In Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, Rob Walker discusses one of the central dilemmas facing marketers: they are trying to get large numbers of people to buy the same thing, while convincing them that doing so in no way makes them conformists. How do you “keep it real” (a phrase repeated ad nauseam by the marketers Walker interviewed) and appear authentic and non-conformist while trying to get as many people as possible to buy the same product?

One solution is to frame buying your product not as a boring act of conformity, but instead as a way of expressing your own unique personal identity. Buying a product you’ve seen advertised doesn’t detract from your authenticity, it enhances it — even if you’re buying a mass-produced product that thousands or even millions of other people purchased identical copies of.

Bec G. sent in this an ad from Jeanswest Australia that illustrates this, asserting that their jeans are “as unique as you”:

Of course, as Bec pointed out, the models they chose to represent how unique Jeanswest customers are are all pretty uniformly thin, even the pregnant woman.

Sarah F. sent in another example. The Australian website for the sandwich chain Subway asks customers whether their preferred sandwich is unique:

I filled out the quiz, creating the only thing I ever get if I eat at Subway: a standard veggie sandwich, no tomatoes. I was then asked to give this amazing item its very own name, to be saved for posterity on the Subway website (if they approve the name): “You’ve just created a Sub that is a reflection of you, so let’s give it a name. Feel free to be creative, after all this is YOUR creation!”

Then it was time for the big reveal. The webpage reinforced the message that designing my very own personalized sandwich from their relatively limited stock list of ingredients is an important expression of my inner being:

I was so nervous! What if my sandwich wasn’t special? Was the honey oat bread too mainstream a choice? Oh, why didn’t I go with the chipotle sauce?!

But it all turned out ok!

In Australia, at least, I now know that my Subway sandwich choice separates me from the masses. What a relief!

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

Changes in language seem to just happen. Nobody sets out to introduce a change, but suddenly people are saying “groovy” or “my bad.” And then they’re not. Even written language changes, though the evolution is slower.

Last weekend, I saw this sign at a goat farm on Long Island.

WER’E ??

I used to care about the apostrophe, but after years of reading student papers about “different society’s,” I have long accepted that the tide is against me. The apostrophe today is where spelling was a few hundred years ago – you can pretty much make up your own rules.

Sometimes the rule is fairly clear: use an apostrophe in plurals when leaving it out makes the word look like a different word rather than a plural form of the original. Change the “y” in “society” to “ies” and it looks too different. “Of all the cafe’s, I like the one with lime martini’s.” The “correct” version is cafes and martinis. but I think they take a nanosecond or two longer to mentally process.

Or these

Technically, it should be “ON DVDS.” But DVDS looks like it’s some government agency (I gotta go down to the DVDS tomorrow) or maybe a disease.

It’s not always easy to figure out what rule or logic the writer is following. The little apostrophe seems to be plunked in almost at random. Not random, really. It’s usually before an “s.” But why does Old Navy say, “Nobody get’s hurt”?

There’s a prescriptivist Website, ApostropheAbuse.com, that collects these (that’s where I found the DVDS and Old Navy pictures). They’re fighting a losing battle.

Technology matters – I guess that’s the sociological point here. The invention of print and then the widespread dissemination of identical texts herded us towards standardization. Printers became a separate professional group (not part of the church or state), and most of them were in the same place (London). They had a stranglehold on published spelling.

For the last few decades, anyone could be a printer. The page you are now reading might harbor countless errors in punctuation and spelling (though spell-checkers greatly reduce misspellings), but it looks just as good as an online article in the Times, and it’s published in a similar way to potentially as many readers. And now there’s texting. It’s already pushing upper case letters off the screen, and the apostrophe forecast doesn’t look so good either. But what will still be interesting is not the missing apostrophe but the apostrophe added where, by traditional rules, it doesn’t belong.

I still can’t figure out WER’E.

Mandi B. sent in this straightforward example of the way that women are positioned as commodities in advertising.  The email ad for Spirit Airlines reads “Trade Up for a Better Flight Awards Card” and illustrates that trade with a new car, a younger look, and a lady in red.  What does the lady have to do with it? Absolutely nothing. But it works because we’re accustomed to thinking of sexy women as prizes for men’s success.

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.

Deeb Kitchen sent in an essay at The Brookings Institution with a graph comparing the number of hours worked and earnings in middle-class, two-parent households (the 10% of households that are in the very middle of the income distribution).   Controlling for inflation (results are in 2009 dollars), we see that these households are earning more, for sure, but also working more.  In other words, they’re getting about as much buck for their bang as they were in 1975.

The authors of the post argue that the 26% increase in the number of hours worked is due mostly to mothers increasing their work hours.  Wages, as you can see below, have been stagnant for fathers, but gone up for mothers:

See also: more men and less women earning poverty wages and why did married mothers go to work.

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.

Megan H. and Ami R. sent in contrasting examples of using gender to market fuel-efficient cars. Megan saw this ad (one in a series that plays on the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” Apple ads) advocating electric cars over gasoline-powered ones. In this ad, femininity is associated with environmental responsibility. The most stereotypically masculine man in the ad — the blue-collar worker in a hard hat and filthy clothes — represents the harmful oil industry. Beneficial, good wind energy, on the other hand, is personified by a pretty woman in a filmy dress. Her beauty renders the bad guys speechless:

Dodge, on the other hand, wants to distance its claims to fuel efficiency from any association with femininity. Ami found this ad for the new Dodge Charger in the magazine for Go! Chapel Hill, an organization that advocates less car use:

So here, fuel efficiency with is also associated with femininity, but in the negative sense of emasculation. The Charger is the one exception to the other fuel efficient cars out there. You can get better gas mileage and still protect your manly reputation.

For other examples of gender representations of the environment or environmental movement, see our previous posts on femininity and benign nature, using PETA tactics to oppose the BP oil spill, nature in vintage men’s magazines, and even girls can drive electric cars!

Cheerleading started in the United States in the late 19^th century as a male activity whose purpose was to organize crowds cheering at football games.   In 1923, women joined cheerleading squads and have increasingly dominated this sport.  Cheerleading traditionally features chanting, gymnastics, and tumbling.  The dominant image of cheerleaders  is a perky, always smiling, female who fits a particular body mold.

However, in the late 1970s, a new style of cheerleading emerged in North Carolina and Virginia.  This African American originated style of cheerleading is called “Stomp n Shake”.  Stomp n Shake cheerleaders have the same goals as “traditional cheerleaders” — to motivate their sports team and raise the enthusiasm of fans. However, Stomp n Shake uses African American dance/stepping aesthetics and African American bragging and insult traditions (dozens/snapping) to “pump up” their audience.  Some Stomp n Shake squads include tumbling and stunts in their repertoire, while other squads don’t.  Mostly women, Stomp n Shake cheerleaders rarely smile.  Instead their goal is to look serious and intimidating when they are chanting their cheers and performing their cheer routines.  As the name implies, hip and butt shaking are common features of Stomp n Shake routines, something usually disallowed in most mainstream competitive cheerleading.

Virginia State University Woo Woos (Work It…):

Howard University Bison Cheerleaders:

Prince Edward County High School, SASSY (We Shake The Best):

It’s also interesting to note that Stomp n Shake cheerleading squads  appears to be more accepting of cheerleaders who don’t fit the relatively slender body build of mainstream cheerleaders.  Comment threads for YouTube videos of usually include comments that certain squad members are overweight and therefore should not be cheerleaders.   Usual responses to those comments are that a “thick”(big boned) body frame is common for many Black females, and, besides,  a cheerleader’s weight has nothing to do with her cheerleading skills.

Stomp n Shake is changing the way cheerleading is performed in the United States and elsewhere, often to the dismay of many cheerleading coaches, cheerleaders, and fans who very much prefer that cheerleading remain the way it is.  However, the influence of such movies as the Bring It On cheerleader series (five movies from 2000-2009) and the posting of videos on YouTube — along with the desire of cheerleading squads to be cutting edge and “hip”– have already influenced the performance styles of some more “traditional” cheerleading squads.  It will be interesting to see whether Stomp n Shake cheerleading will also increase the acceptance in mainstream cheerleading for cheerleaders whose physical builds  are different than those of the typical cheerleader in the past and the present.

Azizi Powell earned a B.A. in sociology from Upsala College, East Orange New Jersey.  She is a retired health & human services administrator, a mother and grandmother, and a free lance artist (African storyteller).  She curates two cultural websites Cocojams and Jambalayah.  For more information and videos on Stomp n Shake cheerleading, click here.

Last week I went to see the last Harry Potter movie. I was a bit startled that the pre-movie commercials included this ad (thanks to Melissa H.-J., Tom Megginson, and carlafrantastic for the link!):

I was startled both because I hadn’t expected a Summer’s Eve ad at a Harry Potter showing (the 14-year-old boy I had taken with me seemed to desperately wish he could disapparate on out of there) and by the idea that the most powerful thing in the entire world is women’s vaginas — or, as Melissa points out, men’s desperate desire to get access to them through violence toward one another, with women passively waiting around to see who wins so they know who to have sex with.

And as Tom (who blogs at Work that Matters) says, if someone is going to show their vagina “a little love,” perhaps they would best do so by avoiding irritating, unnecessary products that can actually exacerbate problems like yeast infections.

Summer’s Eve also released several more “Hail to the V” ads (all posted at Gawker), sent in by Leila R., Jamie D., Joel T., YetAnotherGirl, Maeghan D., and Finette. The ads inform women that they need to carry wipes for their genitals with them at all times, because you need to clean yourself down there multiple times a day to avoid being gross; Summer’s Eve helpfully created ads targeting different ethnic groups to be sure everyone understands how important this issue is:

Here’s the African-American version:
[Video removed]
This Latina version:
[Video removed]
And the White version:
[Video removed]
Vertical smile? Are they serious with this? And as Finette says, “They’ve managed to combine ‘less than fresh down there’ vagina-shaming [omg, what subtle hints has your vagina been trying to get your attention with?!] with ethnic stereotypes! Awesome!”

UPDATE: After a lot of criticism, Summer’s Eve has pulled the ads and seems to have gotten them removed from YouTube, so none of the videos we initially posted are available any more. However, Laura S. found a clip from TYT Network discussing the ad campaign, so you can get an idea of what they were like. Thanks, Laura!

My wife introduced me to two television shows, both built on a similar premise but with radically different results.

First, check out this clip from Clean House, airing on the Style Network.

Now, compare that to this ad for Hoarders, airing on the A&E Network.

This is a wonderful example of medicalization. We have people engaging in almost the exact same behavior, but their actions are interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways. Clean House generally (though not exclusively) frames their subjects as having poor habits that, with a little tough love, can be corrected. Hoarders, on the other hand, frames their subjects as having serious mental illnesses. Indeed, they regularly bring in clinicians to treat their subjects. The former invokes judgment (note the eye-rolling and smirking in the first clip), while the latter invokes sympathy (hear the dire music).

Our behaviors do not come with meaning necessarily embedded in them. We have to made sense of them, and the way that we ultimately do so has consequences. We did this in the past with the behavior of children, particularly of little boys. Is Johnny being rambunctious? There once was a time when Johnny was sent to the principal’s office for a spanking, but today, he is much more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and given a pill. As we medicalize more and more in our society, our acceptance of and reaction to our behaviors change.

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