children/youth

Click here for a nice gender and race analysis of a range of Halloween costumes for adults and kids by our blogger, Wendy.  We’ve also highlighted two costumes in particular: the Sexy Scholar and Anna-Rexia.  And, of course, just a few days ago, we posted about the Halloween display that includes a lynched Sarah Palin and a screenshot of an Obama mask found by searching for “terrorist costume.”  And don’t miss our jack-o’-lantern tribute to Max Weber.  See also, if you like, my Huffington Post about the race, class, and gender politics of Halloween.

To our newest Halloween material:

Andrea G. scanned in an entire Halloween costume catalog and offers some global observations about the breadth of costumes made available.  You can check out her flickr account here or scroll down for the images and some of Andrea’s commentary.

The Cover and Back:

Boys’ costumes:

Boys’ costumes (continued) and girls’ costumes:

Girls’ costumes (continued):

Women’s costumes:

Plus women’s costumes:

Plus women’s costumes (continued) and adult men’s costumes:

Plus men’s costumes:

First, Andrea notes how gendered the costumes are.  Women overwhelmingly are supposed to look sexy, while men are supposed to look funny or scary.  Note that this doesn’t vary much by age.  The costumes for adults and children are strikingly similar.

Second, Andrea points to how often men’s faces are covered by masks and how infrequently women’s are.  She writes that “5 out of the 198 costumes categorized under “female” or “girls” were masked (2.5%)” and “96 of the 180 costumes categorized under “male” or “boys” were masked  (53.3%).”  Andrea thinks: “I think this touches on the double standard American society holds for females/girls to be attractive and beautiful, while males/boys do not have to cater to this social rule, for the most part.”

Third, Andrea notes that there are costumes designed to make men look fat, but not women.  For example, this “Freshman 15” costume:

Thanks Andrea!

Cross-posted at Love Isn’t Enough.

Ann DuCille, in her book Skin Trade, takes two issues with “ethnic” Barbies. 

First, she takes issue with the fact that “ethnic” Barbies are made from the same mold as “real” Barbies (though sometimes with different paint on their faces).  This reifies a white standard of beauty as THE standard of beauty.  Black women are beautiful only insofar as they look like white women (see also this post).  DuCille writes:

…today Barbie dolls come in a rainbow coalition of colors, races, ethnicities, and nationalities, [but] all of those dolls look remarkably like the stereotypical white Barbie, modified only by a dash of color and a change of clothes.

Consider:

But, second, DuCille also takes takes issue with the idea that Mattell would try to make ethnic Barbies more “authentic.”  Trying to agree on one ideal form for a racial or ethnic group is no more freeing than trying to get everyone to accord to one ideal based in whiteness.  DuCille writes:

…it reifies race.  You can’t make an ‘authentic’ Black, Hispanic, Asian, or white doll.  You just can’t.  It will always be artificially constraining…

And also:

Just what are we saying when we claim that a doll does or does not look… black?  How does black look? …What would make a doll look authentically African American or realistically Nigerian or Jamaican?  What prescriptive ideals of blackness are inscribed in such claims of authenticity?  …The fact that skin color and other ‘ethnic features’ …are used by toymakers to denote blackness raises critical questions about how we manufacture difference.

Indeed, difference is, literally, manufactured through the production of “ethnic” Barbies and this is done, largely, for a white audience. 

To be profitable, racial and cultural diversity… must be reducible to such common, reproducible denominators as color and costume.

The majority of American Barbie buyers are only interested in “ethnicity” so long as it is made into cute and harmless variety.  This reminds us that, when toy makers (and others) manufacture difference, they are doing so for money.  DuCille writes:

…capitalism has appropriated what it sees as certain signifiers of blackness and made them marketable… Mattel… mass market[s] the discursively familiar–by reproducing stereotyped forms and visible signs of racial and ethnic difference.

Consider:

Black Barbie and Hispanic Barbie, 1980

Oriental Barbie, date unknown

A later “Asian” Barbie (Kira)

Diwali Barbie (India)

Hula Honey Barbie

Kwanzaa Barbie

Radiant Rose Ethnic Barbie, 1996

There are many reasons to find this problematic.  DuCille turns to the Jamaican Barbie as an example. 

The back of Jamaican Barbie’s box tells us:

How-you-du (Hello) from the land of Jamaica, a tropical paradise known for its exotic fruit, sugar cane, breath-taking beaches, and reggae beat!  …most Jamaicans have ancestors from Africa, so even though our official language is English, we speak patois, a kind of ‘Jamaica Talk,’ filled with English and African words.  For example, when I’m filled with boonoonoonoos, I’m filled with much happiness!

Notice how Jamaica is reduced to cutesy things like exotic fruit and sugar cane and Jamaican people are characterized as happy-go-lucky and barely literate while the history of colonialism is completely erased.

So DuCille doesn’t like it when Black Barbies, for example, look like White Barbies and she doesn’t like it when Black Barbies look like Black Barbies either.  What’s the solution?  The solution simply may not lie in representation, so much as in actually correcting the injustice in which representation occurs.

(Images found here, here, here, here, here, and here.) 

For a related post on race and friendship, see here.

Beth T. sent us this picture of some books for sale at the NASA John Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.  I found some more at the website. They nicely illustrate the gendering of jobs.  Only because we implicitly think that zoologists, oceanographers, paleontologists, and architects are men, is it necessary to modify the term with “woman.”

In The Trouble With Friendship, Benjamin DeMott argues that it is suggested, all too often, that the solution to our troubled race relations is just, well, getting to know and like each other.  Television and the movies, for example, are replete with examples of racial harmony.  I mean, who doesn’t have a black friend or neighbor!?

DeMott’s friendship ideology obscures the institutional causes of racial inequality that undergird racial tension in our society.  Learning to like each other is not going to solve racial inequality in our society because individual one-on-one racism does not exhuast the disadvantage faced by people of color in our society.

In this light, I present to you three pictures, submitted by Muriel M. M., of posters found in an elementary school.

The posters reflect the friendship ideology.  Of course, it is nice to encourage friendship and support across racial lines, the danger is in letting our race education stop there.

Demonizing Obama by demonizing youth, of course.  The text compares Barrack Obama [sic.] to Marx, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Castro and says that “Each and every one called upon youth movements!”

According to Shakesville, this was spotted in the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Historians argue that what constitutes a good childhood and, relatedly, good parenting has changed dramatically over time.  Today, keeping children busy with lessons (in this, that, and the other) seems to be one version of ideal parenthood/childhood.  I thought this ad nicely illustrated this new ideal:

Found at MultiCult Classics.

See also this post on constructions of modern parenthood.

Tourism ad for Australia:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQGMuxJ0vCc[/youtube]

Found here.

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.

Prompted by Gwen’s recent post on adoption announcement cards, Carmen from the excellent blog Racialicious sent us this link to a post about onesies for transnationally adopted infants by iBastard.  As iBastard says

…when people go out of their way to say something, there’s usually more to it than the literal message. There’s a metamessage (the message behind the message itself) or subtext of some kind.

These first two onesies (found at Racialicious and here respectively) are from children adopted from Guatemala:

And this one, also found at Racialicious, is for babies adopted from China:

The first and last one associate babies with goods (“special delivery” and “imported”) that can be bought.  Those with superior resources (i.e., Americans?) can buy these goods. 

The middle one de-humanizes Guatamalans.  As Resistance notes: What is a Guatling?  “Is it like an earthling? A foundling? An underling? A gosling? A yearling?” 

All advertise for others that these children are adopted transnationally.  And why might an adoptive parent want to advertise such things?  Without trivializing how much such parents love their children, we do seem to have a phenomenon in which a transnational adoption is considered a humanitarian good that proves you are not racist, into multiculturalism, and a card-carrying liberal good person (the discourse around Angelina Jolie’s adopted children is part of this).

What do you think the meta-messages are here?  iBastard offers a translation over at Racialicious. 

Oh and, in the spirit of resistance, check out this parody t-shirt made by iBastard:

Also in dressing your kids and meta-messages: leftish t-shirts for kids, “future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts and the like, “God Hates Fags” t-shirts, sexist t-shirts for kids, trucker girl booties, and more.

Other posts on advertising your politics on your metaphorical sleeve: “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?”, “Tough Guys Wear Pink”, “Real Girls Eat Meat”, “True Love Waits”, “I Love My Big Tatas”, and “Use Your Period For Good”.