Consumer Reports has an awesome interaction Eco-label website that provides information on what different types of “green” labels mean (organic, natural, free trade, and so on) and how meaningful they are in terms of indicating that a product is more environmentally friendly than other brands. For instance, you can search the label “organic” and get really detailed information about different organizations that certify products as organic and what their standards are. Or you can search by product (food, household cleaners, and so on) and get more information about the types of labels you’ll often see on them. Here’s a small segment of the page about “100% Vegan” labels under the household cleaners section:

The criteria they used to rate labels, such as transparency, consistency, and freedom from conflicts of interest, are available here.

The website would be great for a discussion of greenwashing (claiming to be environmentally friendly as a marketing technique, with little significant changes in production practices) and how eco-friendly is defined, but it’s also just useful if you’re interested on a personal level.

An extended version of this post also appeared at Ms.

I’ve been taking photographs of breast-cancer-research-and-prevention-branded products for a few months now. I was first driven to do so when I saw this at the Million Aire (private plane terminal) at the Burbank airport:

That’s right. You are looking at pink chocolate chips cooked into cookies to signify a commitment to reducing breast cancer-related morbidity and mortality.

Anti-breast cancer messages are, I think inarguably, the most widely product-linked disease-related message ever.  I am constantly shocked by how many products have a breast cancer version. Here are some pictures I’ve taken over the last few months.

Cream cheese:

Padlock:

Cat food:

Gum:

Golf balls and tees:

Pots and pans:

Steve W. sent in this picture of a pink “ladies night out” breast cancer-themed limo (note the pink ribbon hanging from the rear view mirror):

NEW (May ’10)! Renée Y. sent along this photo of breast cancer-awareness-themed grape tomatoes.  I repeat: grape tomatoes.

We’ve discussed the commodification of activism extensively (see here, here, here, here, and here) and so I’m going to skip this point.  Instead, I’d like the ask the following:

What does it mean when awareness of and funding for disease is subject to marketing?  Is this really the most efficient or rational way to set health care priorities?  I did a bit of research.

According to the CDC (2005 seems to be the latest available data), cancer is not the leading cause of death.  Heart disease is the leading cause of death.  Granted, cancer is a close second.  In 2005, 652,091 people died of heart disease and 559,312 died of cancer.  But not breast cancer, all cancers.  In 2005, 49,491 people died of breast cancer.  More than 10 times as many people died of heart disease.

And, if you want to prioritize cancers, more people are diagnosed with prostate cancer than breast cancer (source) and more people die from lung cancer (159,292), colon, rectal, or anal cancer (53,252), and lymphoid/hematopoietic cancers (55,028) (source).

So why such an emphasis on breast cancer?   I’m not sure why.  Certainly there is a massive social movement organization behind this anti-breast cancer marketing and people in charge have made a decision to take this approach.   I think, also, the body parts and the presumed cause of disease matter.   Do we have less sympathy (and would, therefore, a similar marketing campaign be less effective) for lung cancer because we think that lung cancer patients are to blame for their own disease?  Would we find colo-rectal-anal cancer-themed cream cheese somehow less appetizing?  Or prostate cancer-themed gum?  Do lymphoid and hematopoietic cancers affect parts of the body that are simply less iconic?

“Save the lymph nodes” just doesn’t have quite the same ring?

I’m not trying to suggest that raising awareness of and funding research for breast cancer isn’t important, but I am interested in the strategies by which being “against” breast cancer is (literally) sold to us.  And I’m curious about how this affects treatment and research funding, if at all, and the rationality of our resource distribution given the application of a marketing approach to (some) diseases (and not others).  (Also in breast cancer marketing, see here, here, here, here, and here.)

 —————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

This vintage add (found here) for Kenwood appliances is a nice example of how the act of preparing food is gendered, and how one side of the gendered dichotomy is valued more than the other. Men are chefs– professionals, with careers. And their wives are cooks– they cook at home. Men have prestige as professional chefs outside the home, and women have value as caregiver cooks inside the home.

I guess that this ad is from the early-1980s. How much of this gendering of cooking changed over the years?

I came across a series of photos that reminded me of Menzel and D’Aluisio’s book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, that looked at how globalization, migration and rising affluence affect the diets of communities around the globe.  See also photo galleries 1, 2, and 3 in Time Magazine.

From photographer, Mark Menjivar, You Are What You Eat is a series of photographs looking at the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States. Nothing was added or taken away.

What type of insight do we gain by looking at our refrigerators?

According to the Economist, beauty spending–on make-up, diet and exercise, fragrances, skin care, hair products, and cosmetic surgery–adds up to a $160 billion-a-year worldwide.  To illustrate this, Lauren Greenfield calculated the monthly spending of six women and photographed them undergoing their beauty treatments (slideshow here).  Thanks to Karl B. for sending along the link!

26 year-old, Ginger spends $650 a month on her physical appearance. At Manhattan’s store Sephora, Ginger shops alone for cosmetics because her friends know she will spend hours. She is so obsessed with makeup that she founded her own line of cosmetics, Ginger Luxe.

PR-Company owner, Claudine (29) compares prices at Duane Reade drug store in Upper East Side Manhattan. Claudine spends only $80 each month on her personal grooming. Her philosophy is ‘the less stuff I use, the better I look’.

New York City actress Cameron (25) spends $620 a month on her personal grooming. Cameron reveals that her hair is the key to her personality, ‘I spend so much time with my hair-stylists, they’re like my family’.

New York City hedge-fund exec Suzanne (36) spends $1720 a month on personal grooming.  At ‘Skin & Spa’ cosmetic surgery center, Suzanne receives Botox from Dr. Howard Sobel, a treatment that she receives 3 times a year.

Fashion company spokeswoman, Jennifer, 27 receives a spray tan at a top New York salon. Jennifer spends $865 on personal grooming, ‘My spa time’s not a splurge-it’s a necessity!’

For more on beauty and spending, see our posts on the scientizing of beauty products (here, here, and here), our post on how Dove and Axe are in bed together, and this post on the economics of beauty over a lifetime.

Also see Lauren Greenfield’s work on girl culture and photographs of children at a weight loss camp.

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.

Abby J. sent in some photos she took at Toys ‘R’ Us of a bunch of classic board games that are now marketed specifically to girls. We know they’re for girls because they’re all pink:

Of course the girls’ version of Scrabble would spell “fashion.” I assume the boys’ version spells “motorcycle” or something of the sort…though probably with fewer letters, I guess.

The Monopoly game (called the Boutique Edition) looks like a jewelry box:

I don’t know what Mystery Date is all about–I mean, I can guess, but I’m not familiar with the game, and not actually sure I’d want to encourage kids to go on mystery dates, but whatever. Both Abby and I found the pink Ouija board odd. I didn’t know they really still sold them. My grandma came across an old one when they were cleaning out my great-grandma’s stuff a couple of years back and she took it and gave it to my teen-aged cousin. My aunt took great offense and sent it back. My grandma, who is a devout Christian, took offense at my aunt taking offense (and implying that Grandma was giving her grandchildren satanic toys) and now keeps it around and lets kids play with it at her house. She also declared my aunt “no fun” and “too churchy.” If you knew my grandma, or had ever sat there and watched her call out to Jesus to help her find her missing spatula (he complied and made it appear in the drawer where she always keeps the spatulas), you would understand why I nearly choked on my food when she referred to someone else as “too churchy.” Now she’s decided that the Harry Potter movies are not, as so many people she knows had told her, satanic but are instead quite funny.

Anyway, that’s a long rambling unimportant point for a post that just illustrates how much we identify girlhood today with pink and feel the need to make gender-specific version of games where a single version seemed to work perfectly well in the past.

Reader Rachel sent in this photo she took of Legos being clearly marked as “boys’ toys”:

NEW! Sara P.-S., Liz, and Danielle F. sent us links to the new “girlz” version of the PSP (Playstation Portable) because, as Sarah says, it is apparently so “skewed towards boys that they have to specifically advertise the fact that girls [can] play with it”:

NEW (Apr. ’10)! Sunlight Snow sent in a version of Jenga aimed at girls called “Girl Talk” Jenga. Not stopping at the pinkification of the game, the producers decided to add sharing and gossip to it. Each plank now offers a question that girls are supposed to discuss. Apparently precipitous balancing and impending collapse is not fun enough, girls must add desperate crushes and dreams of becoming a veterinarian!

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

Taylor sent in this ad, found at Blame It on the Voices:

It ran in Esquire in 1959 and our post on the emergence of Playboy Magazine may give the ad some interesting context.

Both Aani B. and Sarah F. sent in a link to a commercial for the new diet Pepsi (Pepsi Max, of course) being aimed at men. 

Also don’t miss this commercial (embedding disabled) in which they describe the ingredients of Pepsi Max as the crushed bones of a Viking, the spit of a rapid Wolverine, pepper spray, and scorpion venom.  The can? Made from the hull of a nuclear submarine.  The crushing of cans on heads ensues.

Over at I Blame the Patriarchy, a reader named Kate sent in a snapshot of some advertising for the product at the intersection of 6th and Anza in San Francisco:

Slogans:

“The first diet cola for men.”

“Save the calories for bacon.”

“0 calories. Great taste. Welded together.”

“No gut. All glory.”

This is, of course, all in jest. Yet is still re-affirms the idea that being this way is the epitome of manhood, if taken to a ridiculous extreme.  Eh, I’ll just let Twisty say it. As usual, she says it better than I:

What’s the big whoop? Well, you can’t have a “soda for men” unless “men” are considered a class unto themselves, defined in terms of the bacon-eating, welding, glorious nukular submarine-squashing aspirations that separate them from dainty vulnerable “women.” These ads are jokey, depicting average-looking dudes, but they tacitly allude to the noxious he-man/fragile damsel dichotomy that’s been chapping actual women’s hides lo these many millennia.

It also, of course, points to the fact that dieting really has been for women all along (see posts here and here for examples). In fact, it denies that diet-soda-for-men is about dieting at all: note the slogan “save the calories for bacon” and the name, Pepsi Max, which implies adding something to the beverage as opposed to taking something out.

See other examples of marketing for diet products aimed at men: Nutrisystem (“get ‘er done!”) and Weight Watchers.