class

I found these three ads for a private jet service in those magazines for excrutiatingly excruciatingly rich people that I’ve been posting from lately. Each ad–one for Marquis Jet and two for Delta AirElite–are pitching their service by suggesting that having a membership in their private jet service will help them be a good Dad because they can get home–for dinner, the game, or some quality time–from anywhere fast. Comments below.

Text:

It’s not just a card.

It’s a choice.

A choice to escape from it all.

A choice to get closer to what’s important.

Text:

9:00AM.   Meeting with group of investors.

1:30PM.  Meeting with district managers.

7:00PM.  The most important meeting of all.

Text:

Make 120 sales pitches on the road.

Listen to pitches in 25 different company offices.

Be there for the most important pitch.

It’s pretty unusual to see ads that highlight a Dad’s relationship with his children. And that’s pretty neat. But, second, the implication is that only men at the extremes of economic success can “afford” to be an ideal father. Hypothetically, I wonder how many people working for that Dad have the privilege of taking a private jet and getting home in time for dinner? My guess would be: Very few. In that sense, these ads uphold the idea that men’s primary role in their children’s lives involves bringing home the bacon and, if you’re really, really, really good at that (and really, really lucky and, likely, very privileged to begin with), you get to be a part of their lives too.

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.

One of the magazines for the obscenely rich that I’ve been perusing lately was Yachts International magazine.

In it was a glaring Sociological Images story. Paging through the magazine it became exceedingly clear that yachts were one prize for extreme economic success… and women were another. Below I have uploaded every ad in the magazine that included people. Across all of the ads, there are 22 women and four men. The women are, overwhemingly, posed as beautiful objects that adorn beautiful yachts.

Each of the ads is embedded after the jump (there’s a lot and they take some time to load):

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The documentary “People Like Us: Social Class in America” (an excellent film, if you haven’t seen it; my students always get a kick out of it) includes a section about Honfest, a yearly festival in Baltimore. The film brings up some interesting questions about Honfest, particularly what it means that one group of Baltimore residents dresses up and acts like a caricature of another part of the population–“hons,” or working-class women (so named for their supposed habit of calling everyone “Hon”).

From the Honfest website:

The Bawlmer term of endearment, Hon, short for Honey, embodies the warmth and affection bestowed upon our neighbors and visitors alike by historic working-women of Baltimore. HonFest is an annual celebration in honor of these women…

In answer to the question, “Is the hon a dying breed?,” Denise Whiting, creator of HonFest, exclaimed, “No! Absolutely not. Hon will live on forever in our hearts, and HonFest gives everyone an opportunity to celebrate and embrace their heritage.”

The festival includes a Miss Hon contest. Here is a photo of Miss Hon 2007:

The website’s description of hons:

…the women who vie to become Baltimore’s Best Hon are a vision of the sixties-era. They are women with beehive hairdos, bright-blue eye shadow, spandex pants and anything with leopard print!

But commentators in the documentary argue that some of the things being parodied–big hair, certain makeup and clothing styles–are still common, particularly in the working-class areas of Baltimore. From this perspective, it’s not just that people are mimicking or parodying the past; there’s also an element of class ridicule involved (since the style, taste, and speech associated with working-class women are being fetishized and parodied by other, often wealthier, women). This brings up a number of questions: Is this just good-hearted fun? Is it truly honoring these women, or mocking them? Does it bring attention to Baltimore’s working class residents, or simply treat them like they are historic relics?

(In)famous Baltimore resident and “Hairspray” director John Waters says,

It’s condescending now. The people that celebrate it are not from it. I feel that in some weird way they’re looking slightly down on it.

This might be useful for a discussion of social class and issues of representation–is Honfest respectful and fun or condescending? Does it make any difference whether some of the styles and mannerisms being parodied are still used by working-class women? Does it matter what the class background of attendees and participants tends to be? You might compare it to the controversy surrounding American Indian sports mascots for a discussion of concerns about representation more broadly.

Andrew Sullivan suggests that this commercial for Pearl Cream that fetishizes (upper class) “Oriental” women is from the 1970s, but a commenter of his makes a good argument that it was on cable television in the ’80s and ’90s. Do you remember this commercial?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaD_fvehAaU[/youtube]

In honor of the election, we offer you a summary of all our election 2008 posts.

This election has certainly brought racial tensions front and center. We highlighted two racist caricatures of Obama: on a waffles box and as a cannibal. We also discussed the cover of The New Yorker on which Barack and Michelle Obama were caricatured as terrorists. Whether or not this was racist was widely discussed and offered an interesting opportunity to ask “Who decides what we talk about?” In response to the argument that we were being too sensitive about the caricatures, we offered some evidence that caricatures of black people do not need to be racist.

Anti-Obama propaganda also included comparison with OJ Simpson, a monkey, celebrities, Osama Bin Laden, fascists and communists, a terrorist, a terrorist again, and a “half-breed Muslin.” See here for other racist anti-Obama propaganda.  Gwen asked “So what if Obama is an Arab?” (Note, too, this satirical T-shirt.)

We saw racialization–or the active production of racial meaning–in the fist bump controversy, in calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama,” and in asserting the whiteness of the White House. We discussed the resemblance between Obama and his Grandfather and the meaning of “Main Street” to illustrate the social construction of race.  And we offered examples of white privilege: in one we discuss the option of white ethnics to emphasize their ethnicity; in two we discuss a cartoonist who calls Colin Powell a race traitor for endorsing Obama and a Howard Stern clip that suggests that Blacks only endorse Obama because he’s Black.  We also remark on how easy it is to deride social theories of inequality.

The McCain/Palin ticket was no stranger to derision.  See also our post in which the McCain/Palin ticket is said to be favored by Nazis, another in which Palin effigy is lynched, and a third that discusses ageism in the election.

We’ve also seen plenty of sexism in this campaign. Hillary Clinton has been represented as a nut buster, asked to “iron my shirt,” critiqued for crying, and called a “bitch.” There are more examples here and here.  Also see this montage of sexism among political pundits. Both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were sexualized. See here, here, and here for Clinton and here, here, here, here, and here for Palin. (By the way, Barack Obama was sexualized as well, see here, here, and here.)

We commented, more sociologically, on the gender politics of this election. We discussed the mothering of baby Trig, conservative feminism, the politics of pink, and took a humorous look at the women’s vote with Sarah Haskins.

We also pointed to the way in which Obama and Clinton attempted to appeal to small town people and the ease with which we make fun of them.

For the intersection of race and gender, see our post in which Michelle Obama is called an angry black woman, is said to need to “soften” to be a First Lady, and our post that features the Bros Before Hos T-shirt (scroll to the bottom). For the intersection of race and class, see our post on Obama’s negotiation of the “elitist” label.  And, in making intersectionality invisible, see the SNL skit, “bitch is the new black.”

Looking more broadly at politics and media coverage, we discussed the portrayal of evil in the Reverend Wright scandal, McCain’s trivialization of war, the linking of a Democratic adminstration with a terrorist attack, pundit hypocrisy, political networks, a voter registration campaign that uses bondage imagery, suspiciously delicious polling techniques, how cell phones shape polling findings, and trends in media coverage of Obama versus Clinton and Obama versus McCain.

In addition, we offered some examples of punditry from alternative media: on young voters, a call for alliance from the labor movement, a call to get your Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama, a political revival of the Budweiser Wassap video, and two examples of art inspired by the election (here and here).

We also put up posts of figures representing public opinion on blacks, a woman president, and politician parents.  And we offered images illustrating how the world would vote.

Finally, our favorite: “We’re not sociologists, we’re Americans!”

One of the preview ads for the Blackberry Storm is shot from the point of view of a guy approaching a Blackberry on a table. We hear his internal monologue, then see his hand reach for the Blackberry. As music wells up and the scene disappears, we’re supposed to assume that he’s been impressed or sucked into an alternate reality or something.

The framing of the ad puts the viewers in the man’s place. assuming that the viewers are heteronormative white bourgeois men and, if they aren’t, imposing this status upon them. It’s a nice example of how modern US middle-class society continues to assume that hetero white men are the default type of people.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbWsQCbqcE0[/youtube]

Here are some graphs about income inequality over time:

From the Working Group on Extreme Poverty.

Here are some graphs on the income and wealth gap between Whites and Blacks in the U.S.

This next one shows homeownership rates. I know some people are going to point out that Blacks are more concentrated in urban areas than Whites are, and so it might make more sense to break down homeownership by area (rural, urban, suburban). While that might be a legitimately useful comparison, it also brings up the question of why African Americans would be more concentrated in urban areas, which could lead to a discussion of government programs that encourage Whites to buy homes in the suburbs after WWII while denying those opportunities to Blacks.

One way of explaining higher unemployment rates among Blacks is that there is some individual or cultural deficiency–African Americans are lazy, or want a hand-out, or don’t look for work, etc. etc. I like to show trend comparisons like these because they undermine those types of explanations. If African American unemployment was due to laziness, a “culture of poverty,” or other deficiencies, it would be unlikely for Black and White unemployment rates to show the same pattern (or, for that matter, any pattern–unless you believe African Americans just got a lot lazier in, say, 1982). What we see here is that Black and White unemployment rates follow a very similar pattern, but that during hard economic times, sugh as the early 1980s and around 1992, African Americans suffer disproportionately.

This one shows the slow but steady trend toward resegregation of our schools:

All of these were found at the Working Group on Extreme Inequality website.