These displays, featuring mannequins posed as if they are being attacked by an invisible assailant, could be seen in the windows at Barneys New York this week:
They were disassembled when shoppers complained.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Liz C. sent us a link to a segment of The Daily Show featuring Kristen Schaal and John Stewart (aired July 1st). They discuss Sarkozy’s ban on burkas and, in doing so, question whether the burka is truly oppressive and whether American fashion is, in contrast, oh-so-liberating.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c |
| Burka Ban | |
We covered Heelarious here.
See also this confessionechoing Stewart and Schaal’s conversation.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
In Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, they are dedicated to the development of a multicultural population.
Two points:
First, as Angry Asian Man asks, why is the Asian child in a rice paddy hat? This anachronistic representation reminds me of what we do to American Indians all the time.
Second, the sign reminds me of the pitfalls of using euphemisms. What do they really mean when they say “multicultural”? They probably actually mean multiracial, but they don’t want to use a word with such harsh connotations (in the U.S.). So instead they use the word culture because it sounds nice and is often imagined to be restricted to things like language, food, clothes, and dancing (as opposed to inequality, oppression, and exploitation).
If they actually meant multicultural, then maybe the hat actually kind of makes sense! But I think they mean multiracial. In which case, see point #1.
Via Racialicious.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Teresa C. sent in a link to a benefit in Raleigh, NC, for a women’s center. The benefit was called Walk for Women and included a mile-long walk in high heels (though apparently the high heels are optional):
I get what they’re trying to do. Really, I do: an attention-getting way of raising money for what I’m sure is a worthy cause. And having worked or volunteered in many social-service jobs, I know fundraising can be hard (especially in an economic downturn) and you can end up doing some sort of weird stuff if you think it will bring in donations. (I once helped out at a dog blessing at an animal shelter. People brought in their dogs and had them blessed by an Episcopalian preacher [priest? I’m not sure of the terminology] and received a little medal with the image of some saint who apparently is the patron saint of animals, and who I am too lazy to look up right now, to hang on the dog’s collar. Also, there was wine, which in small-town Kansas was the source of some controversy.)
[NOTE: When I originally wrote this post, I had no idea that blessing animals is something some Episcopalians and Catholics do fairly often. I thought it was just something a sweet but kind of flaky volunteer thought up. I apologize if the comments about the animal blessing ceremony seemed disrespectful–I truly didn’t know that it’s a common religious ceremony. I decided to leave that section in but cross through it rather than delete it entirely, as it seemed dishonest to just erase it and pretend it hadn’t happened. I messed up, and I know it.]
So I know where people are coming from when they organize such things. But it still kind of bugs me that organizing walks in high heels has become a common fundraising technique for organizations that serve (primarily) women–women’s centers, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and so on. And I can’t help but think that walking around in heels is, ultimately, an odd way to help women. At least in this case, participants are apparently raising money. But several times I’ve seen high-heeled walks that are simply to “raise awareness,” with no particular emphasis on donations. The ones I saw all had men wearing high heels. And the thing is, I can’t figure out what on earth the point is. What type of awareness is it raising? Is walking around in high heels supposed to increase a person’s understanding of some of the problems women face? What are bystanders supposed to get out of it?
The Raleigh Walk for Women organizers also had a Beauty Blitz at a local salon, where people could drop in, register for the walk, and get discounts on salon services from a person who was a contestant on “Biggest Loser.” And also have a cocktail. So the event is this strange mixture of helping women by using the trappings of femininity (high heels, beauty care). And I just find it kind of odd.
As an exercise I sometimes ask the students in my gender class to try on the pants of their friends of the opposite sex. That is, I ask women to try on men’s pants and men to try on women’s pants. They often react with surprise at how effectively the jeans make their bodies look like the bodies of their opposite sex friends. (Women often complain that their guy friends look “better” in their jeans than they do!) This starts a discussion of the many ways that our choices about what to wear make it appear as if our bodies are in fact “opposite” when, in fact, they’re not quite as different as we often believe.
We dress ourselves to emphasize certain beliefs about what men’s and women’s bodies should look like by choice, because not doing so carries some negative consequences, and because doing so is institutionalized. It’s institutionalized insofar as department stores have separate men’s and women’s sections (and no unisex section) and jeans are made for and marketed as men’s and women’s.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and wasn’t always. Check out these ads from the 1960s and ’70s:
Found at Vintage Ads and the Torontoist.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Taylor sent in this ad, found at Blame It on the Voices:
It ran in Esquire in 1959 and our post on the emergence of Playboy Magazine may give the ad some interesting context.
Jacob G. sent us a link to this slideshow hosted by Details magazine. As Jacob noted, not only are the women objectified (their naked bodies serve as furniture on which to display men’s accessories), the title of the slideshow makes a joke of it. It’s titled “Girl Not Included,” just in case viewers mistook the women for purchaseable products alongside the shoes, bags, and belts.
Not safe for work:
