Women’s and men’s washrooms: we encounter them nearly every time we venture into public space. To many people the separation of the two, and the signs used to distinguish them, may seem innocuous and necessary. Trans people know that this is not the case, and that public battles have been waged over who is allowed to use which washroom. The segregation of public washrooms is one of the most basic ways that the male-female binary is upheld and reinforced.
As such, washroom signs are very telling of the way societies construct gender. They identify the male as the universal and the female as the variation. They express expectations of gender performance. And they conflate gender with sex.
I present here for your perusal, a typology and analysis of various washroom signs.
[Editor: After the jump because there are dozens of them… which is why Marissa’s post is so awesome…]
For me, classes begin today and just yesterday the doc gave me the a-okay to walk without the “boot.” So “hello” to students and “goodbye” to the summer-of-a-broken-leg!
You may have noticed that our parent site has changed to The Society Pages. This is a name change only and we’re still thrilled to be under the stewardship of Doug, Chris, Jon, Letta and the wonderful folks at the University of Minnesota. Word on the street is that SocImages crashed their servers so many times that they had to reconfigure them! We’re so grateful to have their support and patience!
Gwen and I are proud to announce a new SocImages essay, What is Indian Art?, published in Contexts magazine (based on our original post). If you’d like a pdf of the essay, send a note to socimages@thesocietypages.org and we’ll send it along. You can see a list of our teaching essays here. They’re all super short and great for in class exercises.
Finally, this is your monthly reminder that we’re on Twitter and Facebook (where we update with featured posts everyday).
NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW! Aug ’10):
Rachel sent in a commercial for Dove chocolate that, as she says, sends “mixed messages…about unrealistic beauty standards for women.” Here’s the video:
Transcript:
We’re only human, but we try to be perfect.
We pretend that high heels are comfortable, and that waxing just takes getting used to.
We pretend we can manage anything that’s thrown at us, and sometimes we can.
And other times, we just have to cut ourselves some slack, and take a moment.
Because although we’re only human, that’s more than enough.
Your moment, your Dove.
The commercial seems to want to have it both ways. On the one hand, trappings of conventional femininity (heels, waxing, as well as being a superwoman who can handle “anything that’s thrown at us”) are accepted as “perfection,” elements of an ideal version of us we aspire to. On the other hand, it’s drawing on the idea that we should just accept ourselves — we’re “more than enough” — but in a way that implies that we have to do this not because there’s something wrong with an ideal of perfection that requires women to put ourselves through painful rituals, but just because sometimes we can’t manage to meet that ideal and have to give ourselves a break and eat some chocolate (of course!) to console ourselves before we get up the energy to throw ourselves back into the search for perfection again. As we often see in advertising, it uses a women’s empowerment message (you’re great the way you are! You can do anything!) in a superficial way that simply suggests consumption as a solution rather than truly challenging the beauty ideals it appears to be critiquing.
Sarah P. sent in this stunning video, from the the Wall Street Journal, about how to advise women about investing. The video has a simple message:
Women are women. They’re weird and need their weirdness to be attended to. But they don’t want to think that you’re treating them like women. They want to think that you’re treating them like human beings (whatevs!). So, whatever you do, never let them know that you’re treating them like women. If you do this, you will make gazillions off of them. Go forth!
The video after a short commercial (selected transcription below):
Selected transcription:
We all know women can be a little difficult… no one wants to feel that they are… being treated differently from the men, so what can advisers do to try to connect with women and keep from following that stigma?
In other words, women are different and also more annoying than real people (e.g., men), so you need to treat them accordingly. But they don’t know that they’re different from real people (they’re “difficult,” after all), so you have to work around that.
First… you can’t approach women as women… don’t treat her like a lady, treat her like a person… women need more time, they ask more questions… get to know what motivates her… if you connect with her on that level, not on the basis of her gender, that’s the first mistake most advisers make…
In other words, pretend like you’re treating her like an individual, but know that what you’re really dealing with is a creature named W.O.M.A.N.
Second… she’s gonna triangulate, women seek many sources of opinions… just know she’s gonna do that, why don’t you play along… give her other sources of information that augment the advice that you’re giving her… that’s a good way to play to women’s natural ability and need to triangulate on advice that they’re getting. She’s gonna do it anyway, put that to your advantage.
In other words, the goal here is to manipulate her essential woman-ness to your advantage. Don’t actually help her learn more about investing, just feed her information that confirms what you’re telling her. She’ll never know the difference!
Third… be aware and be prepared to invest. It’s gonna take more to serve her… It takes time, she needs education… she’s gonna ask a lot of tough questions… but if you invest that time up front… she’s a better client… what advisers tell me time and time again: women are more fun.
In other words, women are “better clients,” even though they’re a drag because they’re “more fun”! Woo hoo! If women aren’t good for fun, what are they good for!
The conversation just goes on from there… the expert here tries so hard to balance the essentialization of women’s nature and the social construction of gender, but she just really fails because she goes back and forth between both and her interviewer keeps cornering her with questions about how frustrating it is to work with women.
My friend Matt M. let me know about this video from The Second City Network that nicely sums up some of the disturbing messages about love, dating, and gender in animated movies such as Beauty and the Beast. Enjoy!
The Daily Kos highlighted an ad for Summer’s Eve in this month’s Woman’s Day magazine. Women’s magazines are peppered with douching advertisements, so why did this one prompt nine people — Tony S., Pharmacopaeia, Frank B., Jason W., Tom M., Jesse W., Sarah P., Ilysse W., and Philippa von Z. — to send it to us? Take a look:
What makes this a remarkable instead of a regular douche ad is the suggestion that Summer’s Eve is interested in women’s empowerment.
This is odd because douching is well understood to be bad for healthy women’s bodies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for example, explains:
Most doctors and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommend that women don’t douche. Douching can change the delicate balance of vaginal flora (organisms that live in the vagina) and acidity in a healthy vagina. One way to look at it is in a healthy vagina there are both good and bad bacteria. The balance of the good and bad bacteria help maintain an acidic environment. Any changes can cause an over growth of bad bacteria which can lead to a yeast infection or bacterial vaginosis. Plus, if you have a vaginal infection, douching can push the bacteria causing the infection up into the uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries.
Douching is bad for you, ladies. So the fact that the C.B. Fleet Co., the company that owns Summer’s Eve, tries to convince all women that they need to regularly douche is not only manipulative, it’s harmful. If it wants to maximize its profit, however, the company needs healthy women to feel that their vaginas are disgusting. And so they tell us that it is over and over again.
You see, C.B. Fleet ‘n friends doesn’t give a shit about you. They don’t care if you get that raise; and they certainly don’t care if their product is unnecessary and potentially harmful in most cases. They just want to make money. And if using a feminist-sounding you-go-girl ad will do that, then they’ll slap on a smile and laugh all the way to the bank.
James O’Byrne and Doug MacCash retrace their steps through the post-katrina devastating, comparing the photos of flooded neighborhoods with photos of those neighborhoods today.
Allie B. sent us a link to an image at GOOD that presents some pre- and post-Katrina information about New Orleans. The map indicates levels of population recovery; the darker the shade of green, the more the population has rebounded:
A close-up of one section (areas with black shading had over 6 feet of floodwater):
Notice that the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas, has among the lowest level of redevelopment.
There’s a much larger version of the map (with a not-too-specific list of sources) here.
Changes in the populations of different parishes:
The income distribution has changed somewhat as well, with a smaller proportion in the lowest income categories (though notice that the dollar range included in each color isn’t consistent as you get into the higher incomes):
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…
