Recently, reader Nicole D. was shopping at Home Depot and noticed a sign near the front that described ways employees are “empowered.” When we think of empowered employees, we might think of issues such as fair pay, decent benefits, access to full-time work, a way for employees to have input in the creation of workplace policies, or other factors that affect the work environment. But what struck Nicole was how being “empowered” was defined to align with corporate goals.

What are Home Depot employees empowered to do? To provide good customer service, basically — that is, to be “friendly and helpful to every customer,” to actually show customers what they’re looking for and “not point” to it, and to make sure Home Depot’s price-matching program is implemented:

In Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels (2007), Rachel Sherman discusses how luxury hotels ensure the level of service their customers expect. Sherman writes, “Managers…face a difficult task. They must convince their employees…to go out of their way for guests, satisfying and surprising guests in largely intangible ways” (p. 63).  Among other strategies, they encourage employees to break rules when necessary to provide the level of customer service their guests expected. This autonomy to circumvent certain rules in order to meet the larger goals of satisfying customers was seen by guests and employees as a mark of luxury service. Luxury service providers, such as the Ritz-Carlton, were in the forefront of the move to “empower” employees, an idea that has spread well beyond the luxury sector.

Sherman found that employees did value even seemingly minor forms of autonomy on the job. It made them feel like they had some power in the workplace. I know when I worked in food service, small things like getting to organize break schedules ourselves or decide what to offer as a special were highly appreciated. But Sherman shows that this language of autonomy can obscure the lack of specific changes that would have materially improved workers’ lives. For instance, while the luxury hotels she studied complained constantly about the difficulty of finding good staff, and framed their employees as intelligent professionals making autonomous decisions in order to serve guests’ needs, the jobs didn’t pay particularly well.

As Nicole pointed out, this a very limited form of empowerment. Employees might be given some autonomy, but it is to be used only in the service of improving outcomes for the corporation. In the case of Home Depot, some aspects of empowerment simply reframe externally-imposed requirements (such as being polite and helpful to customers) as forms of autonomy. The corporate discourse of empowerment presents it as synonymous with corporate goals. The wider array of factors that might empower workers are absent from the conversation, which frames empowerment entirely from the perspective of the company’s interest in providing better customer service without necessarily providing better pay, benefits, or other concrete improvements to workers’ lives.

A while back I was summoned for jury duty and found myself being considered for a case against a young Latina with a court translator.  She was accused of selling counterfeit Gucci and Chanel purses on the street in L.A.  After introducing the case, the judge asked: “Is any reason why you could not objectively apply the law?” My hand shot up.

I said:

I have to admit, I’m kind of disgusted that state resources are being used to protect the corporate interests of Chanel and Gucci.

Then I gave a spiel about corruption in the criminal justice system and finished up with:

I think that society should be protecting its weakest members, not penalizing them for trivial infractions. There is no way in good conscience I could give that girl a criminal record, I don’t care if she’s guilty. Some things are more important than the rules.

I was summarily dismissed.

Criminal prosecutions are one way to decrease counterfeiting and, yes, protect corporate interests and Shaynah H. sent in another: shame.  This National Crime Prevention Council/Bureau of Justice Assistance ad, spotted in a mall in Portland, tells you that if you buy knock-offs, you are “a phony.”

Yikes.  I would have preferred “savvy” or “cost-conscious.”  But, no, the message is clear.  You are a fake person, a liar, a hypocrite.  You are insincere and pretentious.  You are an impostor.  (All language borrowed from the word’s definition.)  And these are not something that anyone wants to be.

But, honestly, why does anyone care?

I suspect that counterfeits don’t really cut into Chanel’s profits directly.  The people who buy bags that costs thousands of dollars are not going to try to save some pennies by buying a knock-off.  Or, to put it the inverse way, the people who are buying the counterfeits wouldn’t suddenly be buying the originals if their supply ran out.

Instead, policing the counterfeiters is a response to a much more intangible concern, something Pierre Bourdieu called “cultural capital.”  You see, a main reason why people spend that kind of money on handbags is to be seen as the kind of person who does.  The handbags are a signal to others that they are “that kind” of person, the kind that can afford a real Gucci.  The products, then, are ways that people put boundaries between themselves and lesser others.

But, when lesser others can buy knock-offs on the street in L.A. and just parade around as if they can buy Gucci too!  Well, then the whole point of buying Gucci is lost!  If the phony masses can do it, it no longer serves to distinguish the elites from the rest of us.

In this sense, Chanel and Gucci are very interested in reducing counterfeiting; the rich people who buy their products will only do so if buying them proves that they’re special.

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 term sexual dimorphism refers to differences between males and females of the same species.  Some animals are highly sexually dimorphic. Male elephant seals outweigh females by more than 2,500 pounds; peacocks put on a color show that peahens couldn’t mimic in their wildest dreams; and a male anglerfish’s whole life involves finding a female, latching on, and dissolving until there’s nothing left but his testicles (yes, really).

On the spectrum of very high to very low dimorphism, humans are on the low end.  We’re just not that kind of species.  Remove the gendered clothing styles, make up, and hair differences and we’d look more alike than we think we do.

Because we’re invested in men and women being different, however, we tend to be pleased by exaggerated portrayals of human sexual dimorphism (for example, in Tangled). Game designer-in-training Andrea Rubenstein has shown us that we extend this ideal to non-human fantasy as well.  She points to a striking dimorphism (mimicking Western ideals) in World of Warcraft creatures:

Annalee Newitz at Wired writes:

[Rubenstein] points out that these female bodies embody the “feminine ideal” of the supermodel, which seems a rather out-of-place aesthetic in a world of monsters. Supermodelly Taurens wouldn’t be so odd if gamers had the choice to make their girl creatures big and muscley, but they don’t. Even if you wanted to have a female troll with tusks, you couldn’t. Which seems especially bizarre given that this game is supposed to be all about fantasy, and turning yourself into whatever you want to be.

It appears that the supermodel-like females weren’t part of the original design of the game.  Instead, the Alpha version included a lot less dimorphism, among the Taurens and the Trolls for example:

Newitz says that the female figures were changed in response to player feedback:

Apparently there were many complaints about the women of both races being “ugly” and so the developers changed them into their current incarnations.

The dimorphism in WoW is a great example of how gender difference is, in part, an ideology.  It’s a desire that we impose onto the world, not reality in itself.  We make even our fantasy selves conform to it.  Interestingly, when people stray from affirming the ideology, they can face pressure to align themselves with its defenders.  It appears that this is exactly what happened in WoW.

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.

Wired describes the new documentary, The Mechanical Bride, as a “moving, weirdly human exploration of artificial companionship.”  Directed by Allison de Fren, explores the range of mechanical brides, from robots to Real Dolls (NSFW), and the “technosexuals who love them.” I can’t wait to see it.

Trailer:

Bonus clip:

The Mechanical Bride will be screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal (July 19-August 7).

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.

This is the fourth part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. See also, parts One, Two, and Three. Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s Blog.

This post details some daily rituals that help interrupt damaging beauty culture scripts.

1) Start enjoying your body as a physical instrument.

Girls are raised to view their bodies as an thing-to-be-looked-at that they have to constantly work on and perfect for the adoration of others, while boys are raised to think of their bodies as tools to use to master their surroundings. We need to flip the script and enjoy our bodies as the physical marvels they are. We should be thinking of our bodies, as bodies! As a vehicle that moves us through the world; as a site of physical power; as the physical extension of our being in the world. We should be climbing things, leaping over things, pushing and pulling things, shaking things, dancing frantically, even if people are looking. Daily rituals of spontaneous physical activity and thanks for movement are the surest way to bring about a personal paradigm shift from viewing our bodies as objects to viewing our bodies as tools to enact our subjectivity.

Fun Related Activity: Parkour,”the physical discipline of training to overcome any obstacle within one’s path by adapting one’s movements to the environment,” is an activity that one can do anytime, anywhere. I especially enjoy jumping off bike racks between classes while I’m dressed in a suit.

2) Do at least one “embarrassing” action a day.

Another healthy daily ritual that reinforces the idea that we don’t exist to be pleasing to others is to purposefully do at least one action that violates “ladylike” social norms. Discuss your period in public. Eat sloppily in public, then lounge on your chair and pat your protruding belly. Swing your arms a little too much when you walk. Open doors for everyone. Offer to help men carry things. Skip a lot. Galloping also works. Get comfortable with making others uncomfortable.

3) Focus on personal development that isn’t related to beauty culture.

According to research, women spend over 45 minutes to an hour on body maintenance every day. That’s about 15 more minutes than men each day and about 275 hours a year.

But, since you’ve read Part 3 of this series and given up habitual body monitoring, body hatred, and meaningless beauty rituals, you’ll have more time to develop yourself in meaningful ways. This means more time for education, reading, working out to build muscle and agility, dancing, etc. You’ll become a much more interesting person on the inside if you spend less time worrying about the outside.  The study featured above showed that time spent grooming was inversely related to income for women.

4) Actively forgive yourself.

A lifetime of body hatred and self-objectification is difficult to let go of, and if you find yourself falling into old habits of playing self-hating tapes, seeking male attention, or beating yourself up for not being pleasing, forgive yourself. It’s impossible to fully transcend the beauty culture game since it’s so pervasive. It’s a constant struggle. When we fall into old traps, it’s important to recognize that, but quickly move on through self forgiveness. We need all the cognitive space we can get for the next beauty culture assault on our mental health.

Kevin L. let me know about Independent Woman, a PBS documentary in which a number of TV actresses discuss how their roles reflect the pressures, expectations, and opportunities women face, from the happy housewives of the 1950s to a variety of current shows. I don’t always agree with their interpretations, but if you love pop culture, as I do, it’s worth a watch:

Watch The Independent Woman on PBS. See more from America in Primetime.

I’m reposting this piece from 2008 in solidarity with Lisa Wade (no relation), whose (non-white) child was described by his teacher as  “the evolutionary link between orangutans and humans.”  It’s an amateur history of the association of Black people with primates. Please feel free to clarify or correct my broad description of many centuries of thought.

The predominant colonial theory of race was the great chain of being, the idea that human races could be lined up from most superior to most inferior.  That is, God, white people, and then an arrangement of non-white people, with blacks at the bottom.

Consider this drawing that appeared in Charles White’s An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables (1799). On the bottom of the image (but the top of the chain) are types of Europeans, Romans, and Greeks.  On the top (but the bottom of the chain) are “Asiatics,” “American Savages,” and “Negros.”  White wrote: “In whatever respect the African differs from the European, the particularity brings him nearer to the ape.”

Nearly 70 years later, in 1868, Ernst Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte was published.  in the book, this image appeared (his perfect person, by the way, was German, not Greek):

In this image, we see a depiction of the great chain of being with Michelangelo’s sculpture of David Apollo Belvedere at the top (the most perfect human), a black person below, and an ape below him.

Notice that there seems to be some confusion over where the chain ends.  Indeed, there was a lot of discussion as to where to draw the line.  Are apes human?  Are blacks?  Carolus Linneaus, that famous guy who developed the classification system for living things, wasn’t sure.  In his book Systema Naturae (1758), he published this picture, puzzling over whether the things that separating apes from humans were significant.

In this picture (also appearing in White 1799) are depictions of apes in human-like positions (walking, using a cane).  Notice also the way in which the central figure is feminized (long hair, passive demeanor, feminized body) so as to make her seem more human.

Here we have a chimpanzee depicted drinking a cup of tea.  This is Madame Chimpanzee.  She was a travelling attraction showing how human chimps could be.

In any case, while they argued about where to draw the line, intellectuals of the day believed that apes and blacks were very similar.  In this picture, from a book by Robert Knox called The Races of Men (1851), the slant of the brow is used to draw connections between the “Negro” and the “Oran Outan” and differences between those two and the “European.”

The practice of depicting the races hierarchically occurred as late as the early 1900s as we showed in a previous post.

NEW! Nov ’09) The image below appeared in the The Evolution of Man (1874 edition) as part of an argument that blacks are evolutionarily close to apes (source):
During this same period, African people were kept in zoos alongside animals.  These pictures below are of Ota Benga, a Congolese Pygmy who spent some time as an attraction in a zoo in the early 1900s (but whose “captivity” was admittedly controversial at the time).  (There’s a book about him that I haven’t read.  So I can’t endorse it, but I will offer a link.)  Ota Benga saw most of his tribe, including his wife and child, murdered before being brought to the Bronx Zoo.  (It was customary for the people of his tribe to sharpen their teeth.)

The theorization of the great chain of being was not just for “science” or “fun.”  It was a central tool in justifying efforts to colonize, enslave, and even exterminate people.  If it could be established that certain kinds of people were indeed less than, even less than human, then it was acceptable to treat them as such.

This is a “generalizable tactic of oppression,” by the way.  During the period of intense anti-Irish sentiment in the U.S. and Britain, the Irish were routinely compared to apes as well.

So, there you have it.  Connections have been drawn between black people and primates for hundreds of years.  Whatever else you want to think about modern instances of this association — the one Wade and her child are suffering now, but also the Obama sock monkey, the Black Lil’ Monkey doll, and a political cartoon targeting Obama — objections are not just paranoia.

(I’m sorry not to provide a full set of links.  I’ve collected them over the years for my Race and Ethnicity class.  But a lot of the images and information came from 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.

Referring to the controversy over Pluto’s demotion, in this quick video C.G.P. Grey does a fun job of explaining why the icy rock is no longer a planet.  He closes with a discussion of why properly categorizing objects in space with words like “planets” may always elude us.  It’s a great example of social construction.

Via Blame it on the Voices.  For lots more examples, see our Pinterest pages on the social construction of everything and the social construction of race.

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.