The Pew Research Center has released the results of a poll of 2,508 adults about social class and life experiences.

An important caveat to start with: the poll asked people to categorize themselves as upper (2% of respondents), upper-middle (15%), middle (49%), lower-middle (25%), or lower class (7%). We know that there’s a tendency among people in the U.S. to identify as middle class, even when their actual income falls far below or above what could reasonably be considered middle class, and the survey didn’t ask about incomes or assets to compare to individuals’ self-identification. There’s likely to be some overlap between the categories if we actually looked at the income/wealth of participants. The graphs below combine those who defined themselves as upper or upper-middle class together into the “upper class” category, while those who said lower-middle are assigned to the “lower class” group.

Not surprisingly, there were large differences by social class in a number of quality-of-life areas. The higher one’s class, the more likely they were to say they were better off than they were 10 years ago and were happy with life and rarely experience stress (though apparently we’re generally pretty stressed overall):

The lower class is much more likely than the other groups to say they are in worse shape than they were before the recession, indicating that they continue to suffer disproportionately from the effects of the economic meltdown and the slow recovery:

Those defined as lower class were much less satisfied with family life, their level of education, and their housing situation:

They were also much more likely to report specific difficulties in the past year, including trouble paying rent/mortgage and other bills, losing a job, and problems paying for medical care:

The results show a consistent, unsurprising pattern: the rich are weathering the slow recovery relatively well, while the poor suffer disproportionately. Check out the full report for information on participants’ perceptions of the wealthy, the fairness of the tax burden across classes, and which political party best represents each group.

[Note: The last item on this page might be NSFW in some workplaces; it’s behind a jump, but if you came to the post directly, be careful about scrolling down past the raincoats.]

Seven readers — Aneesa D., mouskatel, Brandi B., Lisa B., Jared B., Tom Megginson (of Work that Matters), and sociologist Michael Kimmel — all let us know about the attention Bic’s “for Her” pens have been getting, so I thought it was a good day for another round-up of the many items we have decided must be differentiated into versions for men and women. We’ve featured pens like this before; Bic’s are designed just for us ladies and our special pen needs, which apparently include the colors pink and purple and “easy glide” and “smoothness”:

The pens are for sale on Amazon in the UK, and they’ve inspired a lot of push-back over the gendering, with people writing reviews mocking the product and its packaging. Buzzfeed featured a number of the reviews, which highlight the way that internet marketing certainly helps companies, but also opens up more avenues for the public to complain about or ridicule products in a very direct, immediate way that can quickly attract others to do the same — a much faster form of complaint than the days when you had to write a letter to a company’s headquarters:

But don’t worry, guys! There are products just for you, too! J.V. is happy to report that there’s now a hair dryer for men, called the Man Groomer. After all these years of wishing you had some way to quickly dry your hair the way women can, a solution is at hand:

And Sean discovered that Planters is helpfully now selling cans of mixed nuts that are specifically chosen to support men’s health. Obviously women may eat almonds, peanuts, and pistachios separately, but when combined, these form a magical Man Food that addresses men’s unique needs for protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber:

UPDATE: Reader Kat says,

The Men’s Health on the can of nuts is because they are a product the editors of the magazine Men’s Health felt were a healthy option…The can of nuts aren’t gender specific they are just boasting their “award” of being well liked by the editors of this particular magazine. No different than when any other product has the label “recognized by *fill in the blank* magazine.”

In other gendered products news, Jessie L. noticed these face masks for sale in Taiwan. They are different sizes, but instead of simply presenting them as Medium and Large, for whoever might need those sizes, those size differences are clearly connected to expectations about gender. They’re differentiated by color, by the person shown wearing each one, and the pink package even has a heart-shaped hole that lets you feel the mask.

Similarly, Joonas L. saw his-and-hers versions of disposable raincoats for sale in Helsinki, Finland, and couldn’t see anything different about them except the color and the use of language (miesten = men’s, naisten=women’s) to explicitly gender them:

Finally, Megan C. pointed out an example of gendered personal lubricant. The exact same product it “Tush Eze” when it’s pink and features a woman, but “Anal Eze” in the blue bottle featuring a man. I’m putting it after the jump, just in case it’s not safe for some workplaces:

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Last year I posted about a map several geographers put together showing the distribution of last names across the U.S. Historical immigration and internal settlement patterns are reflected in the concentrations of names across the country.

Now one of the geographers involved in that project, James Cheshire, has done the same for London. Using 2001 electoral rolls, Cheshire plotted the 15 most common surnames in 983 separate London districts. Here’s a section of the map of the most common name:

The size of the font is scaled to represent the number of people with each name. They’re color-coded by place or origin (though since many immigrants have Anglicized names, origin of a name may not reflect a person’s ancestry).

As Cheshire points out, a few names fill the top slot throughout most of London. As you go a bit further down the list, London’s diversity becomes more apparent. Here’s a small slice of the map of the 10th most common surnames:

Those of you with more knowledge of London, what noteworthy patterns do you see?

Hanna Rosin, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of The End of Men, has written a piece about hook up culture on and off college campuses for the September issue of her magazine.  Given that I’ve done some research on hook up culture, W.W. Norton’s Karl Bakeman asked me to weigh in.  So, here are my two cents: Rosin isn’t wrong to argue that the culture offers women sexual opportunities and independence, but she mischaracterizes the objections to hook up culture and draws too rosy a conclusion.

Those who wring their hands and “lament” hook up culture, Rosin contends, do so because they think women are giving it up too easily, a practice that will inevitably leave them heartbroken.`She writes:

[Critics of hook up culture pine] for an earlier time, when fathers protected “innocent” girls from “punks” and predators, and when girls understood it was their role to also protect themselves.

If this is the problem, the answer is less sex and more (sexless?) relationships.  But, Rosin rightly argues, this wrongly stereotypes women as fragile flowers whose self-esteem lies between their legs.  It also romanticizes relationships.  Drawing on the fantastic research of sociologists Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth Armstrong, she explains that young women often find serious relationships with men to be distracting; staying single (and hooking up for fun) is one way to protect their own educational and career paths.

All this is true and so, Rosin concludes, hook up culture is “an engine of female progress — one being harnessed and driven by women themselves.”

Well, not exactly.  Yes, women get to choose to have sex with men casually and many do.  And some women truly enjoy hook up culture, while others who like it less still learn a lot about themselves and feel grateful for the experiences.  I make this argument with my colleague, Caroline Heldman, in Hooking Up and Opting Out: Negotiating Sex in the First Year of College.

But what young women don’t control is the context in which they have sex.  The problem with hook up culture is not casual sex, nor is it the fact that some women are choosing it, it’s the sexism that encourages men to treat women like pawns and requires women to be just as cunning and manipulative if they want to be in the game; it’s the relentless pressure to be hot that makes some women feel like shit all the time and the rest feel like shit some of the time; it’s the heterosexism that marginalizes and excludes true experimentation with same-sex desire; and it’s the intolerance towards people who would rather be in relationships or practice abstinence (considered boring, pathetic, or weird by many advocates of hook up culture including, perhaps, Rosin).

Fundamentally, what’s wrong with hook up culture is the antagonistic, competitive, malevolent attitude towards one’s sexual partners.  College students largely aren’t experimenting with sexuality nicely.  Hook ups aren’t, on the whole, mutually satisfying, strongly consensual, experimental affairs during which both partners express concern for the others’ pleasure.   They’re repetitive, awkward, and confusing sexual encounters in which men have orgasms more than twice as often as women:

The problem with hook up culture, then, is not that people are friends with benefits.  It’s that they’re not. As one of my students concluded about one of her hook up partners:  “You could have labeled it friends with benefits… without the friendship maybe?”

Hook up culture is an “engine of female progress” only if we take-for-granted that our destination is a caricature of male sexuality, one in which sex is a game with a winner and a loser.   But do we really want sex to be competitive?   Is “keep[ing] pace with the boys,” as Rosin puts it, really what liberation looks like?  I think we can do better.

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.

Somehow the accidental mis-translation of the Princess/Barbie character is just right

Buzzfeed and CookdandBombd, via Work that Matters.

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 have a fun post about the various ways in which Prince Charles was posed with Princess Diana in order to obscure the fact that she was about his height.  Building on this, Geoffrey Arnold at The Social Complex has collected some examples of men’s height being manipulated in order to preserve the social illusion that men are taller (or at least not shorter) than women.

See also Arnold’s guest posts introducing the concept of heightism as a gendered prejudice and discussing heightism (and other icky stuff) at Hooters.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The September issue of Oprah’s magazine, sent in by YetAnotherGirl, features the woman herself on the cover wearing her hair in a “natural” (that is, real and non-straightened).  The O website announces that this is the first time in its 12-year history that Oprah has appeared on the cover without “blow-drying or straightening” her hair.

Black women’s hair is a touchy issue wrapped up deeply in racial power struggles.  The appearance of White people — in this case, the hair White people are more likely to have (that is, straight or slightly wavy) — is often considered the most beautiful or normal.  Black women who have tightly curled hair are faced with deciding to push back against white supremacy and wear their hair more-0r-less naturally (and face being seen as a “political” or “non-assimilating” Black person) or straighten their hair (and risk being accused of capitulating to racism).  Whatever they do, it’s sends a message.

What I think is notable here is that Oprah, of all people in the world, has never until now appeared on the cover of her own magazine with “natural” hair.   Lest we’ve forgotten who Oprah is, here’s a reminder (from wikipedia):

Winfrey was called “arguably the world’s most powerful woman” by CNN and Time.com, “arguably the most influential woman in the world” by the American Spectator, “one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century” and “one of the most influential people” from 2004 to 2011 by TIME. Winfrey is the only person in the world to have appeared in the latter list on all eight occasions.

What I mean to say is, when even Oprah largely avoids being seen as she really is, we know we are seeing a powerful cultural force.  In this case, a racist and sexist one demanding that women of all races conform to an unreasonable White standard of beauty.  I’m glad that Oprah decided to appear this way for the cover, but I’m saddened by why it took this long.

Via Jezebel.

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.

Trulia Trends has posted interactive graphs that let you look at crime by time of day in various cities in the U.S. Using data from SpotCrime (which largely relies on police reports to track crime), they plotted the commission of different types of crime. If you scroll over a city you can get details of the types of crime occurring at a specific time of day:

You can also choose types of crime, then get information on what percent of all crimes in each city fall into that category as well as its distribution throughout the day:

The graphs are useful for visually showing that, though violent crimes (shootings, assaults, robberies) understandably get more attention, the vast majority of crime is property crime.

I haven’t had time to go through and look for clear patterns or differences between cities or types of crime. Notice anything interesting?

Via Information Is Beautiful.