Search results for pink

Prompted by Gwen’s recent post on adoption announcement cards, Carmen from the excellent blog Racialicious sent us this link to a post about onesies for transnationally adopted infants by iBastard.  As iBastard says

…when people go out of their way to say something, there’s usually more to it than the literal message. There’s a metamessage (the message behind the message itself) or subtext of some kind.

These first two onesies (found at Racialicious and here respectively) are from children adopted from Guatemala:

And this one, also found at Racialicious, is for babies adopted from China:

The first and last one associate babies with goods (“special delivery” and “imported”) that can be bought.  Those with superior resources (i.e., Americans?) can buy these goods. 

The middle one de-humanizes Guatamalans.  As Resistance notes: What is a Guatling?  “Is it like an earthling? A foundling? An underling? A gosling? A yearling?” 

All advertise for others that these children are adopted transnationally.  And why might an adoptive parent want to advertise such things?  Without trivializing how much such parents love their children, we do seem to have a phenomenon in which a transnational adoption is considered a humanitarian good that proves you are not racist, into multiculturalism, and a card-carrying liberal good person (the discourse around Angelina Jolie’s adopted children is part of this).

What do you think the meta-messages are here?  iBastard offers a translation over at Racialicious. 

Oh and, in the spirit of resistance, check out this parody t-shirt made by iBastard:

Also in dressing your kids and meta-messages: leftish t-shirts for kids, “future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts and the like, “God Hates Fags” t-shirts, sexist t-shirts for kids, trucker girl booties, and more.

Other posts on advertising your politics on your metaphorical sleeve: “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?”, “Tough Guys Wear Pink”, “Real Girls Eat Meat”, “True Love Waits”, “I Love My Big Tatas”, and “Use Your Period For Good”.

Shoshannah F. sent in this video of a group singing what is titled “Eid Mubarak India Song.” Shoshannah says,

“Eid mubarak” is a traditional Muslim greeting reserved for use on the festivals of Eid ul-Adha and Eid ul-Fitr.

Eid al Fitr, by the way, is the festival celebrating the end of Ramadan; it was celebrated last week.

There are several things in the video I think are interesting. First, it might be a good example of the diversity that exists in the Muslim world. As we’ve talked about before on Soc Images (see here and here) , in the U.S. Islam is often associated very strongly with “the veil” or even “the burqa.” This is used as evidence that Islam is automatically and uniquely oppressive to women. Yet in this video we see some women wearing scarves that cover some of their hair and other women whose heads are completely uncovered. It might be a useful video to show (at least a bit of it) if you’re talking about stereotypes of Islam and the idea that all Muslim women have to wear head coverings.

I can also imagine using a short clip from it to illustrate the fact that students’ frequent belief that Muslim = Arab = Middle Easterner is actually inaccurate. I assign a reading in my race class by Nadine Naber titled “Ambiguous Insiders: An Investigation of Arab American Invisibility” (2000, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies vol 23, number 1, p. 37-62). She argues that Islam has been racialized in the U.S., such that most Americans assume all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are Arabs, and negative stereotypes of Arabs and Arab Americans are extended to Muslims in general. On a global basis, only a minority of Muslims live in the Arab-speaking world (which is, by the way, the definition of “Arab”); the largest Muslim population lives in Indonesia, and though they are predominantly Muslim countries, neither Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, nor Afghanistan are Arab countries. I might show a small portion of this video as part of a lecture on the inaccuracy of equating Muslims with Arabs.

Another element that really struck me was how certain aspects of the type of masculinity on display here differ from our ideas of how men should act in the U.S. The men are wearing pastel colors that are generally only worn by women in the U.S. (though as this post shows, men are, under certain circumstances, allowed to wear pink). The men also dance closely and hug in ways that would not be acceptable between straight men in the U.S. The video could be used as an example of the social construction of gender, and how the things considered appropriate for men or women to do in one culture may not be viewed the same in others.

Now, I have no idea what the meaning of the guys looking all aghast at the guy in the business suit (at about 3:45) until he starts dancing is. I don’t know what that is supposed to signify–that he’s Westernized and might not take part in the festival? If any readers have any insights on what the meaning of that exchange is, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks, Shoshannah!

UPDATE: Commenter Silviu G. makes a good point:

What struck me was that, in commenting the video, the blogger didn’t emphasize the strict segregation of women and men.

Indeed I didn’t…thanks for pointing out the oversight in my analysis, Silviu! That might add to an interesting discussion of how, in the U.S., we would view men who interacted primarily with one another, hugging and dancing together, and remained entirely separate from one another. In the U.S., such behavior would almost certainly lead to the men being defined as gay; however, I don’t think that is in any way implied in this video, which again points to the variation in norms of gender behavior.

Also, just to clarify…Silviu suggests that I was “praising” Muslim TV for showing women with uncovered hair. That was not my intention–in fact, it would be terribly condescending of me to be all “Hey, look! How nice! They let some women be in public with no headscarves!” My point in mentioning that the women’s heads aren’t covered was just that, at least among my students, there’s often a belief that all Muslim women cover their hair all the time (I’ve had them ask if they have to cover their hair while they sleep), and that this video might be used just to get the point across that there’s no single way that Muslim women dress, any more than all Christian women dress the same, which many of my students found very surprising.

I found this vintage outfit in an antique store the other day and bought it, despite having no children. I thought it was a great example of how our “only girls wear pink and only boys wear blue” rule is arbitrary and wasn’t always as strictly enforced as it is today.

Of course, you could also use it in a discussion of how girls are allowed to appropriate “masculine” things (i.e., a girl can wear blue) in a way boys can’t usually do with things coded feminine (a boy wearing pink, for instance).

I suppose the pink bows on the ducks were supposed to make it appropriate for a girl?

UPDATE: Ok, according to several commenters, this is a boys’ outfit. The woman at the store was adamant that it was for a girl. I’m guessing it was the ruffles and the cute little duckies. That could be another topic for discussion–what clues were she and I looking at to decide what gender this outfit was manufactured for? Thanks for the correction, readers!

I am not convinced that most people are as carefree about the colors their kids are dressed in as some of the commenters are, though. Yes, both boys and girls might wear orange…but they’ll usually be different shades of orange, mixed with different other colors, with very different patterns. Go to a store selling kids clothes right now and stand in the middle between the girls’ and boys’ sections and look back and forth at the clothes (I did this recently). I don’t think there will be very many items that are not clearly gendered–where you think “I have no idea whether this was manufactured for a boy or a girl. The colors give me no clue.” And most parents would not take kindly to you giving their kids clothes for the “other” gender…Believe me, I’ve been dumb enough to think it wouldn’t matter, and it most certainly does, apparently. You might get away with giving a girl a t-shirt with a dinosaur or firetruck on it, but you give someone’s son a lavender t-shirt with a dragonfly on it? Well…go try it and let me know how it goes.

Here is an ad put out by the McCain campaign that associates Obama with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton:

What struck me about it is that associating Obama with some young women is a way to imply he’s not a serious candidate (see this post from yesterday on a similar theme). I mean, they could have used, say, Tom Cruise of one of the examples of overwhelming celebrity, but part of the image of the Obama campaign is that many of his followers are sexy but vapid young women. (Also, as far as I’m aware neither Britney Spears nor Paris Hilton have actually been connected to Obama, unlike Scarlett Johansson, who sent him emails; the media frenzy over the idea that he was her “email buddy” eventually forced him to distance himself from any association with her. Why this was such a big deal, I do not know, since there was no indication that the emails were inappropriate in any way.)

Also: Paris Hilton has now become part of our political discourse? Really?

NEW: Marc S. sent in a link to the humorous response from Paris Hilton. It might be a humorous intro to a discussion of the way that we assume that certain types of femininity (particularly the type associated with tanning and liking the color pink) are incompatible with being intelligent or politically aware.

Thanks, Marc!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

A while back, Captain Crab sent me a link to Baby Couture Magazine (“We put the ‘coo’ in couture”):

It is, as far as I can tell, a magazine dedicated to how to raise a kid very stylishly. The magazine features fashion spreads of kids with information on where to get the clothes, just like women’s magazines such as Vogue or Glamour. There’s a section where you can send in pictures of your kids to see if the magazine might want to use them as a model or just “…show off your children (and their outfits!)…”

In the caption of a photo of Salma Hayek currently up on the site (posted on June 20, 2008), we learn about her daughter, “Valentina’s father, Francois-Henri Pinault, is reportedly the 3rd richest man in France, and owns and runs PPR (subisidiaries of which include Gucci, YSL, Balenciaga, etc).”

Here’s a playset highlighted in the Spring 2008 issue that costs $21,850 (image at Jezebel.com):

About the Nurtured by Nature line, we learn,

…it is a fabulous baby shower gift as well (you know, when they open your present at the shower and other parents look at you like that “momma who just knows her thang”). Anyway, they are not mass-produced so they may be on the pricey side (it says on their site that a Nature’s Dream gift set is $200.30).

Yes, that might be just a tad on the pricey side for most people. I went to the company’s website and found onesies running from $22 to $99. I’m all for non-mass-produced items made from local materials (in this case, New Zealand-grown merino wool), but…$200??? For a baby gift set??? I bought some of my friends’ babies’ presents at resale shops.

This could be interesting for several different kinds of class discussions–the class element is obvious, not just in terms of how much things cost or who the audience is, but also ideas of parenting and how they differ by social class (for instance, as far as I know my friends and family members aren’t offended if I buy nice used baby clothes at resale/consignment shops, but I suspect that if you gave such a gift to the type of women who read Baby Couture, you would be a permanent outcast–something to keep in mind if you’re trying to extract yourself from such a social network).

You could also discuss changes in parenting overall, though, not just among the wealthy. In the book Parenting, Inc: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Couture, and Diaper Wipe Warmers–And What It Means for Our Children, Pamela Paul discusses how parents confront more and more products they are told any good parent must buy for their child (such as “educational” products that have no shown positive effects on learning), so that book might provide some interesting analysis about why we think we need these things. The whole topic brings up a number of interesting questions about parenting in general: what does this mean about how parents who can’t (or won’t) afford all these things are judged? Why do new parents increasingly look to the marketplace to tell them what they need–and how–to raise a child? How does middle-class fear of “falling behind” play into this whole trend? Why have we become so convinced that raising children requires huge amounts of “expert” advice and purchased products?

NOTE: Well, I have to say, I didn’t actually believe there were such things as $800 strollers–that just seemed exaggerated–but for fun I did a quick search before I posted this and behold:

The Boy Meets Girl Pink & Blue Limited Edition Valco Twin Trimode, for $825 (though there are several hundred dollars’ worth of upgrades available on top of that). Of course, it’s also good that it’s color-coded so you know which side to put the boy and girl in. Also, it’s described as an “all-terrain” stroller. All-terrain stroller??? Where exactly are people taking their kids these days? There are a lot more similarly bizarre products at Let’s Go Strolling.

So I learned something today: No matter how much the upper limit is that I can imagine for a baby product, I need to add many, many hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to it. And upper-middle-class parenting has become very, very strange.

And I owe it all to Captain Crab!

Maybe you’ve never noticed, given that feminists are always talking about the ladies, that there are lots and lots and lots of things that (real) men are not supposed to do. For instance: drink fruity drinks, wear pink shoes, look at their fingernails the wrong way, enjoy a “chick flick,” like a girl, like cats, prefer not to fight, care about grades, eat salad… should I go on? You get the gist.

Comparably, women have got it good. We’re allowed to knit and play soccer, be a mom and be a lawyer, take dance and karate, wear skirts and pants!

How do we make sense of this? Crash course: Femininity is just for chicks. When men do feminine things, they are debasing themselves. Masculinity is awesome and for everyone. When women do masculine things, they’re awesome. This is sexism: Masculinity rules, femininity drools. Men are encouraged to stay away from femininity, so their individual choices are constrained, but they also are staying away from something debasing. In contrast, women are required to do a least some femininity, so women are required to debase themselves, at least a little bit, even as they are given more options.

I say this all to introduce these two hilarious examples of men and how they have to worry about doing masculinity (sent in by Vesko J.).

How To Give The Perfect Man Hug

How I Sit On The Bus

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.

Captain Crab sent in this image (found here) of pubic hair dye:

Here is a link to the betty website. According to the site,

In less than one year, over 100,000 happy customers are using betty to naturally match their hair above, cover gray or just for fun! Whether you’re a blonde (be a true blonde now!), radiant auburn, rich brunette, raven black or want to try hot pink for fun, our easy to use no-drip formula gives you the perfect finishing touch.

These might be useful for a discussion of the ever-increasing standards for personal beauty: once upon a time, you just worried about gray hair on your head. And taking care of things “down there” meant obsessing over odor and controlling evidence of menstruation. Now women get genital plastic surgery and “vaginal rejuvenation” (those sites aren’t work-appropriate) as they age or after childbirth, shave or wax their pubic hair, and apparently can now dye their pubic hair to be sure it doesn’t show signs of aging (or just doesn’t match their hair)–although the betty website FAQ link does mention that men also use the product. I can’t help but suspect that the mainstreaming of porn and increased access (especially online) to images of women’s genitals is providing average women with a new body part to compare to other women and find lacking.

At least the pink seems like something you’d just do for fun, not out of a concern to hide signs of aging. Although maybe there are 50-year-old women out there running around with pink pubes. What do I know?

Thanks, Captain!

Myra M. F. sent us these four breast cancer awareness ads to compare and contrast (find them here).  They are all super pink-ified (because men don’t get breast cancer… oh wait, they do), but the first two use stereotypical femininity and the latter two challenge them.

(1)  Ah the lovely young middle-aged woman (I stand corrected), the ruffley white blouse, the slight head tilt, and the fashionable breast cancer scarf.  You too can look oh so good while you fight breast cancer!  Go Ford!

(2)  “Expose the Truth.”  Those awesome knockers on that gorgeous anonymous babe could someday be victims of breast cancer.  And we can’t have that!  Support breast cancer research!

Consider how different these next two are:

Here we see a woman who accepts some conventional definitions of femininity (make-up, pearls, earrings and, of course, pink), but rejects the idea that women should be ashamed to lose markers of femininity (“We can live without our hair.  We can live without our breasts.”) and instead looks bravely towards a cure (“We cannot live without our hope for a cure.”)  Plus, this image is about action (a race) instead of fashion (a scarf), suggesting that it is also a rejection of the idea that to be feminine is to be passive or powerless.

And this image actually mocks the symbolic ribbon and, I will add, bracelet activism (how feminine are ribbons and bracelets?), in favor of appropriating a masculine symbol (heavy machinery) by turning it pink and putting it to work against breast cancer.  The text at the bottom says: “Stop breast cancer!  It’s in our power!” 

Four ads, all with the same message, all mobilizing femininity, but in two very different ways. 

Thanks again to Myra!