activism/social movements

First the marketing team for an energy drink out of Poland, called “Black,” hired a Black person, Mike Tyson, to personify its product.  Then, they surround him with White, female models and have the convicted rapist call himself a “beast” that can’t control himself.  Tag lines include “that’s the power of Black” and “Black power.”

So we have, in one ad campaign, the fetishization of Black men, the White supremacist portrayal of White women as the ultimate female, their objectification (see #3, he actually hands one out in the second ad), the trivialization of his crime (he can’t control himself, LOL right!?), the use of animalistic language to refer to Black people, and the appropriation of the Black Power movement.  Anyone see anything else?  Does it matter that this comes out of Poland and not the U.S.?

Thanks to Tom Megginson at Work That Matters for the heads up.

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.

Thanks to YetAnotherGirl and Kari B., we can now feast our eyes on this ad from Unik (“unique”) Wax Center.  It’s a promotion offering 50% off hair waxing for girls “15 and younger.”  The Consumerist reports that all procedures are fair game, including bikini waxes.

The usual concerns regarding the sexualization of young girls apply here.  Why do girls this young need to be concerned about how they look in bikinis?

Perhaps more interesting is the frame for why such a girl might want to undergo waxing. According to the 4th of July-themed ad, it’s to “celebrate freedom and independence.”  Implicitly, hers. So, to follow the logic to its endpoint, a girl of 15 or younger can’t feel free unless she’s hairless.

The company, responding to criticism, gave arguments along these lines.  They framed waxing as a “regular activity” and a “process in life” that “goes along with our country.”  Moms are coming in to get waxed (as all women do), explained the corporate offices, they’re dragging their tweens along with them (obviously), and the girls “have questions” and “get bored,” so the next step is to initiate them into the ritual.

So, the whole process is “natural,” as the ad copy specifies.  It is just an inevitable step in a supposedly universal way of (female) life.  And one that liberates women from… um, I don’t know what… embarrassment, I guess.

The ad is reminiscent of many similar campaigns aimed at adult women, ones that frame consumption of clothes, make-up, jewelry, and cosmetic procedures as expression of freedoms.  In this way, it’s a capitalist appropriation of feminism/liberation ideology.  It’s also a naturalization of what is, in reality, a lifetime of compulsory, expensive, and sometimes harmful beauty practices.

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.

Raised by a racist father, Johnny Lee Clary joined the Klan in 1963 at the age of 14. By 30, he had risen through the ranks and was named the Imperial Wizard, the leader of the entire organization.  He was an outspoken advocate of white supremacy and violence against non-whites, even appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show.

In this four-minute video, he discusses his association with Reverend Wade Watts, a Black civil rights activist and member of the NAACP.  Watts expressed kindness and love towards Clary, even in the face of escalating violence (Clary ultimately set fire to his church).  Deeply affected by Watts, Clary would eventually recant his association with the KKK and join Watts in the fight against racism.

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.

I snapped this photograph of a Make a Wish Foundation advertisement at the Los Angeles International Airport.  The organization aims to grant wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Unfortunately, in this advertisement, they pigeonhole girls into the princess role.  There are five adult males in the ad with the little boy: a soccer player, a surfer, a soldier, a man in a red hat (?), and an astronaut (I’m assuming people imagine there is a man in that space suit). There is one female, and she looks to be a princess.  (Or maybe that’s supposed to be an option for the little boy in the ad? Somehow I don’t think so.)

Meanwhile, Aisha C. sent in this March of Dimes promotion, called “I’m Born To…”  It portrays children, each given a supposedly natural talent (hence, “I’m born to…”).  Each child, though, is attributed a gender stereotypical talent and future:

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 Sociology of Gender textbook, I spend a chapter discussing the idea of institutions.  I define the term as “persistent patterns of social interaction aimed at meeting the needs of a society that can’t easily be met by individuals alone.”  These needs  include educating the next generation, providing health care, ensuring safety, and enabling efficient transportation.  These things are done better and more efficiently if we all chip in and put together a system.

What is interesting about institutions from a sociological perspective is that, once they’re in place, it is essentially impossible to opt out.  You can choose not to buy a car, for example, but the government is still going to spend your tax dollars on highway infrastructure.  You can amass as much medical knowledge and experience as you like, but you’ll still be a criminal if you practice medicine without a licence.  You can believe the government is corrupt and stay home on voting day, but Congress is still going to pass legislation to which you will be held accountable.

You get the picture.

In any case, I thought of this when I came across the striking photography of Eric Valli.  Valli seems to specialize in capturing the lives of people living very close to the earth.  In one series, he follows a group of individuals who have decided to live “off the grid.”  That is, they’ve “unplugged” from the social institutions that sustain us.

The photographs reveal people who are committed to being off the grid. It’s no joke.  And, yet, as I scrolled through them, I couldn’t help to notice how many trappings of the rest of the world were part and parcel of their lives (canoes, coats, oil lamps, cooking and eating utensils, halters, firearms, hot sauce, etc).

I’m not questioning, at all, whether or not these people are off the grid. They certainly appear to be.  But it is interesting to notice how much of the grid is still a part of their lives.

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.

The Fourth Estate has found that the vast majority of people quoted in news coverage of the 2012 election are men.  The media research group collected a sample of election-related news stories from print newspapers and TV broadcasts, finding that 13% of print sources were women (79% were men and 8% were organizations) and 16% of TV sources were women (81% were men and 3% were organizations).

Male dominance was true in all outlets, though Meet the Press and Time Warner stand out as the least disproportionate:

This might be old (though still frustrating) news, except for the fact that the pattern held for issues traditionally considered “women’s”: abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood, and women’s rights (blue is men, pink is women, grey is organizations):

This asymmetry is found across media.  See also our posts on gender and book reviewing, gender and top billing at Paramount pictures, gender and top creatives for family movies, and women as news subjects.

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.

NPR reports that Beef Products Incorporated, the company that makes “finely textured beef” (a chemically-treated paste made from non-muscle cow parts used as a filler in ground beef), will be closing three of its production plants this month.  Dozens of food manufacturers, grocery store chains, restaurants, and school districts have announced they never did or will no longer use the product.  This after just two months of media coverage and activism around the product, kicked off by an ABC News report on March 7th.

The swiftness and sureness of this victory against this product is a testament to the value of the right language and one good image.  In case you haven’t caught on yet, finely textured beef is better known as “pink slime.”  Between that nifty pejorative and images of a long coil of bright pink…substance, which you probably saw, finely textured beef never had a chance.  This is  “mechanically separated chicken” (made with a similar but not identical process); it appears to have become synonymous with pink slime, correctly or no.

This is the power of framing.  The product at issue is not “slime,” it’s cow-part paste.  Of course, it’s not “beef” either, it’s cow-part paste.  Both are discursive frames; it’s a classic “he said, she said” social movement framing battle (along the lines of “life” vs. “choice”).  The outcome of the contest depended, in part, on which language captured the public’s imagination.  And… well… we saw how that went.

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.

The National Bureau of Economic Research recently released a paper by  Emin Dinlersoz and Jeremy Greenwood about unionization in the U.S.. They argue that economic shifts that changed the relative prevalence of different types of occupations partially explain decreasing union membership.

So what occupations are growing, and which are declining? Jordan Weissmann, at The Atlantic, adapted two graphs from the NBER paper that illustrate larger economic changes. Of the twenty fastest-declining occupations (in terms of % decrease), many are factory or industrial production jobs — machine operators of various types fare especially poorly (also, sorry, fellow sociologists):

The color of the graph indicates the level of unionization for each occupation; blue = less than 20%, green = 20-40%, red = over 40%. Nine of these occupations were over 40% unionized; their decline means the loss of many decently-paid jobs that provided benefits to employees without high levels of formal education.

So which occupations are growing, then? Take a look (though note this reflect % change, not overall # of employees):

Notice that top category: numerical control machine operators. Those words reflect a profound shift in manufacturing in the U.S. Numerical control machine operators program and operate computerized machinery, which requires a very different type of human operation than the classic assembly line machinery did — less input of physical labor and more technical management and troubleshooting.

Many of the other fastest-growing occupations require specialized, and often lengthy, higher education or licensing: health-diagnosing practitioners, teachers, scientists, physical therapists, and dentists, for instance. And unionization is consistently low in these types of occupations, contributing to overall declines in the prominence of unions in the U.S. over time.