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In a previous post I embedded a video of a small child worshipping, arguing that it illustrated how children learn “the culturally-specific rules guiding the performance of devotion.”  The video below is a similar case, showing how a young child of about the same age, who has yet to learn to speak, has nonetheless absorbed the rhythms, emotional expression, and gestures customary among preachers in the particular faith in which he is being raised:

Discovered thanks to Dmitriy T.M.

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.

A couple of days ago, Lisa posted about the sexualization of young girls, specifically in a fashion spread in French Vogue. Erica B. found another striking example on the reality show Toddlers & Tiaras, a show about young girls entered in beauty pageants. In this case, 2-year-old Mia’s mother has her perform wearing a tiny version of Madonna’s famous cone-bra bustier from her Blond Ambition tour:

The whole performance (and note the video is titled “Mia Living Doll”):

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For another video of her doing the routine, watch the 2nd video at this Jezebel post.

Meant to reveal the unbearable whiteness of the TV show Friends, this video by The DocFuture Show, is a pretty hilarious account of all of the black characters to ever grace the screen alongside the cast. It’s, um, funny:

Via BoingBoing.

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.

In the article “In Pursuit of the Perfect Penis: The Medicalization of Male Sexuality” (available for free if you search for the title and Tiefer’s name), Leonore Tiefer discusses the way that the increasing attention paid by the medical community to conditions defined as “impotence,” and the way it has become medicalized, requiring any number of surgical, psychological, and/or pharmacological interventions. While some men have undoubtedly benefited, the largest beneficiary is the medical community itself. The broadened definition of what counts as “erectile dysfunction,” for instance, has created a larger market for drugs such as Viagra and Cialis.

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a trailer for the documentary Orgasm Inc., which documents efforts to medicalize “sexual dysfunction” among women. In the 3-minute trailer, we see cultural commentators and doctors discussing the shocking prevalence of sexual problems among women (43%! 83%! It’s an epidemic!) and some potential medical solutions. It’s a fantastic example of the medicalization of sexuality (and pretty safe for work). Enjoy!

In an earlier post we reviewed research by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett showing that income inequality contributes to a whole host of negative outcomes, including higher rates of mental illness, drug use, obesity, infant death, imprisonment, and interpersonal trust.

In the 3 1/2-minute video below, Kate Pickett argues that social inequality causes violence by creating status inequalities that those on the bottom respond to with violence.

Pickett and Wilkinson’s data is striking, but I’m not sure I buy that low status combined with status-sensitivity instigates violence.  Sociologists have made this argument; but others have questioned these conclusions.

Villanova University’s Lance Hannon, for example, tested this “subculture of violence” thesis as applied to poor African Americans. Using police department homicide data, he found no evidence that Black people were more likely than White people to react to an insult with violence.  This is swapping race for class, of course (and Hannon doesn’t control for class because the data was limited), but it does suggest that we should think carefully about the kind of argument Pickett is making.

See Dr. Pickett making similar arguments as to why raising the average national income in developed countries doesn’t make people happier or enable them to live longer and how status inequality increases stress.  And see more about income inequality and national well-being at Equality Trust.

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.

“It is big, it is strange, it is unexpected.”

Schell spends the first six-and-a-half minutes of the lecture below talking about the surprising wins in technology this year.

Club Penguin, a flash game for kids, being bought by Disney for 350 million dollars.

Guitar Hero.

Webkins. “What?” “Really?”

He spends next 22 minutes trying to explain why these games have been so successful. Including:

Anything you spend time on, you start to believe, “This must be worthwhile. Why?  Because I’ve spent time on it.  And therefore it must be worth me kickin’ in 20 bucks because look at the I’ve spent time on it.  And now that I’ve kicked in 20 bucks, it MUST be valuable, because only an idiot would kick in 20 bucks if it wasn’t!”
…

What these all have in common is that these are all busting through to reality… We live in a bubble of fake bullshit and we have this hunger to get to anything that’s real.

…

Pockets turn the law of divergence inside out… remember the swiss army knife! …and this is why everyone hates the ipad.

And then, from about 21 minutes forward, he gives an account of what he thinks the future will look like. It’s, um, chilling.

Enjoy!

See also: Do We Play Farmville Because We’re Polite?

And also, he makes the same point we made in a previous post about how the new Ford Hybrid has made driving green into a game.

Via Text Relations.

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.

Michaela sent in two Australian ads for Selleys sealants. Both target men and caution them about the consequences of neglecting home maintenance projects:

So men who fail to do the type of housework that is consistent with ideals of masculinity — fixing things — face threats to other areas of masculinity as well, since, of course, women (who cannot, themselves, caulk a shower, obviously) will be unable to resist a hot dude who can (and will) fix stuff, thus proving himself to be the ideal man. Who doesn’t love emasculation as a marketing tool?

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

Most of us are clear on the idea that patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women.  In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched and perhaps even superseded by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine.  We know we live in an androcentric society because masculinized things (playing sports, being a doctor, being self-sufficient) are imagined to be good for everyone (we encourage both our sons and daughters to do these things), but feminized things (playing with dolls, being a nurse, and staying at home to raise children) are considered to be good only for women.

This means that men are teased and ostracized for doing feminized things, as we have demonstrated in advertising for McCoy Crisps, Hungry Man, Solo, Chevy, dog food, Miller beer, beef jerky, cell phones, Dockers, the VW Beetle, and alcohol (see here, here, here and here).

This tendency towards androcentrism means, also, that companies can count on both women and men buying masculinized products, but only women buying feminized products.  It’s smart business, then, to masculinize everything.  In a New York Times article, for example, Patton reports that Mercedes masculinized its SLK in response to a finding that “too many” women were buying it, something that threatened to feminize the car:

Mercedes says that 52 percent of the registered owners of first-generation SLK’s are women and 48 percent are men; the company would prefer the figures to be more on the order of 60 percent men and 40 percent women…

The standard thinking in the industry is that lots of women will buy a car that appeals to men, but many men — certainly those who wish to avoid the girlie-men label — won’t buy one associated with women.

This logic helps explain the, admittedly tongue-in-cheek (I think), hyper-masculinization of the Honda Odyssey in this commercial, sent in by Nancy N. She writes:

The choice of the black car, the music, and lighting all direct the viewer to think, “this isn’t just a mini-van, this is a man-van, and you aren’t a pansy if you buy it.”   …[It is] “technology packed “… with distinctly harder edges. Overall, Honda is trying very hard to override the notion of a “mom car” to sell to a broader audience.

See also: “how to give the perfect man hug” and “how I sit on the bus”.  And for more examples of androcentrism, see our posts on the phenomenon in  sports (see here and here), cartoons, schools (see here and here), and Cosmo.

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.