children/youth

We were shopping for my 6-year-old stepdaughter in Walmart in the Boston metro area this weekend. I took a picture of a display of T-shirts for sale for girls, available in size 6X-14. Clockwise, these 4 say “Peace, love and lipgloss,” “it’s a girls [sic] world! (we just let the boys live in it),” “”Friends are forever / Boys are whatever,” and “My favorite things: 1. My mom, 2. Fridays, 3. Shopping, 4. My best friends, 5. My brother (Just kidding).”

Here’s another one from the same display that says “My dad’s awesome…when he buys me stuff!” Presumably a dad is therefore not awesome when he is trying to raise a happy, healthy kid with techniques that do not include purchasing sparkly pink shirts with pro-capitalism messages.

Rachel M. sends us this story:  The cover for the 1976 Scorpions album “Virgin Killer” apparently not considered problematic enough for censorship at the time, was pulled from a Wikipedia webpage for being “a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18.”  The image, included after the jump, features a naked prepubescent girl in a provocative pose:

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Welcome to Christmas 2008!

Rose McM. sent us this great example of rigidly gender-coded toys from the Sears Wish Catalog (click to enlarge):

NEW! (Jan. ’10): Sarah O. snapped this photo of toys that teach girls they should cook and care for babies, while boys can build things and be doctors:

See also these posts on the Rose Petal Cottage and Tonka Trucks (“built for boyhood!”).

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.

Here’s a vintage Fleishmann’s Yeast ad (found here), which presents yeast as the answer to the horrors of pimples–awful, hideous pimples!

I don’t know in what world high schools have movies, but whatever. Clearly, the message is “pimples = social death and eternal loneliness.” It’s not just that Davy can’t be in the movie due to his horrible affliction; if he can’t play the lead along with his girlfriend, he faces the possibility of losing her to a leading man with a clear complexion.

Given such messages about the importance of clear skin, it’s no wonder teens and their families were willing to shell out enormous sums of money on skin-care products. Apparently yeast didn’t catch on as a treatment, though.

For other examples of vintage ads playing on teens’ fear of facial blemishes, see here and here.

Kay W. sent us a link to an archive of cigarette advertising and other historical materials.  Among the many interesting things there were some internal documents circulated by tobacco companies. I include some below:

Product placement contract:

Targeting youth:

Script for Frank Sinatra:

Directing scientific research:

Wheelchair use equated with terminal misery (click to enlarge):

Wheelchair use will keep you from EVER having fun. So implies this ad for Goodyear Tires from the August 2, 1937 issue of Life. Everyone looks depressed about the fact that the boy’s in a wheelchair, from the boy himself to his sister and even the dog. I’d be kind of depressed too if I were teetering on the edge of a porch [notice that Sis has one leg up on a step] without a guard rail. This image could be used in a discussion of how perceptions of persons with disabilities have changed over the years…and also how they have stayed the same [witness the stubborn popularity of “wheelchair-bound” as a descriptor for wheelchair users].

Heather O. sent us a link to product sold at a website featuring items for girls’ rooms.  It’s a “piggy” bank for saving money for a boob job.

In case there is any question as to whether the products are aimed at girls, this is from the front page:

Thanks Heather!

The belief that men and women are “opposite sexes” doesn’t come out of thin air.  It doesn’t, very often, come out of our life experience either, as most people most of us know are not living stereotypes.  No, in fact we are TOLD that men and women are “opposite sexes” constantly.  Consider this submission from Andrea G.:

You can now buy One-A-Day vitamins for teens, boy and girl teens that is (and in case you can’t tell which one is which, they’re color-coded).  According to Women’s Health News, the vitamins “for him” have more magnesium and the vitamins “for her” have more calcium and iron.

(1) Notice the obnoxious invisibility of dad (my emphasis):

Did you know there are gender specific teen multivitamins to address the top health concerns of moms and teens?

This is annoying, of course, because it reproduces the idea that dads don’t care about or aren’t paying attention to their kids.  But it’s also kind of ridiculous because, as long as we’re going by stereotypes, if there’s one social group less concerned with health than men, it’s teenagers.

(2)  I will leave aside whether teenaged female and male bodies are so dramatically different that they need different vitamins and minerals (I am not convinced), and instead just point out that One-A-Day has gendered what vitamins are for.  Check out the first bullet point in the close-up (in case you can’t tell which is which, the “For Him” is in block letters with stripes across his torso and the “For Her” is in cursive with spirally curves):

So boys need vitamins for muscles and girls need vitamins for clear skin?

I bet these vitamins will sell like hotcakes.

Thanks Andrea!