Guest Blogger Amanda Czerniawski on November 27, 2011
This picture — a woman marked up for the plastic surgery she would require if she were to look like Barbie — captures in a moment what Dove’s Evolution video took over a minute to convey — the media images and fashion icons that we aspire to emulate are constructions. Like billboard signs and magazine editorials, the pictures are manipulations that distort our sense of normal bodies.
We are trapped in a narcissistic world of images, where we must self-surveil our bodies with beauty as one of our primary goals. We invest in and manipulate our bodies and engage in body regimes to cultivate our physiques, often towards unattainable goals of perfection. We become subjects (in the Foucauldian sense) to our own projects of becoming, as we police ourselves and internalize a normalizing gaze. The only way to achieve these kinds of bodies, like Barbie’s proportions in this image, is through dramatic, invasive cosmetic procedures. Yet, we still labor over our bodies, continually trying to shape it in accords of dominant ideals. We have forgotten (or simply ignored) that these kinds of bodies are fantastical images.
As Naomi Wolf argued in The Beauty Myth, we are trapped in a cycle of cosmetics, beauty aids, diets, and exercise fanaticism; however, our bodies are no longer the same prisons Wolf envisioned. With the new advances in cosmetic surgery, we can achieve the near impossible. The important question to ask is why do we do this to our bodies? Increasingly, we have gone from being judged on our “good works” to our “good looks.” We place a high premium on the look and shape of our bodies, as it is the visible sign of our moral status and class position. Here, the Barbie physique may be possible if you have enough cash.
Amanda M. Czerniawski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University. She specializes in bodies and culture, gender and sexuality, and medical sociology. Her past research projects involved the development of height and weight tables and the role of plus-size models in constructions of beauty. Her current research focuses on the contested role of the body in contemporary feminist discourse.
Dolores R. sent us the newest message from associated with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Sponsored by both PETA and the Ministry of Waxing (a pubic-hair removal site), the ad features a fur-covered “wallet” (via Ms.):
I guess it’s just an ad for waxing your pubes, but the logic is so convoluted that I’m having a hard time getting my head around it. The fur of slaughtered animals is gross/unethical, so you should shave off your public hair? Pubic hair is gross and that’s how you know wearing animal fur is gross? Shave your public hair as a token of your objection to wearing fur? Skin yourself, not animals?
Or perhaps my problem is looking for a logic in the first place.
UPDATE 1: A reader sent in a clarification regarding the relationship between PETA and the Ministry of Waxing, one with its own sociological lessons about social movement organizations. It appears that the Ministry has donated money to PETA for the privilege of using the “PETA Business Friend logo.” While PETA has apparently made a deal with the Ministry of Waxing, they legally disclaim any responsibility for how their logo is used and it’s possible that they did not approve this ad. Details on the program here.
…PETA isn’t somehow being used against their knowledge; they’re co-promoting it. There’s no disclaimer, no weaseling out, no “we didn’t know about it”; this is 100% PETA-approved.
It’s that time of year when we savage the world with our unbridled consumerism. If it’s not a Black Friday stampede at Target, it’s a news story of a shopper who camped out in front of a Best Buy for over a week to score some discounted gadgets. Everywhere you turn consumers are whipped into a frenzy, children’s eyes are glazed over as they think of what gifts they’ll open, and romantic partners are stressed over what they will give their loved one to demonstrate the depths of their love.
When consumerism is exaggerated, as it is this time of year, it’s easier to see the cultural scripts and rituals that surround it. These cultural scripts tell us:
How to feel when we come into a lot of money or even just get a good deal
How to act when we receive a gift
And how to impute love from inanimate objects.
1. The Rapturous Consumer Windfall
Next to presentations of sex and bad karaoke there is arguably no other scenario played out on television ad nauseam more than the consumer windfall. Turn on your TV right now, and find an advertisement or game show and you will almost certainly see someone falling to their knees, eyes full of tears, as they praise the gods of capitalism for blessing them. Bob Barker (er, Drew Carey) play the role of Benny Hinn in this consumer revival smashing their open palms on the foreheads of game show contestants as they exclaim, “The. Price. Is. RIGHT!” (Watch at 0:51):*
Television advertising is a wellspring for this type of consumer exaltation. The best example of this consumer rapture is the @ChristmasChamp campaign from Target. Watch the video below and you tell me; is this woman having a consumer-gasm or what?**
Maybe it’s just me, but this ritualized consumer rapture gives me the heebie geebies.
2. The “Show Us What You Got” Photo
Leaning on the arm of your parent’s love, seat slightly sauced, your aunt turns to you and says lovingly, “oh show me what Santa brought you!” After you halfheartedly motion to the pile of loot on the floor she puts her glass down, grabs the family Polaroid and says, “Let’s take a photo to send to [fill in name of absentee relative].”
If we were to flip through your family photo albums I bet we’d find page after page of people cheesing with their unwrapped gifts held head level. This obligatory photo is the classic post gift exchange cultural script. Somehow a gift is only properly received when there is a photo to document it.
From my point of view, it is strange that we take photos of the things we receive during holidays which are tangible and will be around well after the event. But many of us don’t take photos of the moments with our loved ones that won’t linger and fill up our closets.
3. The Hand Dance of Love
Does he love you? Does your hand show it? The holiday season is a time when many will pop the question and boy do advertisers know it. While the issues surrounding jewelry ads are well documented on this site, I’d like to talk about the hand dance women are socialized to do after their love has been verified by an appropriately large shiny rock. After a woman says “yes,” she walks around with one arm sticking out like a zombie for the next few months doing the hand dance. This cultural script dictates that women flaunt their recently acquired diamond ring and then all women in their surround give their requisite “Oh, that is GORGEOUS!” There is a sad sizing up that goes on here, where women are shamed or praised for the size of ring bestowed upon them.
In Conclusion
Most of these cultural scripts and rituals go unnoticed or at the very least unquestioned. These acts are the mechanisms through which we objectify the social world and alienate ourselves from our loved ones. So this year why not participate in Buy Nothing Dayand double down on some quality time with your loved ones.
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* We should acknowledge that sometimes the people who are receiving these windfalls are desperate and totally deserving. I don’t want to shame or cast dispersions on anyone in this situation, but these are exceptions to the rule.
** Forgive me for sexualizing this, but I mean come on, that’s an apt description. While we are at it, this ad is chock full of sociology. We have an “empowered woman” who uses her power to consume; it’s the classic redirection of feminist energies into consumer. This woman, who appears to be the epitome of the middle class, white, privileged consumer, is flexing her muscles, exerting her power, and being aggressive enough to make Betty Friedan blush… ’cept she is using her power to purchase consumer goods from a capitalist system that creates and maintains her oppression. Maybe it’s just me, but I think feminist scholars would have a (justified) objection if I called this “champ” a feminist. I dunno.
In Capital, Karl Marx discusses how the products we buy are separated from any recognition of the people who produced them. If I want to buy a TV, I’m unlikely to be involved in any kind of interaction with the people who made it. I don’t see the factory where they worked, I don’t have any idea what the conditions were like, I have no specific idea where it was made, outside of “Made in _____” written on the box. Instead, I exchange money for the TV at a store that almost certainly had nothing to do with manufacturing the TV; no one at Best Buy or Wal-Mart could tell me any more about the specific conditions of production than what I can figure out from reading the package.
Marx referred to this as commodity fetishism. The social relations embedded in products — the fact that someone made that TV, under particular conditions, making a certain amount of money for their labor while producing profit for their employer — are obscured and workers become invisible. Instead, we focus on how much we pay for it, and which store charges the least. Marx argues that relationships between workers, employers, and consumers are presented to us simply as relationships between things; we exchange paper money (an abstract measure of our labor) for commodities, and we rarely pause to think about how the price of a TV is determined by the worth placed on workers in a particular place at a particular time.
Social activists concerned with working conditions, environmental impacts, and a range of other concerns often push back against commodity fetishism, attempting to make the social relations of production visible to consumers again. Craig Martin of Religion Bulletin provided an example from South Africa’s Apartheid Museum. This poster, produced during the struggle against apartheid, calls for a boycott on South African fruit (UPDATE: A reader found a larger image so you can see more detail; via):
The visual of workers soldiers superimposed on the fruit, with workers and protesters in the background, and the phrase “Every bite buys a bullet!”, remind consumers that items they buy having meaning for the world around them, and that they aren’t just exchanging money at a grocery store in return for that fruit; they are buying into a system of production that provides profits for a racist government, which uses those profits to buy military supplies used to enforce its brutal, unequal racist policies.
As Martin says,
In Capital Marx says that commodity fetishism presents relations between men as relations between things — and this poster is a powerful example of an attempt to demystify commodities and reveal that they are in fact relations between human beings.
Last Friday at the University of California-Davis, a group of student Occupy Wall Street protesters were pepper sprayed by university police for refusing to vacate the campus quad. As Lisa pointed out, thanks to the widespread availability of phones with cameras, the incident was photographed and recorded by dozens of onlookers. As a result, images and videos of the pepper spraying incident have flooded the internet. One video has received over 1.7 million views on Youtube; another shorter clip has almost 1 million.
One image, taken by Louise Macabitas, has become iconic (via San Francisco Citizen):
The image is striking in several ways. First, nearly everyone watching has a camera or cell phone and is documenting the event. Second, there is a strong visual separation of the police and protesters — the police are standing, while the protesters are seated. Third, the police officer who is spraying protesters has a very casual, removed demeanor and stance. There is no direct confrontation occurring to seemingly warrant such an action. The image depicts an imbalance of power, as students crouch and hide their faces from the pepper spray wielded by campus police.
The image has so much visual power that it has taken off as an online meme. Consider these variations, all posted at Wired.
I think this meme is itself a form of visual protest. The variations on the original image reinforce the perception that the police officer’s actions were inappropriate and an abuse of power. The use of famous scenes and works of art creates a cartoonish depiction of inequality and injustice, of someone using their power unjustly against those who obviously have less power — children, kittens, the unemployed, etc. (via the Pepper Spraying Cop tumblr):
Other images present the officer’s actions are an affront to justice, by using images associated with freedom, democracy, or peaceful resistance (found at the Pepper Spraying Cop tumblr and CyBeRGaTa:
This one merges the image with another iconic photo of an abuse of police power on campus, the shooting at Kent State University in 1970 (via CyBeRGaTa):
Reproducing this image of injustice online is a form of visual protest, spreading images of perceived injustice in different visual contexts across the internet. The meme is a commentary on how we culturally and historically understand power inequalities and the limits of appropriate uses of power.
Yet, while this is a powerful form of protest that draws important connections, the meme also removes the officer, Lt. John Pike, from the original context of his actions. This runs the danger of focusing on Pike as a lone actor, and not an individual whose actions are shaped within the larger institutional system of justice. As Alexis Madrigal warns us in “Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike“:
Structures, in the sociological sense, constrain human agency. And for that reason, I see John Pike as a casualty of the system, too. Our police forces have enshrined a paradigm of protest policing that turns local cops into paramilitary forces. Let’s not pretend that Pike is an independent bad actor. Too many incidents around the country attest to the widespread deployment of these tactics. If we vilify Pike, we let the institutions off way too easy.
According to the Farm Bureau, Thanksgiving dinner will cost American families 13% more than it did last year. They estimate an average of $49.20 for a family of 10.
Here are the details:
Farm Bureau economist John Anderson says the rise in prices is due, in part, to retailers “…being more aggressive about passing on higher costs for shipping, processing and storing food to consumers…”
Guest Blogger Kushlani de Soyza on November 22, 2011
In her August 13 column in the Washington Times Communities section, Rebekah Kuschmider declares proudly, “So here’s the thing: I am not embarrassed about my stretch marks.” It’s a great message. Women should love their aging skin and reject the impossible Photoshop beauty standards that make us hate ourselves. Kuschmider describers herself as, not a Barbie Doll, but a “Velveteen Rabbit, so worn and loved that I’ve become real.”
Two curious images, however, accompany this story about a (presumably) wealthy white woman’s stretch marks. The two women pictured with Kuschmider’s column are actually a Thai woman from a village near Burma and an Indian laborer from the city of Diu (according to the Flickr pages from which the photos were captured). The old Thai woman’s face is a shrunken apple; tattoos cover the younger Indian woman’s neck, and the whites of her eyes are yellowed from exposure to the sun. Both women are beautiful.
But why don’t we see, not to get too invasive here, the stretch marks of which Ms. Kuschmider is justifiably proud? Why do we instead see haunting portraits that seem to come straight off the pages of National Geographic? The underlying message from whoever chose these photos (the author? an online editor?) is that wrinkles look exotic on poor women whom privileged Americans love to gawk at. We don’t expect them to be attractive by our standards – they’re so lovely in their way, so tragic. But wealthier white women?
Maybe the conservative readership of the Washington Times doesn’t want to see white women looking old or wrinkled, no matter what Rebekah Kuschmider claims about aging. Is that kind of woman is too dignified to be seen looking so “unattractive”? Is aging easier to accept when it’s exotified and Othered — as if it can’t (and shouldn’t) happen to those of us who are more privileged?
Kushlani de Soyza is a reporter and producer for APA Compass, an Asian-Pacific-American public affairs radio program on Portland’s KBOO-FM. She teaches Women’s Studies at Clark College in Vancouver, WA, and English/Journalism at Oregon State University.
About Sociological Images
Sociological Images encourages people to exercise and develop their sociological imaginations with discussions of compelling visuals that span the breadth of sociological inquiry. Read more…
