bodies

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu popularized the notion of the habitus. The term refers to both the knowledges and physicalities that maintain distinctions between groups (examples in a sec). It’s a great concept for helping us understand the reproduction of class differences without relying strictly on economics. It takes more than money to make money, it also takes knowing the right things, the right people, and the right way to act.

The habitus, then, is one way to show that you “belong” to the group. Imagine being on a really fancy job interview for a really fancy job. Can you talk knowledgably about what vintage of which wine was really excellent in any given year? Do you know which fork is the salad fork? What parts of your body are allowed on the table? When? How quickly do you eat? What is the sign that you are finished with your food?

People who grow up in wealthy families that prioritize these things tend to absorb this knowledge naturally while growing up, just as a kid who grows up on a farm knows how to wrassle a lamb for fixin,’ mend a barbed wire fence, and spot a good steer at the auction. Both of these types of knowledges are useful, but they don’t transfer; my colleagues, for example, are forever unimpressed that I can tell the breed of most horses just by looking.

In any case, while these examples refer to class and rural or urban upbringings, Missives from Marx offered a great example of the habitus as a marker of religious belonging.

In the video below, made by evangelicals, the evangelical habitus is satirized. “Lost at an evangelical meeting?” the video asks, “Here’s how to do evangelicalism!”

* Title, post idea, and video stolen from Missives From Marx.

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.

Andrea t. B. sent in some photos released by Britney Spears from a series she did for Candies.  Below, you can see the images side-by-side, before and after retouching, and get a sense of just how impossibly perfect our physical role models are made to be:

(From the Daily Mail.)

Jessica Simpson also appears on the cover of May’s Marie Claire without makeup:

I spoke with a reporter at the Associated Press yesterday who asked me if releasing photos without retouching or being photographed with out makeup was a trend.

Gwen and I agreed that, yes, it is a trend… but only insofar as the rules against doing so are so powerful that even a handful of female celebrities going sans makeup or retouching makes it SO AMAZING.  In reality, what’s so amazing about this trend is that these women are choosing to release these photos.  Photos of Simpson and Spears looking less than perfect are all over the internet, thanks to paparazzi.  So it’s not as if un-retouched or unflattering pictures of these celebrities are anything new… it’s the voluntariness of the releases that is so fascinating.

The romantic might say that they really want to be role models for young girls.   The cynic, however (e.g., me and Gwen), might suggest that there are ways that the might benefit from the release of these images.  In both cases, this could be interpreted as an excellent career move.

Simpson has a new show, The Price of Beauty, questioning the cultural construction of beauty (with questionable success).  So her photo shoot is likely a way to gain publicity for her program.

Spears’ motivation is less clear.   On the one hand, she can claim the romantic narrative and gain the respect and admiration of (more) fans. On the other hand, some of the attention to those (often awful) paparazzi pictures may be displaced by these pictures.  The truth is that she has a lot more control over these non-retouched photos than she does the candid shots.  In the photos above, she has been made up by professional make up and hair artists and she is being shot by a professional photographer with perfect lighting and excellent instruction.  She is also having these photos taken at the height of her fitness when her career is back on track  instead of at a low point (psychologically, physically, and career-wise).  So, given that all those truly unflattering photos are out there, these really re-represent the “real” Spears.  They may draw just a bit of attention away from those images of her bald and attacking a car with an umbrella.

Of course, the motivations of Spears and Simpson, as well as the rationales of those in charge of their images, is left mysterious.  What do you think?  How much of this is about being an excellent role model?  What else might be driving their decisions to take the risk of appearing without make up or retouching?

More discussion and examples of re-touching can be found through our retouch tag.

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 photo below was submitted to Fail Blog as a failure of communication:

In English adjectives come after before the noun that they modify such that, the way this is written, it reads as if there is a “big black reward” for the finder of the “lost dog” instead of a “reward” for the finder of the “big black dog.”

So this is funny, right?

It’s not simply funny because of the grammar mix up, it’s funny because “big” and “black,” when put together, have a particular connotation. We live in a society in which those words often go together because we stereotype black men as having large penises and being, generally, large.

The fact that the grammar mistake is humorous, then, relies specifically on this stereotype… so it’s nice evidence that the stereotype is real. The sign simply would not have the same impact if it read “Lost Dog Big White Reward” or “Lost Dog Big Yellow Reward.”

Fail Blog, via Dr. Grumpy.

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.

Get rid of it so that she will love you completely and without reserve (so long as you remain physically perfect):

Thanks to Marie-Claire for sending this in!

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.

When American figure skater Evan Lysacek won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, he was the only man on the podium who had not attempted a quadruple jump in either of his two skating programs. The silver medalist, 2006 Olympic Champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia, was quick to point out that “a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn’t do a quad, well I don’t know… Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing.” Plushenko’s website later proclaimed (though the claim was soon redacted) that his superior performance had earned him a “platinum” medal. Figure skaters and others who heard his comment understood this wasn’t just sour grapes; by questioning Lysacek’s jumping ability, Plushenko was also questioning his manhood.

As Daniel, a former singles and pairs skater, knows from personal experience, when you look below the surface of figure skating, a coded gendering of the sport emerges. Figure skating has both athletic and artistic components, and traditionally these have been apportioned to men and women, respectively. Men are expected to be able to land enormous jumps. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to grab one of their feet and pull it up behind their heads, sometimes while spinning fast enough to set off a nose-bleed, as Mirai Nagasu did in Vancouver. Women’s programs also emphasize a great deal of emotion when they skate, while men are expected to display their athletic strength and power.

This is not to say that women are not expected to jump or that men can be soulless automata, but there are lower expectations for each in the other gender’s territory. A male skater who doesn’t emote passionately can be forgiven if he has a fantastic triple axel, and a woman can even win the Olympics with jumps that aren’t fully rotated. Artistry and flexibility are where women are expected to excel, while boys strive to jump higher and rotate more. To this day, only one woman (Japan’s Miki Ando) has landed a clean quadruple jump in competition, while it has become a mainstay of men’s event. This video shows Ando’s jump, at a 2002 competition:

In the aftermath of his silver platinum silver medal finish in Vancouver, Plushenko questioned the qualifications of Evan Lysacek to win gold without a quad. Aside from being poor sportsmanship, his approach highlighted the deep association of jumps with male figure skating. Though, in the women’s event, Mao Asada completed the technically difficult triple axel on three separate occasions, no fuss was made over her second-place finish behind the ethereal Kim Yu-Na. Kim has strong jumps, to be sure, but what sets her apart from her competitors is that she skates in a way that is graceful, balletic and undeniably feminine.

Ironically, one of the most promising things about a young Evgeni Plushenko when he arrived on the international skating scene in 1997 was his blending of artistry and athleticism. His style was avant-garde and overwrought, and his jumps were magnificent; he had, in skating parlance,”the whole package.” It might seem excessive to map gender onto his performances, but he is famous for being one of the only men to perform the Biellmann spin, in which the skater grabs the blade of one skate and pulls it up behind the top of his or her head.

This was a clear and unabashed case of gender-bending, as the spin had previously been the province of women. The figure skating world, after being sufficiently impressed by the flexibility of his hips, shrugged and moved on. No one thought any less of him for doing a “girly” spin.

Compare this to the skating world’s reaction to two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, who was often said to skate “like a man.” Witt had big jumps (and big thighs to go with them), and skated to the soundtracks of epic movies, a practice that was usually reserved for men, while other women tended to skate to classical ballet suites. Witt’s artistic style was also not typical of women skaters: while her competitors demonstrated flowing, balletic arm movements to match their floaty chiffon skating dresses, Witt opted for stronger, cleaner arm movements and famously skated in leggings and a tunic in a program set to music from Robin Hood. She also skated with a stoic bearing that was similar to that of Canadian Elvis Stojko, who won the silver medal in Lillehammer in 1994.

Despite the popular perception of figure skating as a uniformly “girly” sport, there exists within the figure skating world a unique and nuanced code for constructing and understanding gender. In the figure skating world, as in the rest of our culture, that code changes over time, with different representations of masculinity and femininity being rewarded, marked down, or phased out entirely as the sport evolves. And as Plushenko’s comments about Lysacek demonstrated, figure skating’s coding of gender can be invoked by skaters trash-talking their rivals in subtle, but complicated, ways. As yet, Plushenko has made no comment on Lysacek’s upcoming appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it’s not hard to imagine what he might have to say.

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Chloe Angyal is a Contributor at Feministing.com, where she writes about gender in popular culture. She is also a failed figure skater. Daniel Eison is a former nationally-ranked pairs and singles skater who retired in 2005. He is not a failed feminist.

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Gender differences in figure skating are also institutionalized in the form of costume requirements. Women are required to wear dresses, while men are not allowed to wear leggings or sleeveless outfits.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff says,

This isn’t true anymore; “this rule was repealed in 2004, allowing women to wear tights, trousers, or unitards” [1] ([1] http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/faq/rules.shtml)

Thanks for the correction!

Related posts: Johnny Weir and Canadian skating gets tough.

Kevin, XM, and Laura let me know about an interesting article in the Guardian about acceptable vocabulary in tampon commercials. Kotex recently came out with a new ad campaign that makes fun of some of the usual tropes of tampon commercials–the euphemisms, the dancing around in fields of flowers, and so on. The ads also address the embarrassment or discomfort many people feel about tampons.

In this spot from the Kotex website, a guy asks for help picking tampons for his girlfriend:

Here’s one commercial intended for TV that parodies tampon commercials in general:

The original version didn’t go over well, apparently, and several TV networks rejected the commercial. From the NYT via Gawker:

Merrie Harris, global business director at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in advertising by three broadcast networks, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead saying “down there,” which was rejected by two of the three networks. (Both Ms. Harris and representatives from the brand declined to specify the networks.)

So a TV commercial poking fun of the euphemisms in tampon commercials is rejected by not being euphemistic enough…and apparently even the phrase “down there” is too specific. We can talk about erectile dysfunction or leaky bladders, but “down there” just crosses a line.

Related posts: tampons are modern, Tampax ad features menstruating teen male, concerns about tampons and virginity, weird Australian tampon ad, and tampons and female workers during World War II.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Crossposted at Jezebel.

My friend Larry Harnisch at The Daily Mirror found this gem, published in the Los Angeles Mirror News on March 21 1960:

A clearer photo:

That’s right: this woman’s body was so distracting to male students that it required intervention by school officials or campus discipline would break down. And the intervention wasn’t to tell men to grow up and stop ogling their female classmates, of course, but to ask her to make herself less visible.

I’m sure the muu-muu fixed everything, though.

The next year she competed in a  beauty contest sponsored by the Young Democrats.

These aren’t really boobs, but they still may not be safe for work. So, after the jump…

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