bodies

Victoria and Paul (a sociologist from the University of Turku, Finland) sent in an ad for a woman’s guitar that nicely illustrates the way that we unnecessarily gender size difference.  The Daisy Rock ad specifies that the guitar is “lighter weight,” with a “slimmer neck,” and designed exclusively for women:

On the one hand, this guitar may be great for women who are on the smaller side.  In that sense, a smaller guitar may make it easier for more women to play guitar.

On the other hand, size is only related to gender, it’s not synonymous with gender.  There are women who are built in such a way as to make a traditional guitar perfect.  And there are men on the smaller side who may also benefit from a guitar built for slighter frames. The mistake is to suggest that small = female and large = male.  In contrast to this girl-only company, one that simply offered guitars in different sizes would be embracing of both women and the 1/2 of guys on the smaller side of the bell curve.

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 Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery, Kathy Davis upended the common sense view that people undergo plastic surgery because they want to be beautiful or handsome.  Instead, she found that most people sought cosmetic correction because they felt ugly or strange.  They didn’t want to be great-looking, or even good-looking, they wanted to be normal, unremarkable, to blend in with the crowd.

I thought of Davis’ book when I scrolled through Zed Nelson‘s photographic commentary on beauty, Love Me, sent in by zeynaparsel.  There’s a lot to see there, but here I’ve pulled out some of the pictures that I think resonate with Davis’ findings.

“I’m competing with men 20 years younger than me.”

“To be honest I never thought that I needed it [labiaplasty]. But I read about the procedure in a magazine.”

“Men’s Health magazine (USA) hasn‘t had a hairy chest on it’s cover since 1995.”  

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 1922 the American Social Hygiene Association, funded by the American Public Health Service, created a social marketing campaign aimed at American teenagers. While it was predominantly about sexually transmitted infections, it also taught about good health and hygiene in general. And maintaining health, then as now, is not only about health but also about conforming to social norms–especially gender norms.

The posters aimed at boys were titled “Keeping Fit”:

And the girls’ posters were titled “Youth and Life”:

Comparing the boys and girls’ posters, you can see that fitness is not just about physical health; it is also about particular character traits. For boys, those traits are will power, courage, and self-control–traits that are based on a puritan work ethic that we value in a competitive capitalist society.

While courage and endurance were important for both boys and girls, fitness for girls was less about power and self-control, and more about grace, beauty, and friendship.

TEXT:

Paint your cheeks from the inside out. Outdoor exercise, baths, regular meals, and plenty of sleep will help. Most girls could be prettier than they are because most girls could be healthier.

TEXT:

Copy the pose but not the shoes. Correct posture gives attractive figure, straight back, freedom of action for heart and lungs, good muscle tone. Stand tall — chest up, not out — toes straight forward when walking or standing. A well-poised body develops self-respect, and wins the regard of others.

Men were taught how to grow up to be honorable husbands and fathers, while women were taught how to grow up to be good wives and mothers.

For boys:

TEXT:

The youth who achieves self-control can go joyfully and clean into marriage with the one girl he is willing to wait for, and become a husband and father without the danger of causing suffering to wife and child.

For girls:

TEXT:

A woman physician who is also a mother. The girl of today will be the woman of tomorrow. She will need brains, vitality, and sound training, if she is to take her place in the world as a mother and a useful citizen.

It may be tempting to think that we know more now than we did back then and that with progress we make fewer mistakes today than they did in the past. However, controversy surrounding many health topics such as obesity, circumcision, and the way we screen, treat, and fundraise for breast cancer should tell you that we still have many assumptions behind our health recommendations that are based on ideology.

The posters are held at the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries

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Christina Barmon is a doctoral student at Georgia State University studying sociology and gerontology.

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At his great blog, Work that Matters, Tom Megginson highlighted a pretty stunning commercial.  In it, a woman in a dilapidated mansion looks disgustedly at a mildly repulsive carpet covering a giant room. She resigns herself to pulling it up, revealing a smooth hardwood floor beneath. And she hauls the mass of fibers to the street, only to return to a room newly covered again.

It’s a metaphor for the Sisyphean task of hair removal, of course. So what’s the solution? Well, it’s not rejecting the obviously unrealistic task of being female and hair-free. No. The solution is laser hair removal.

*I stole this fantastic title from Tom.

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 a recent interview at The Consensual Project, I was asked if I’d ever seen any “…videos, images, or sound bites that have provided [me] with valuable sexual health information.” I recounted this experience:

There is one video I saw, when I was about 21, that stands out in my mind even today…  The filmmaker asked about 40 women to stand naked, side-by-side, on the edge of a stage.  The camera captured the appearance of their bodies from about the neck to the knees, no faces, just bodies. (I don’t know if it was ever publicly available, but if anyone can send it to me, I’d be thrilled.)

Think about how rarely you actually see a new (near-)naked body that is not a model or the equivalent (actress etc).  With new sexual partners, perhaps.  And if you’re straight, this is (probably mostly) going to be the body of the other sex.  At the gym perhaps?  But you’re not supposed to look, so you probably don’t look closely.  I realized when I saw this video (it probably lasted all of two minutes), that I had never really seen women’s bodies outside of the mass media. I didn’t know what women’s bodies looked like.  And I had been comparing my body to that of actresses and models.  I realized that day that things about my body that I thought were horrible deformities were completely normal.  Even though the bodies in that video were all different, they were also very similar, and my body looked just like theirs in some cumulative way.  From that point on, I knew I wasn’t gross.  A simple lesson.  And so important, but a really hard one to encounter in a powerful way.

I was reminded of this story when I saw a photograph by Spencer Tunick.  Tunick specializes is getting large numbers of naked people together, arranging them, and taking pictures.  Most of them seem more polished than raw, but this one, featured at BoingBoing, seems to reveal bodies in some of their variety and similarity simultaneously.  It’s worth a good long look at each body; each is a precious point of push back against mass media’s representation of the female form.

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.

Sociology PhD candidate Kjerstin Gruys recently guest posted about her effort to shun mirrors for one year in the hopes of improving her body image.  As any really interesting and challenging project should, it’s begun to get some major media coverage, including a story at Yahoo News.  When a political project starts getting mass media attention, though, it risks being contextualized and even co-opted by the status quo.  This is a case in point.

Interspersed among the article about Gruys’ project are links, an effort on the part of the website to get readers to spend more time on its pages and the pages of its advertisers.  These are probably randomly generated according to the content of the article.  So, since Gruys’ project is about her feelings about her body and avoiding mirrors for six months before and after her wedding day, the links center around beauty and weddings.  The first two links nestled in among the first few paragraphs read “Are you Satisfied with Your Face?” and “A Wedding Dress to Fit Your Body Shape.”

By publicizing her project, Kjerstin is trying to make the personal political.  But one of the only means of drawing awareness to her work includes losing control of how it’s talked about and delivered.  While she wants women to feel better about themselves, and some may be inspired by her project, in some ways this is also another instance of the mass media reminding women to think about the appearance of their face and body. The inserted links, further, can be read as upholding the very standards that Gruys is trying to combat.  And in at least some cases, they do. The “Are you Satisfied with Your Face?” link, in this vein, goes to a site sponsored by super-beauty project corporation L’Oreal.

Thanks to my student, Kirsten Easton, for sending along this link!

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 years ago we posted a series of weight gain ads from the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.  Yes, weight gain ads.  Say it a few times, see how it rolls unfamiliarly around your tongue.  If you consume popular culture, it’s rare to come across anyone suggesting that there’s such a thing as women who are too skinny. Quite the opposite. Yet, during the middle decades of the 1900s, being too skinny was a problem that women worried about.  And Wate-On was there to help them achieve the “glamorous curves” of “popular” girls.

Jeremiah gave us a great excuse to re-post this already-posted material.  He sent in an ad for Wate-On featuring Raquel Welch:

There are interesting conversations to be had here.  Is pressure to be full-figured any different than pressure to be thin? It’s just another kind of pressure to conform to a particular kind of body.  Is the mid-century ideal different than the contemporary ideal of “curvy” women? In other words, are these women any less thin, or any less hourglass-figured, than the supposedly curvy icons of today: Beyonce, JLo, etc?  Are there any products for women who think they are too skinny today?  Can we make an interesting comparison between the capitalist and the medical solution to “too skinny”?  Other thoughts?

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Julie C. found this ad in a newspaper from the 1960s:

The text:

“If skinny, thin and underweight take improved WATE-ON to help put on pounds and inches of firm, healthy looking flesh. WATE-ON supplies weight gaining calories plus vitamins, minerals, protein and other beneficial nutrients. Clinically tested. Fast weight gains 4, 6, 10… as much as 20 and 30 pounds have been reported. No over-eating. Helps make bustline, cheeks, arms, legs fill out, helps put firm solid flesh on skinny figures all over body. Helps fight fatigue, low resistance, sleeplessness and nervousness that so often accompany underweight. Underweight children and convalescents can take WATE-ON. It’s a clinically tested, pleasant formula sold around the world. Buy some today and start putting on weight FAST. Satisfaction from 1st bottle or price refunded. At drug stores everywhere.”

Another (year unknown, found here):

Taylor D. sent in this add for Wate-On (found here), which targets African American women:

Here’s another brand for a similar product from 1943:

Text:

Girls with “Naturally Skinny” Figures …AMAZED AT THIS ENTIRELY NEW WAY TO ADD 5 LBS. OF SOLID FLESH IN 1 WEEK…OR NO COST!

New Natural Mineral Concentrate From the Sea, Rich in FOOD IODINE, Building Up Weak, Rundown Men and Women Everywhere.

THOUSANDS of thin, pale, rundown folks–and even “Naturally Skinny” men and women–are amazed at this new, easy way to put on healthy needed pounds quickly. Gains of 15 to 20 lbs. in one month–5 lbs. in one week–are reported regularly.

Kelp-a-Malt, the new mineral concentrate from the sea–gets right down to the cause of thin, underweight conditions and adds weight through a “3 ways in one” natural process.

First, its rich supply of easily assimilable minerals nourish the digestive glands, which produce the juices that alone enable you to digest the fats and starches, the weight-making elements in your daily diet. Second, Kelp-a-Malt provides an amazingly effective digestive substance which actually digests 4 times its own weight of the flesh-building foods you eat. Third, Kelp-a-Malt’s natural FOOD IODINE stimulates and nourishes the internal glands which control assimilation–the process of converting digested food into firm flesh, new strength and energy. Three Kelp-a-Malt tablets contain more iron and copper than a pound of spinach or 7-1/2 lbs. of fresh tomatoes; more calcium than 6 eggs; more phosphorous than 1-1/2 lbs. carrots; more FOOD IODINE than 1600 lbs. of beef.

Try Kelp-a-Malt for a single week and notice the difference–how much better you sleep, how firm flesh appears in place of scrawny hollows” and the new energy and strength it brings you! Prescribed and used by physicians, Kelp-a-Malt is fine for children, too–improves their appetities. Remember the name, Kelp-a-Malt, the original and genuine kelp and malt tablets. There is nothing else like them, so don’t accept imitations and substitutes. Try Kelp-a-Malt today, and if you don’t gain at least 5 lbs. of good, firm flesh in 1 week, the trial is free. 100 jumbo size tablets, 4 to 5 times the size of ordinary tablets, cost but little. Sold at all good drug, stores. If your dealer has not yet received his supply, send $1.00 for special introductory size bottle of 65 tablets to address below.

Vintage Ads posted another example:

Text:

If you are a normal healthy, underweight person and are ashamed of your skinny, scrawny figure, NUMAL may help you add pounds and pounds of firm, attractive flesh to your figure.

For NUMAL, a doctor-approved formula, contains essential minerals and vitamins that may aid your appetite. Then you eat more and enjoy what you eat. But that isn’t all. NUMAL contains a food element which is also a great help in putting on weight. So don’t let them snicker at your skinny, scrawny figure. A skinny, scarecrow figure is neither fashionable nor glamorous. Remember, the girls with the glamorous curves get the dates.
So start NUMAL today…

Lauren McGuire spotted this ad (at Vintage Ads, via 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.

Erg. Ugh. Just…[cringe]. That is my reaction upon seeing a clip (first posted at Jezebel), sent in by Dmitriy T.M., of a segment from a recent episode of the reality show Bachelor Pad. The show is a spinoff of the popular shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, consisting initially of 20 former contestants from those two shows, one of whom is voted off by the rest of the cast each week. This week, the contestants indicated their votes for who should leave by getting to anonymously throw paint-filled “eggs” at others’ backs. But in case that wasn’t sufficiently humiliating, the host also had contestants throw eggs in response to the question “Who are you least attracted to?” Here’s the segment with the women:

It’s a depressing illustration of the current TV obsession with public humiliation and bullying as entertainment. It’s hard not to feel for Erica as she stands there feeling each successive hit, being publicly held up as the least desirable woman there. But her response is also revealing; it exemplifies the way women are encouraged to think of themselves as being in competition. At 2:54 Erica talks about the experience and the difficulty of having a body that, while appearing incredibly thin to me, in that environment qualifies as notably curvaceous.

But in her ability to defend herself and push back against the judgments of others, she falls back on a common strategy: not questioning the standards of beauty themselves, but simply trying to refocus them, in this case (at about 3:05) pointing to another woman who is “way bigger” and not “that pretty.” The result is to reaffirm both the idea that body size is an objective and essential measure of attractiveness (so being bigger automatically should make you less attractive than a smaller woman) and that women’s self-esteem and resistance to negative judgments of their own attractiveness must come at the expense of other women, with whom them are always, and inevitably, in competition.