In this video they posted at Feministing, Chloe and Samhita discuss Sex and the City 2. Enjoy!
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This being the opening weekend for Sex and the City 2, it seems like a perfect time for this video of sociologist Tracy Scott, from Emory University, discussing the cultural impact and contradictions of the SATC franchise. Enjoy!
Thanks to Nicole J. for sending it in!
K. sent in a trailer for a new comedy called Outsourced. In it, a white call center manager is sent to India to manage a company full of Indian workers who take orders for gag items (including jingle jugs). I think the it is both troubling and promising at the same time. My thoughts after the trailer:
On the one hand, a lot of prior experience and several aspects of this trailer make me worry that this show is going to capitalize on negative stereotypes of Indians, especially ones that suggest that they are goofy and nerdy and are hilariously unfamiliar (e.g., “stupid” names and “scary” food)… with a handful of stereotypes about Americans thrown in for good measure. The show threatens to reaffirm a binary where the U.S. and India are completely different in every way.
On the other hand, I am encouraged by the fact that the show includes a wide range of Indian characters. In some cases, our stereotypes are upset by traits that Americans are conditioned not to expect in Indians (such as the guy who likes to dance); in other cases, characteristics are clearly attributed to individuals instead of “Indians” (such as the girl who is afraid to talk). Further, it becomes clear in the trailer that the employees in the manager’s office are misfits because they’re misfits, not because they’re Indian. The competitor call center employees are not misfits at all. They are clearly super-effective and excellently-trained (though, perhaps, also Westernized). The ridiculousness of the main ensemble cast, then, isn’t attributed to their Indianness per se.
So, yes, I fear that this is going to be a show that makes (white) Americans laugh by suggesting that Indians are dorky and weird. At the same time, I see promise in a show that actually casts Indians as individuals instead of representatives of their nation/race.
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.
We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework. The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.” Ah-mazing. The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.
And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.
For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.
See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.
Hat tip to Jezebel.
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.
This was originally posted at Jezebel by Lindsay Robertson. Thanks to Chloe A. at Feministing for drawing our attention to it as a possible cross-post!
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Last night, ABC used hidden cameras and actors to see what regular people would do if they saw an obviously abused woman being harassed by her boyfriend. A lot of regular people failed the test.
The highly-successful 20/20 spinoff What Would You Do? brings social experiments to television, using variables to test how ordinary people react to situations such as seeing someone steal a bike in a park, or witnessing a deli clerk give a blind man incorrect change. Lately, the show has been raising the stakes, and last night reporter John Quiñones showed us what restaurant diners do when they see a very obviously bruised woman getting picked on by her boyfriend at a nearby table.
As they often do, the producers used different variables to see if they changed the outcome, staging the scene with both white and African American actor “couples” to see if race affected bystanders’ willingness to step in. In both cases, the actresses were helped by fellow diners (though fewer men got involved with the African American couple):
But then they tried a different variable: the women’s clothing. When the same actresses dressed “provocatively,” and we’re talking clothing that’s pretty average for a Saturday night, not Julia Roberts’ blue-and-white monokini-thing in Pretty Woman, nobody came to their rescue. Diners complained to the staff that the couple were “upsetting customers” and one man told the abusive boyfriend actor that the two were “embarrassing themselves as a couple,” but nothing like what happened when the women were dressed conservatively occurred in this case, and in fact, two middle-aged female witnesses joked with each other about the beaten-up woman being a prostitute.
While obviously the show is highly unscientific (notice that in the second video, the white actor is inexplicably dressed up in a suit) and meant for entertainment, it can’t be a bad thing to force viewers to think about issues such as racism or domestic violence. Maybe the next time they see someone being abused, they’ll be more likely to step up. (After all, they might be on TV!)
What Would You Do? [ABC]
Send an email to Lindsay Robertson, the author of this post, at lindsay@lindsayism.com.
This cute two-minute video explains it:
Feminist Frequency, via my friend Ronke O.
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.
Michelle R. sent in a segment from CNN that asks children to associate positive or negative attributes with various skin tones, much like a famous 1940s experiment that asked children which doll they preferred. The original experiment, and recreations since then, have found that children of all races tend to view lighter-skinned dolls or images more positively (prettier, smarter, more desirable as a classmate) than darker-skinned ones, and to believe that adults do so as well (sorry for the ads before each segment).
Anderson Cooper then talks to some of the children about their answers:
It’s fascinating that kids pick up on competing cultural themes and use them in their answers — that is, skin color isn’t supposed to matter and you judge people as individuals, but people still do care about skin color. And they all agree that the “good” skin color (from their own perspective or what they think adults prefer) is lighter. And to hear a girl refer to her own skin color as “nasty”…heartbreaking.
NEW! (May ’10): Alex P., Dimitriy T.M., and Abeer K. sent in a final segment, in which a parent reacts to her child’s preferences:
Related posts: another recreation, and the original study.
This being the opening weekend for Sex and the City 2, it seems like a perfect time for this video of sociologist Tracy Scott, from Emory University, discussing the cultural impact and contradictions of the SATC franchise. Enjoy!
Thanks to Nicole J. for sending it in!
K. sent in a trailer for a new comedy called Outsourced. In it, a white call center manager is sent to India to manage a company full of Indian workers who take orders for gag items (including jingle jugs). I think the it is both troubling and promising at the same time. My thoughts after the trailer:
On the one hand, a lot of prior experience and several aspects of this trailer make me worry that this show is going to capitalize on negative stereotypes of Indians, especially ones that suggest that they are goofy and nerdy and are hilariously unfamiliar (e.g., “stupid” names and “scary” food)… with a handful of stereotypes about Americans thrown in for good measure. The show threatens to reaffirm a binary where the U.S. and India are completely different in every way.
On the other hand, I am encouraged by the fact that the show includes a wide range of Indian characters. In some cases, our stereotypes are upset by traits that Americans are conditioned not to expect in Indians (such as the guy who likes to dance); in other cases, characteristics are clearly attributed to individuals instead of “Indians” (such as the girl who is afraid to talk). Further, it becomes clear in the trailer that the employees in the manager’s office are misfits because they’re misfits, not because they’re Indian. The competitor call center employees are not misfits at all. They are clearly super-effective and excellently-trained (though, perhaps, also Westernized). The ridiculousness of the main ensemble cast, then, isn’t attributed to their Indianness per se.
So, yes, I fear that this is going to be a show that makes (white) Americans laugh by suggesting that Indians are dorky and weird. At the same time, I see promise in a show that actually casts Indians as individuals instead of representatives of their nation/race.
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.
We’ve posted many times on the way that cleaning is gendered feminine in a way that makes women ultimately responsible for housework. The Today segment embedded below, however, does not suggest that cleaning is a feminine task. Instead, it turns the tables by arguing that men are better at cleaning and that women need to learn how to “Clean Like a Man.” Ah-mazing. The second cleaning is framed as masculine, it becomes a story about men’s superiority over women.
And, of course, for men cleaning is a war (“Gather the troops,” “Establish a plan of attack,” “Plan the victory party”) and women reward themselves by drinking white wine, playing music, and watching a chick flick.
For examples of how women are responsible for the home, see help cleaning, Olympic laundry, this KFC advertisement offering moms a night off, this a commercial montage, Italian dye ad with a twist, women love to clean, homes of the future, what’s for dinner, honey?, who buys for the family, liberation through quick meals, “give it to your wife,” so easy a mom can do it, men are useless, and my husband’s an ass.
See also our historical examples of the social construction of housework: husbands “help” wives by buying machines, gadgets replace slaves, feminism by whirlpool.
Hat tip to Jezebel.
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.
This was originally posted at Jezebel by Lindsay Robertson. Thanks to Chloe A. at Feministing for drawing our attention to it as a possible cross-post!
————————————
Last night, ABC used hidden cameras and actors to see what regular people would do if they saw an obviously abused woman being harassed by her boyfriend. A lot of regular people failed the test.
The highly-successful 20/20 spinoff What Would You Do? brings social experiments to television, using variables to test how ordinary people react to situations such as seeing someone steal a bike in a park, or witnessing a deli clerk give a blind man incorrect change. Lately, the show has been raising the stakes, and last night reporter John Quiñones showed us what restaurant diners do when they see a very obviously bruised woman getting picked on by her boyfriend at a nearby table.
As they often do, the producers used different variables to see if they changed the outcome, staging the scene with both white and African American actor “couples” to see if race affected bystanders’ willingness to step in. In both cases, the actresses were helped by fellow diners (though fewer men got involved with the African American couple):
But then they tried a different variable: the women’s clothing. When the same actresses dressed “provocatively,” and we’re talking clothing that’s pretty average for a Saturday night, not Julia Roberts’ blue-and-white monokini-thing in Pretty Woman, nobody came to their rescue. Diners complained to the staff that the couple were “upsetting customers” and one man told the abusive boyfriend actor that the two were “embarrassing themselves as a couple,” but nothing like what happened when the women were dressed conservatively occurred in this case, and in fact, two middle-aged female witnesses joked with each other about the beaten-up woman being a prostitute.
While obviously the show is highly unscientific (notice that in the second video, the white actor is inexplicably dressed up in a suit) and meant for entertainment, it can’t be a bad thing to force viewers to think about issues such as racism or domestic violence. Maybe the next time they see someone being abused, they’ll be more likely to step up. (After all, they might be on TV!)
What Would You Do? [ABC]
Send an email to Lindsay Robertson, the author of this post, at lindsay@lindsayism.com.
This cute two-minute video explains it:
Feminist Frequency, via my friend Ronke O.
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.
Michelle R. sent in a segment from CNN that asks children to associate positive or negative attributes with various skin tones, much like a famous 1940s experiment that asked children which doll they preferred. The original experiment, and recreations since then, have found that children of all races tend to view lighter-skinned dolls or images more positively (prettier, smarter, more desirable as a classmate) than darker-skinned ones, and to believe that adults do so as well (sorry for the ads before each segment).
Anderson Cooper then talks to some of the children about their answers:
It’s fascinating that kids pick up on competing cultural themes and use them in their answers — that is, skin color isn’t supposed to matter and you judge people as individuals, but people still do care about skin color. And they all agree that the “good” skin color (from their own perspective or what they think adults prefer) is lighter. And to hear a girl refer to her own skin color as “nasty”…heartbreaking.
NEW! (May ’10): Alex P., Dimitriy T.M., and Abeer K. sent in a final segment, in which a parent reacts to her child’s preferences:
Related posts: another recreation, and the original study.