bodies

Elizabeth H. sent in the trailer for the movie Precious (based on the novel Push), which should be released later this year:

As Elizabeth says,

It seems to reinforce…negative associations [of] underclass or working class African-Americans: poor education, single motherhood, teenage pregnancy, abuse, child obesity, etc.

The trailer brings up some interesting issues about skin color as well. Precious’s desire for a light-skinned boyfriend highlights the emphasis placed on skin color as a measure of attractiveness: a light-skinned boyfriend would indicate her own success in the world, just as fame and wealth would. Elizabeth points out that all the “good” adult characters are light-skinned (and thin) as well.

Also see our posts on kids’ perceptions of skin color and attractiveness, an ad for skin lightener, a club letting light-skinned girls in for free, Malaysian anti-racism parody of skin lightening cream ad, and an ad that shows darker skin as more exciting.

Penny R. sent in this picture from c1943.  In it, two women model newly designed safety gear for working women.  The woman on the right is wearing a plastic bra designed to protect her breasts from “occupational accidents.”  Don’t worry fellas, the “girls” will be safe!

From commenter, Sanguinity, who seems to know what s/he is talking about:

I couldn’t say, not without knowing what the job in question was, what the job’s hazards, why the employer went for protective equipment instead of changing the job, nor when (or if!) breast protectors were required (as opposed to being requested by the employees).

(And frankly, those answers would only help me judge whether were useful from today’s perspective. The methods of occupational safety have changed hugely since the 1940s; quite a lot of what was common safety practice in the ’40s would be unacceptable today. Even if breast protectors for a given job wouldn’t pass muster today, they might very well have been useful then, within the context of acceptable safety practices of the day.)

No, what’s unusual about this photo to me, as a safety professional, is that they were willing to consider issuing sex-specific safety equipment at all. Nowadays, creating and maintaining sex-specific safety regs looks very much like sexual discrimination, and can easily cross the line into outright discrimination if you’re not thinking about it very carefully. (Not to mention: who’s going to check under these women’s coveralls to make sure they’re wearing their required protective equipment, assuming breast protectors are required?) Nah, even if initial analysis indicated that breast protectors would be reasonable/useful for a given job, any contemporary safety pro worth his or her salt is gonna work pretty hard to find another way to do things.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Months ago Ryan emailed us about a video game called Katawa Shouju (sometimes translated as Disabled Girls or Crippled Heart). From the website:

Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends—and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right.

A design sketch of the girls:

An article at GameSetWatch refers to the game having a “perverse and contemptible premise.”

Ryan says,

A lot of the discussion about this game seems to be about the disabilities of the girls and how disgusting it is. I don’t really share that opinion personally…I don’t really see what’s wrong with casting a girl with burn scars on her face as a love interest within a game. Or for that matter , what’s wrong with casting a girl with no legs or deformed arms as a love interest? I mean, it’s one thing to fetishize…but on the other hand it might be good for someone who has similar disabilities to feel like they can be desirable.

It’s an interesting point. I suspect there are things about the video game I would find disturbing, and if the girls are portrayed in a ridiculing way, that’s problematic. But some of the reactions to it seem to assume that having a person with a disability as a potential love interest is automatically ridiculing them. But why would that be? Why would it be more “contemptible” to portray these women as romantic/sexual interests any more than other women in similar games? Some of the objections to the game are based on the idea that you must be laughing at people with disabilities if you show them as sexy or romantically interesting. But that’s based on the idea that of course they can’t really be sexy, so it’s mean to portray them that way…which points out some interesting assumptions about people with disabilities and their romantic and sexual lives.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Reader Magnetic Crow says,

I think what bothers me about this is the premise of a “school for disabled kids only”, the fact that the girls are ‘othered’ from the get-go by this isolation, and the fact that this is probably being made to play to an exploitative fetish. Were it any other dating sim, and one of the girls available for dating just happened to have been born with no arms, or had lost her legs in a traffic accident, I would feel a lot more comfortable.

Other posts about video games: Evony’s boob ads, gender and race in RuneScape, Border Patrol game, Miss Bimbo and Sexy Beach 3, Rape Simulator, My Life, Medal of Honor’s all-White military, a game called Battle Raper that is exactly what it sounds like, blaming moms for video game addiction, sales of Grand Theft Auto, and “military entertainment.”

We also have a posts of a girl with a limp as an ugly friend, Goodyear ad featuring a sad kid in a wheelchair, nude calendar of Paralympic athletes, dolls with Down’s Syndrome, models with disabilities in a British Top Model show, representing people with disabilities, what is an “alt model”?, and amputee model Viktoria.

I’ve posted in the past about surgical procedures used to give “Asian” eyes a more “Caucasian” or “Western” look. As Alexia R. showed us, though, there are temporary means of getting a similar effect, particularly gluing a fold into eyelids. A quick google of “eyelid glue” came up with products such as this for sale on ebay:

I don’t have many thoughts to to add that I didn’t say in the earlier post, except that watching that video has made my eyelids really itch and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have them glued together. And also I’m kind of horrified by what apparently counts as not wearing much makeup; I had no idea I could conceivably be putting three different products on my eyelashes as part of my daily beauty regimen.

NOTE: Some commenters have made a good point about my post title and the implication that people who try to get an eyelid crease are trying to look more “Caucasian,” given that about half of people living on the Asian continent have an eyelid fold. I put “Caucasian” and “Western” in quotes to acknowledge the fact that I know these categories are socially created. But I think they have a good point about making assumptions as to why someone might use a product like this. The websites for eyelid surgery often DO very explicitly advertise their procedures as producing a “Caucasian” eye, so I think there often is that understanding or motivation, but people may use products like these for a variety of motivations, and I shouldn’t automatically imply that it is to approximate U.S. standards of (White) beauty. Thanks for the comments, everyone!

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

Readers’ minds think alike, sometimes, and the changing advertising campaign for the “empire building” video game Evony caught the attention of fds, torenc, Assaf N., Elisabeth R., Sabriel, Nicole O., and Liz B. (images found at Gawker and Coding Horror, and hope I didn’t miss anyone who sent it in). Online ads for the game started out like this:

Then they added a woman with a little boob showing:

In case people weren’t noticing the cleavage, the ad evolved into one where the boobs are pointed out a bit more explicitly:

Moving on to a slightly more realistic look:

Christina W. sent us one with a woman actively disrobing and saying “Come play, my Lord”:

Mick H. found a close-up version similar to the one above:

D.R.S. sent us another:

And then they realized they could just dispense with all subtlety and get to the important part:

If that didn’t work, why not straight up near-nudity.  Dan J. found this one here:

This ad submitted by both Alex B. and Kim H. seems to be taking the advertising to a whole new level.  No longer content with boobs, they seem to be moving towards implied female masturbation:

Wtfcats sent this one in:

NEW (Dec. ’09)! Tom R. sent in this next one with a nice “we’re lesbian, but just for you” flair.  Using the term “discreetly”  to imply porn, it reads “join the fun”:

NEW (Jan. ’10)! Thanks to Chris M., Tinpantithesis, and Ryan, we now know that there is an Evony ad that doesn’t say anything about the game at all.  You simply see this image and are invited to click on her boobs, butt, or lips to turn her into the “ideal woman”:

When you click, you are taken to this site, which asks you to sign up for the game because “obvious[ly],” “it makes you feel like King!”

Or sometimes apparently you get this view:

Presumably some players will be disappointed that there isn’t a female “queen” to be saved or oogled in the game at all–the women were invented only for the purpose of adding boobs to the ads. Jeff A. from Coding Horror says,

Evony, thanks for showing us what it means to take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom … then dig a sub-basement under that, and keep on digging until you reach the white-hot molten core of the Earth. I’ve always wondered what that would be like. I guess now I know.

ALSO NEW (Dec. ’09)! Apparently the Evony ads have become such a thing that other games are referencing them to advertise themselves.  Timm F. sent along the ad below making fun of the Evony ads.  It reads, “She is actually in our game, my lord”:

Elizabeth M. and Toban B. sent in a clip from the British TV show “That Mitchell and Webb Look” that has a humorous take on how advertisers target men and women:

This ad for Ripolin paint reads:  “You walls deserve a paint wich [sic.] will age well.”

Not safe for work:

more...

Kristin W., Brad W., and Deb G. sent us the Bacardi Breezers “Get an Ugly Girlfriend” ad campaign, discussed over at Jezebel. The message? Ladies, if you want to look better, get an ugly female friend to stand next to:

There are profiles of the various ugly girlfriends you can get:

Of course this ad campaign suggests to women that the most important thing about them is how they look. But, more insidiously, as Sweet Machine points out, it places women “in competition with other women for male attention” in a world where “self-esteem is a zero-sum game.”

This is how patriarchy creates in-fighting among women: If men have the power, and the only way to get power is to get men, then women feel compelled to try to get (the attention of) a man (or men).  Other women are their competition.

Women are stereotyped as bitchy and catty as if it is an inherent feature of femininity when, in fact, women’s subordination to men creates the conditions that force them into competition.

We see it happen live in this horrendous clip from Battle of the Bods.

More examples of cultural endorsements of the idea that women and girls are always in competition with one another here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Commenter Joanne pointed out an update, via Shapely Prose:

Sean-Patrick Hillman of bacardi.com comments below:

June 21, 2009

Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

I’m a bit confused, though–I did a quick google search, and Bacardi Breezer seems to be sold in a lot of places, including Canada and the U.S., but maybe they’re imported by a third party and not directly by Bacardi? I know I’d heard the name Bacardi Breezer before I saw these ads. Apparently I’m going to have to go on a tour of local liquor stores to see. What a horrible life I lead.

And I also agree with several of the other commenters–how awful must it be to be cast as an “ugly” person?