for the hat tip.

The uproar in the blogosphere pales only in comparison to the uproar in our email inbox about My New Pink Button.

Penny R., Eden H., Alicia T., Shannon H., Nils G., Shiquanda S., Mickey C., and Bob C. have all sent in links to a new product designed to bring back the “fresh” to your lady parts. For 30 bucks you can get 3 days of pretty-in-pink. That’s right, genital dye to pinkify your private parts. In case you weren’t worried about this particular repulsivity, now you know. (It apparently works on men as well as women, and nipples too).

As they say at Jezebel: “Anti-aging mania and marketing: Not just for your face anymore!”

Shiquanda and Mickey brought our attention to this particular Q&A in the FAQ section:

Q. “Help! I’ve noticed I am turning a more brown color down there on my inside lips, is this normal”?

A. Yes, it’s perfectly normal and there are many factors that can contribute to this.  Ethnicity is a big factor, also age, hormone change, surgeries, childbirth, sickness, health, diet and medications can all contribute to a change from “Pink” to “Brown” in a woman’s genital area.

So this is kind of fascinating: browner coloring is “normal,” but you should change it anyway.  The message is that normal is not ideal.  We are normal (or at least white people are), and we still need fixing.

The FAQ makes plain the two ways in which marketing tries to convince us to change our bodies: both by telling us that our bodies are abnormal and by telling us that they are normal.  Normal bodies are icky, we’re told, your body should appear, as much as possible, as if it is not a body at all.  I mean, isn’t that part of what shaving our legs, chests, and genitals (both male and female) are about?

I think the ubiquitousness of breast implants in the media also sends the message that beautiful breasts have the look of breast implants (in terms of shape, size, and the position of the nipple).  I recently saw mannequins in a store window who were built to look as if they had breast implants.  Do you get how crazy that is?  If a mannequin is supposed to represent the ideal body, then the ideal body isn’t one with naturally large breasts, it’s one with fake breasts!  Nuts.  This world is nuts. (Kristi reminds me that this is insensitive to those with mental illness… and she’s right.)   Weird!  This world is weird!

(I looked this up on Snopes, but no word yet as to whether it’s a hoax. I have no idea whether this product is for real or whether it’s a big-enough-seller to get my panties in a bunch over.  Though it appears that you can order it, but it is of questionable efficacy.  Scam-status and efficacy aside, I think it still reveals something interesting about how we are told that our bodies aren’t good enough.)

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.

Is “princess” being redefined?

One of the compliments aimed at the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog, is that the heroine isn’t just a pretty face, but in fact an entrepreneur who wants to open her own restaurant and is uninterested in catching a man.  This observation was made to me, for example, when I was interviewed for a story by CNN reporter Breenana Hare, who suggested that this new princess was making a break with the old princesses in more than one way.

I replied that this “new” kind of princess had been on the scene for a while.  Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, according to imdb, was “a bookworm who dream[t] of life outside her provincial village,” not of a prince charming.  That was 20 years ago.  Both Pocohantas and Mulan were adventurous and brave.  Most princesses, these days, are not perfect embodiments of femininity, they balance their femininity with a bit of masculinity.  It’s ‘cess + sass as a rule.

But, to be fair, these princesses aren’t radical.  They aren’t pushing the envelope of femininity.  They are only reflecting the fact that ideal femininity in the West has changed such that the perfect woman now incorporates some masculine character traits.  “Some” is the operative word here.  Today’s ideal woman is still feminine, but she works, wears pants, and plays sports.  She may even be a sports fan and drink beer.  But she also preserves her femininity, especially those aspects of femininity that mark her as “for” a (just barely and totally benevolently of course) dominant male.  She still doesn’t disagree too vigorously or laugh too loud.  She marries a man who is slightly older, more educated, larger, taller, and makes a bit more money at his job that is just slightly higher prestige.  And, no matter what, she looks, dresses, and moves in pretty, feminine ways.  Barbie and the Three Musketeers is another, non-Disney example of this phenomenon:

Not a man in sight!  But damn do they look good in those boots!

Simon O. also sent in a Barbie website that fits this theme nicely.  It asks “What Should Barbie Be Next?” and let’s us vote on her next profession: pet vet, race car driver, ballerina, baby sitter, “kid doctor,” rock star, pediatric dentist, or wedding stylist. Barbie can be anything she wants, as long as she looks great doing it.  Or maybe it’s that Barbie can be anything she wants because she looks good doing it.

The new rule is: a girl can be anything, as long as she’s hot (and deferent when push comes to shove).  Whether she likes it or not, she always gets the guy in the end because, well, she’s so damn sweet and adorable (and, yes, those words are totally coded with gendered meaning).  This fact, the fact that she always still ends up with the guy in the end, is a really important part of this story… it reminds us that getting the guy is still the happy ending… even the little girls in the bike commercial came away with a “prince.”

So, yeah, we can debate about whether these princesses are a qualitative and substantial break from previous princesses.  I’m not sure they are.  Or, if they are, I’m not sure the difference is all that fantastic, given that the ideal is still incredibly rigid and damn difficult to live up to.  And I’m not even sure I like this new (impossible) ideal any better than the old (impossible) ideal.  What we see today is a couple generations of women who are expected to be both masculine and feminine.  As if staying fit, looking lovely, smelling great, volunteering, and having a clean house, a sexually satiated husband, and behaved, brilliant, well-adjusted children wasn’t enough of a job… women now have to be go-getters at the law firm and ass-kickers on the court.   It’s called The Second Shift and women work more and relax less than men.

For more examples of the ideal balance of femininity and masculinity, see these posts on pinkifying masculine jobs, prints, and hobbies (sports and guns), the “girl” ranchhand, this ad suggesting that a girl’s razor should be “no girly man,” the social construction of female athletes (here and here), and the color blue.

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.

Jillian Y. sent a really interesting example of the gendering of housework. The example comes from a non-profit organization, Cleaning for a Reason, that assists cancer patients with house cleaning.

The organization is for people struggling with any type of cancer (not just breast cancer, as the pink ribbon suggests), but it still only assists female patients.

Jillian didn’t want to trivialize how useful and important such a service is, and I don’t want to either.  There are reasons why women may need this service more frequently than men.  The first reason is, of course, that women do the majority of housework in the U.S. and most Western countries (see also the links below).  So when a woman gets sick and she can’t do her job anymore, this organization steps in and helps.  When a man gets sick, the housework (apparently) keeps getting done with no problem because it wasn’t his job in the first place.

This, of course, assumes that everyone who gets sick is (heterosexual and) married (and able-bodied to begin with).  What about single people?  Who does their housework?  Much of the time their female relatives do some of it… but let’s assume that single people are especially vulnerable because they have no one to help them do the daily upkeep of the house.

I recently saw a study that stunned me.  It looked at the frequency with which married couples separated or divorced after a cancer diagnosis.  Get this:  If you are a man, the chance that your relationship will break up after diagnosis was three percent.  Three.  If you are a woman, the chance is 21.  Twenty-one.  One out of five women diagnosed with cancer (compared to one out of every thirty men) finds herself single.

So, yeah, maybe it makes sense to be especially aware that female cancer patients have a burden that many male cancer patients do not (whether by virtue of the fact that housework is gendered or the fact that female cancer patients are more likely to end up single).

That said, I don’t appreciate that the organization reinforces the idea that housework is women’s work; nor do I like that it excludes men who need help (largely by making single men or men with partners who cannot do housework invisible).

—————————

See also our post on how health-related activism is sometimes for women only.

For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.

Historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.

And, of course, it’s hilariously funny to think that men would actually do housework:  see our posts on “porn” for new moms (also here), the househusbands of Hollywood, and calendar with images of sexy men doing housework.

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:

1.  If you’re following us on Facebook, you might have noticed that we’ve begun updating our status with a “featured post” each day.   We’re on Twitter too, if that’s more your style.

2.  Remember that Method commercial where the soap suds sexually harass a woman in her own shower?  Ann Marie N. sent us note to let us know that it’s been discontinued due to complaints.

3. This was a good media month for us.  I was quoted in a CNN article about The Princess and the Frog; several of our posts on gendered marketing to children were discussed in a Salon article by Kate Harding; a recent post about pink telescopes and microscopes was featured on Pharygula; we were linked from the American Spectator; and Guardian named our Avatar post among The Best of the Web.  Fun!

NOTE FROM A READER:

Sarah is a reader and frequent commenter on the blog who sent us a note complimenting all of you.  We thought we’d let everyone read it.  Sarah wrote:

I just wanted to commend you for the environment of open discourse on your website. I have some opinions that differ from those of many others on this site, and when I’ve brought them up, I’ve been able to openly discourse with other members without any fear of being chased off with fire and pitchforks.

So, thank you for setting up such an open and welcoming environment.

Thanks Sarah!  Our readers are, indeed, awesome.

And we try!  We don’t follow the comments threads as closely as we’d like (we’re both tenure-track profs), but we do the best we can to make sure that people adhere to our discussion policy.  Thanks to all of you who have been patient with our less-than-perfect moderation and sometimes-ineffectual efforts to weed out the trolls.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

In Dec. ’08 we commenting on McDonald’s efforts to market itself as high class, linking the fast food chain to Bourdieu and Sex in the City, of course.

And in Dec. ’07 we posted a hilarious story about a statue in Lexington, KY, of a war hero on a female horse with, um, testicles.  A hero riding a girl horse into battle is simply inconsistent with our cultural preconceptions… so bring on the intersex equine!

Finally, if you haven’t seen enough Christmas material, visit the posts of Christmas past: marketing cigarettes for Christmas (with new material), non-U.S. Christmas cultures, a scary, fiery Christmas cross, Christmas vs. Holiday (politics edition), the Chrismakkuh Yarmaclaus, a clothesline for X-mas (why not?), and a special gift for Santa and for you.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! Dec ’09):

Marketing

We found another example of vintage ads extolling the dietary benefits of sugar.

Larry H. sent us two photos of Amelia Earhart from 1937 in which she is posed in cutesy, flirty ways; we added it to our post of a Lucky Strike ad featuring Earhart.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in another example of a vintage Chrysler ad in which they market the car as youthful (can you imagine!).

Race and Ethnicity

To our vintage Jello ad featuring Asian stereotypes, we added a contemporaneous ad for Rice Krinkles, sent in by Ted K.

It’d be nice to not link back to our post on instances in which college and post-college students dress up like racial minorities, but this isn’t one of those updates.  We added an image of students at the London School of Economics  in brown-face dressed up like Guantanamo Bay prisoners to our post featuring similar acts of individual racist impersonations (scroll way down).

Pete W. sent in a third vintage Bull Durham tobacco ad depicting Black Americans as foolish and bumbling.

Pornification

Yikes!  We added a new ad to our post where sexual body parts are not-so-subliminally included in ads (NSFW).  This one is for “fresh” “shaved” turkey breast slices and they look like, um…

Our evolution of Evony ads post has been among the most popular posts on our site.  Timm F. sent in an ad for another online game, Alteil, making fun of the Evony ads.  We added it to the original post and, while we were at it, we also added another in the series of increasingly sexualized ads, this one sent in by Tim R.

Gender

Harvey tC. sent in a photo that we added to our post featuring pink guns and rifles being marketed to girls/women.  For the hell of it: here is a crazy great set of pro-gun posters.

Both Emily W. and Sabine M. sent us another example of t-shirts being divvied up into “t-shirts” and “women’s t-shirts.”

Elizabeth T. sent in a video of men vamping it up and trying to “do” sexy. We added it to another post asking whether, given the gender binary and our gendered image of “sexy,” such a thing can be anything other than ridiculous.

Monica C. sent in another great example of gendered toy advertising.  In this one a girl plays with a kitchen set alongside a boy playing with a tool set.  Sigh.

In contrast, Lynne S. and Fia K. sent in some more photos of house play toys featuring both girls and boys.

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.

You might have noticed that there are poor, rich, and middle class neighborhoods in just about every town.  Sociologists call this residential segregation.  Residential segregation is a problem, in part, because it can create a situation in which some neighborhoods have more social and other services than others.  Sociologists have found, for example, that richer neighborhoods tend to have more grocery stores, better sidewalks, and more fire protection.

So, when Jessica Sherwood, of Sociologists for Women in Society, sent us a map showing the density of playgrounds in New York City, I immediately thought to correlate it with average income.

Playground map (darker pink = more playgrounds):

Map of median household income (yellow = more income, blue = less):

UPDATE:  Awesomely, Reader Mark Root-Wiley overlaid the two maps and sent it along!  Here it is:

It looks to me that playground density is highest in the poorest neighborhoods.  A very unusual finding!

So, what factors do you think might account for the disproportionate number of playgrounds in low income areas?  Speculate away!

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.