Blanca M. sent in this picture she took here in Las Vegas of a truck advertising Air Conditioning Technical Institute. The truck says “Hot City, Cool Career,” and then had this image on the side.

When you go to the website, you see a video (which I can’t embed, sorry) of a man driving up to a house in a sports car. A blonde woman comes out and gushes over the car. The man then says “Six months ago she wouldn’t have given me a second look. I had no job, no education, I was living with my parents.”

So apparently air conditioning tech school is appropriate only for men, and guarantees that you will make enough money to get the hot women you’ve always wanted. Aside from the clear objectification of women as sexual rewards for men, it reinforces the idea of women as opportunistic gold-diggers. It’s also an interesting perspective on how men should view relationships–that they should be perfectly happy to be with women who don’t like them for who they are, and who would presumably leave them if they lost their job or got a pay cut. As long as the woman’s hot, a guy is apparently supposed to be satisfied with the relationship and not worry about little things like whether his wife actually loves him–we reserve concerns about love and emotional closeness for women only.

Thanks, Blanca!

Ok, so this isn’t an image, but it seemed like something our readers might be interested in, so I’m making an exception. Larry (of The Daily Mirror) sent in a link to this story in the New York Times about efforts by the European Union to discourage sex stereotyping in ads (I think another reader also sent in the link, but I’m afraid I’ve lost the email; if it was you, let me know and I’ll give you credit!). From the article:

The European Parliament has set out to change this. Last week, the legislature voted 504 to 110 to scold advertisers for “sexual stereotyping,” adopting a nonbinding report that seeks to prod the industry to change the way it depicts men and women.

Interestingly, the author of the article refers to the measure as “laughable as a gesture of political correctness.” Advertising industry leaders call into question the link between stereotypical images and actual discriminatory or problematic outcomes in actual life. It brings up a recurring issue cultural critics face–it can be extremely difficult to show that, say, sexualized images of women leads to any particular negative outcome. We may strongly believe that the ubiquitous presence of ads that show stereotypical gender roles reinforce them…but since we haven’t yet created a society similar to our own except without the stereotyping, it’s hard to isolate the effects of such cultural messages because we can’t compare what our culture would be like without them.

Thanks, Larry!

Ben O. sent us these three images. This image (found here) is of a sticker on the window of a car (presumably a Mustang?) that says “Built with tools, not chopsticks.” The car is, ironically, parked in front of a sushi bar (see the reflection in the window).

These next two images (found here and here) illustrate how this particular public library requires an ID to look at both Jet and Essence (magazines aimed at Black Americans), but not other magazines.  Presumably, someone thinks that magazines consumed by Black Americans are more likely to be stolen than other magazines.  Ben asks:

Is this racism? Is this censorship? What do you think about it?

Thanks Ben!

NOTE: In the comments, several readers questions whether the last image is an example of everyday racism. Yes, magazines are sometimes kept at the circulation desk because they are perceived to be at high risk of being defaced or stolen, but they’re also sometimes kept behind the desk if they’re highly popular, to prevent patrons from monopolozing them for very long periods of time. By forcing patrons to check them out rather than have them freely available on the shelves, patrons can keep them for only a cetain length of time, guaranteeing that other patrons who might wish to read them also have an opportunity. So it’s possible that Jet and Essence are kept behind the counter because they are very popular titles and the library is trying to be sure as many patrons as possible get access to them. So this image might be better used to talk about the difficulties that can arise interpreting situations where race appears that it might be playing a part, but it isn’t clear whether it is or in what way.

Here are the Red State Update guys talking about Toby Keith being a Democrat:

It might be useful for starting a discussion about the way country music is so associated with conservative politics and the Republican party today, and why we would be surprised that a guy like Toby Keith (who has proudly acknowledged smoking pot–liberal!–but also wrote the song “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue”–conservative!) would be a Democrat–what does that say about our ideas of what a Democrat (or Republican) must be or act like? You might contrast that with the number of country artists in the first half of the 20th century who were often progressive Democrats or (gasp!) even socialists. It’s pretty fascinating how much the politics associated with country music have changed, and how “obvious” it seems to people today that country musicians would be conservative, to the point that country music has in many ways become a symbol of conservatism (as opposed to “alt country,” which is often associated with a more liberal outlook*).

For an excellent discussion of the early political culture of the California country music scene, see Pete LaChapelle’s book Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. Of course, I’m biased because it mentions Okies.

*If you don’t own any alt country, please go buy some Drive-By Truckers albums immediately. I’d start with “Decoration Day” and move on from there. Move! Now!

This man, Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s Big Idea, helpfully tells the rest of us what the “new feminist ideal” is. Hillary Clinton’s problem, he explains, is that she “didn’t put [on] a skirt.” Enjoy:

Also in women can be anything they want as long as they’re hot: The Nerd Girls.

Found at Feministing.

Pleasant Company started off with three American Girl dolls in 1986. Kirsten was from 1854, Samantha from 1904 and Mollie from 1944. The dolls came with scads of historically accurate and really expensive accessories, as well as mediocrely written stories in which they demonstrated how caring, assertive and morally sound they were. The Pleasant Company line soon exploded in popularity, resulting in its inevitable buyout by Mattel and the current proliferation of American Girls in all colors from all time periods.

Now a “premier lifestyle brand” containing books, magazines, movies [including the recent Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl], toys and clothing, American Girl the media machine markets not only products, but a host of problematic assumptions about race, class and gender. [See screencap above for expensive fun available at the New York City location of American Girl Place.] Not only were the first wave of American Girl dolls all Caucasian characters, but the entire American Girl enterprise promotes conspicuous consumption and an aspiration to upper bourgeois “gentility” composed of salon care for your doll and $33-a-head tea parties.

In an informal discussion on Slate about American Girls, commenter Nina made the following astute observation:

I like the idea of teaching kids that quality and craftsmanship matter and that investing in special items can be OK. But it doesn’t just stop at the dolls—there’s the outfits, and the furniture, and the tea parties. And that makes me a little uncomfortable. It feels too much like a patina of morality masks conspicuous consumption. It’s the kind of rationalization that makes it seem OK to spend thousands of dollars on, say, a mint-condition Eames chair.

If you have the time for an extended radio episode, you may be interested in the segment that This American Life did about the American Girl Places. [If you follow the link, you can stream this episode through your Internet connection for free.]

I took these pictures at a Vons in Los Angeles, CA (Eagle Rock neighborhood):

Someone or someones somewhere made a conscious decision to hang candy bars on the outside of the freezer doors leading to the TV dinners marketed as healthy. I think it nicely illustrates how, in American culture, we are subject to incredible temptation and pressure to consume more calories than we need at the same time that we’re encouraged to look as if we do not submit to that temptation. This is good for the economy in that both the food industry and the diet industry are far larger industries than they would be were we to restrict our caloric intake according to need.

NEW (from Gwen): I took the following two photos in my office building at Nevada State College. We don’t have any food service program and there aren’t any places to eat within walking distance, so the only options faculty and students have are the vending machines. The other day my attention was drawn to this sign posted inside one of them:

Now, on the face of it, this seems all good–individuals should take responsibility for their food choices by choosing healthier options, and the vendor is even providing guidelines. How nice!

But then I stood back and looked at the products for sale in that same vending machine (there were a couple of rows of chips at the top that got cut off in the photo):

None of these products had nutritional information in view, so I couldn’t actually see how many of them fell within the guidelines helpfully posted along the side. I know, from looking at similarly-sized packages at a convenience store later, that all the chips had over 350 calories.

My guess would be that most people would choose the “yogurt apple nut mix” on the next-to-last row as the healthiest item, but I’ve found that mixes like that often have surprisingly high fat and calorie contents, particularly because they often come in multiple-serving packages. But without access to more information, the consumer is left to try to guess what would be healthiest and what might have lots of hidden calories (like those yogurt-covered nuts might).

I thought it was a great example of how concerns about unhealthy eating habits and obesity are often framed as failures of individual responsibility–people just eat too much and make bad decisions about food. The food industry likes this explanation because it takes the focus off of the types of products it makes available or the responsibility food companies might have for producing healthier options…or at least telling us more openly about what we’re eating. But this framing of the issue ignores the fact that it’s often very difficult to make better eating decisions; nutritional information is often lacking (I have on several occasions asked for nutritional information at restaurants, just out of interest, and usually found that employees have difficulty locating it; in one case they eventually found it posted on a chart hidden by a fake plant), and in other cases there simply aren’t better options (or they’re more expensive than the unhealthy ones). Providing platitudes about “making balanced choices” isn’t that helpful in the absence of specific information about and access to foods that are, you know…balanced.

During World War I and World War II, being German-American in the U.S. became less-than-agreeable.  At that time, due to interpersonal and institutionalized discrimination, many German-Americans actively tried to assimilate into a still-very British America by downplaying their ethnic characteristics.  This cartoon, published in 1921, illustrates how German-Americans attempted to do this and how well-aware the larger society was of their efforts:

(I have long since lost the source on this, but if someone sends one in, I will gladly link to it.)