food/agriculture

I could make some sociological comment about the linking of the marketing for Easter candy and professional wrestling… but really I just think this is hilarious.  Not only is it a linking of the marketing of Easter candy and professional wrestling (go, Jesus, go?), but there is something so wrong (or is it so right?) about the proximity of the words “EGG” and “RAW” (NOT appetizing) and also the phrase “Jelly-filled mallows” (so soft and sweet!) next to the ripped, muscle-bound dude in the middle.  I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Also in wrestling: No Nipples Allowed!!!

(Image at CMM News.)

Food & Water Watch has an interesting interactive map that allows you to click on states and see how many factory farms it has per county, broken down into cattle (meaning beef, I assume), hogs, dairy, broilers, and layers (the last two are both chickens). You can look at number of facilities or number of animals. Here’s a screenshot of the number of cattle containment facilities in the U.S.:

Factory farms were identified using Census of Agriculture data and counting those that “best match the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition for a confined animal feeding operation…” based on the following guidelines:

There’s a very detailed description of the methodology available here and an explanation of the maps here.

Way back in December Sadie McC. sent in this Canadian ad for Tetley Red Tea, a variety that apparently originated in southern Africa:

We get several of the standard signifiers of “Africa”: tribal music with drums, elephants, and huts with thatched roofs (rooves? What’s the spelling consensus these days?). Both what mostly struck Sadie and I is our feeling that if we were marketing a food product, probably we would go with not choosing imagery that made the product look an awful lot like blood. My usual argument to students is that things in ads are not accidental; millions are spent on ad campaigns, and they are scrutinized, focus-grouped, and every detail is poured over by many individuals, all to add to the overall design. But in this case, I’m going to assume that somehow nobody noticed that the commercial kinda makes it look like wisps of blood creating scenes of Africa.

Anyway, I was looking around online for information about tea cultivation in Africa and found this short video about tea production in Kenya, including images of workers harvesting the tea:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyP-l6eP_sE[/youtube]

It might be a good video to show if you’re talking about globalization and agricultural labor, to get students thinking about how our food gets to us and who is doing the often non-mechanized, back-breaking labor required for us to have such a wide variety of foods available year-round. In the video, the men don’t look obviously miserable, but my guess is that picking leaves with your bare hands for hours at a time, while carrying bags of leaves on your back, is pretty unpleasant, physically demanding work that probably isn’t highly paid. And I could be wrong, but I’m betting workers don’t wear protective gear to keep them from coming into contact with chemicals when the crop has been sprayed with fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or whatever else they might spray on the fields.

Apparently, due to the perceived healthiness of green teas, imports to the U.S. were up 7% in 2008, to about 257 million pounds. I was surprised, however, to learn that we’re only the 7th biggest consumer of tea. Having grown up in Oklahoma, where sweet tea was ubiquitous and nearly mandatory, and is the only beverage served at my family’s get-togethers, I sort of have this idea that everyone drinks iced tea, all the time, and expected us to rank higher.

Random tea-and-Gwen-related story: I was a waitress in Wisconsin for a while, and one time a woman ordered “regular” tea. I brought her a glass of unsweetened tea in a glass. She stared at it and said “I just wanted plain tea.” I assured her I had brought the unsweetened kind, but she insisted again that she just wanted “normal” tea. I was pretty confused at this point and explained again it wasn’t the raspberry-flavored tea and it wasn’t sweetened, it was just plain. She then very slowly, in that extra-loud and enunciated voice people use to talk to people they think are either not too bright or maybe don’t speak their language very well, that she wanted “the kind that comes hot, in a teapot,” making exaggerated gestures like she was pouring tea into a cup. I called my mom later and she was as befuddled as I was to think that anyone would mistake that kind of tea for normal tea.

And then I found out the Brits drink milk in tea.

UPDATE: Commenter Christine says,

…red tea is not just from southern Africa, but very specifically South Africa, with strong historical ties to colonialism in the area. Even the other name the tea is known by, rooibos, is an Afrikaans word; the Afrikaans language developed among Dutch settlers in South Africa. Cultivation of the plant began in the 1930s; commercial production came about around WWII; apartheid laws were enacted in 1948.

And reader Steve W. sent in two photos of some coffee he saw for sale at Panera Bread, where the package assures buyers that “every detail matters” and that the coffee is made from “handpicked beans that are carefully selected”:

As Steve points out, for most of us, when we see descriptions like “handpicked,” we usually don’t connect it to actual people doing actual work. It’s also interesting that the phrase “handpicked” is used to imply that the product is somehow special and carefully produced. But the video above shows handpicked tea, and I don’t think you can argue it was being carefully chosen (the workers, after all, need to pick as quickly as possible to increase their pay), but also you’ll see the phrase used in situations where most of the crop is harvested by hand, meaning that it doesn’t indicate any special production process at all.

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

The Cornucopia Institute provides a link to Dr. Phil Howard’s webpage, which has all kinds of awesome graphics to illustrate concentration in the organic food sector. This one shows acquisitions by several major food corporations (sorry the images are small–there’s a link after each one that takes you to a bigger version, or you can easily see all of them at Dr. Howard’s website). For all but the third image, the color scheme is yellow = multinational processor, green = organic brand, blue = investment firms, and red = organic versions of mainstream brands.

Click for a larger version.

Creation of private-label organic lines for particular retailers:

Larger version.

Concentration of organic labels:

Larger version. Dr. Howard has also created an  animated version of consolidation in the organic food sector, which I highly recommend, unless you are easily made dizzy.

Major independent organic processors:

Larger version.

NEW! John found some updated information at Phil Howard’s site. Introductions of new organic brands:

Acquisitions, as of June 2009:

For an article providing more detail and more graphics see: Howard, Philip H. 2009. “Consolidation in the North American Organic Food Processing Sector, 1997 to 2007.” International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture 16(1), 13-30. [online at
http://www.ijsaf.org/archive/16/1/howard.pdf]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPuIuYDDwBs[/youtube]
(Via Jezebel.)

Also interesting… I don’t think we have a concept of “swollen noodles” in the U.S.

Also in the sexualization of food:

1.  Chex Mix gives you curves.
2.  Sexy hot dog lady in a bun.
3.  Hot Indian Chicken.
4.  Sno-Ball head, sexy lady body.
5.  Chopsticks plus fork = hot sex.
6.  Vegetables are hot.
7.  Pasta, naked lady.
8. Women prefer Kellogs to hot men.
9.  Axe makes women love you like chocolate.
10.  Astroglide and Puma get in on the action.

Dozens more!

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.

The Environmental Working Group’s interactive database lets you look up farm subsidies paid by the USDA. You can get all kinds of information–subsidy payments by county or congressional district, top 100 recipients of subsidies, breakdowns into particular types of payments (conservation, crops, disaster, etc.), and so on. It’s an interesting source of information, given that the Obama administration wants to drastically reduce farm subsidies and we’re likely to see a big argument over what the impact will be on farmers. Some groups argue that mid-sized family farms will be devastated by the loss of price supports. Others point out that subsidy payments are highly concentrated, with the top 20% of recipients getting the overwhelming majority of payments, and that if large industrial operations were forced to compete with family farms on an even playing-field without welfare payments, many of them would go out of business, leading to lower production and higher prices for other producers.

This was a big debate among rural sociologists when I was in grad school, and I guess we may be about to see.

That’s the refrain anyway.

But whose sex is sold?  And to who?   If it was simply that sex sold, we’d see men and women equally sexually objectified in popular culture.  Instead, we see, primarily, women sold to (presumably heterosexual) men.  So what are we selling, exactly, if not “sex”   We’re selling men’s sexual subjectivity and women as a sex object.  That is, the idea that men’s desires are centrally important and meaningful, and women’s are not (because women are the object to men’s subjectivity).

That women’s object status and men’s subjectivity is sold to women in women’s magazines (for example, Cosmo and Glamour always feature scantily clad women on the cover) in no way undermines the idea that men’s sexual subjectivity is being sold.  It’s just that it’s being sold to all of us.

For example, if this ad was selling Tango with sex, they’d both end up naked in the fourth frame, no?

The new ad spots for M&Ms also illustrate this nicely. m&ms have been anthropomorphized in advertising for some time. There is only one female m&m and she is, by no accident, the green M&M. If you remember from elementary school, green is for horny. That, also, is no accident.

So male M&Ms come in multiple colors, flavors, shapes, and personalities, but female M&Ms are just sex objects.

In the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue this year, M&Ms went with the theme (found here):

The ad campaign extended beyond Sports Illustrated:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDoJNymbU1Q[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubChW7SLhKE[/youtube]

To sum, if it was simply “sex sells,” we’d see an even pattern of sexualization. But we don’t. More often than not, it is women who are sexualized. What is being sold, really, isn’t sex, but the legitimation and indulgence of (supposedly heterosexual) men’s sexual desires.

Kirsti M. alerted us to an M&M advertising campaign in Australia, where you could vote for your favorite color. All but one of the M&Ms are depicted as males (again, the female is Miss Green).

Here is a screenshot of the page for Red, a satirical take on a Marxist revolutionary:

Some highlights from the text:

Favorite quotes: “The revolution is now!”

Favorite books: “100 Steps to World Domination”

Weight: “Perfect for my shell”

A poster:

Here is a screenshot of the page for Miss Green (notice the others aren’t Mr. Blue or Mr. Red; only the female M&M has a title):

Highlights from the text:

Miss Green, working the polls.

About me: I may have a pretty hard shell, but I assure you I’m sweet on the inside.

Favorite quotes: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.”

Favorite books: “How to Work the Polls”

Interests: Right now I’m focusing all my attention on the top position.

Campaign policy: All beaches to be nude beaches.

Age: Let’s just say I’m experienced.

A poster:

So again we see the sexualization of the female M&M (she’s “experienced,” focusing on the “top position,” she’s “working the polls” while wrapping her go-go-boot-clad legs around a tree in the manner of a stripper on a stripper pole, her arms and legs are much longer and thinner than the other M&Ms’ are).

In this vintage ad (1970s?), it is clear that it is his “plans” for her that are being appealed to:

NEW! These ads for hearing aids are apparently aimed at men only:

Other great examples include these posts with ads promoting organ donation, an air conditioning technical school, selling pasta, vegetarianism, aviation, cars, war, travel, dentistry, food, more food, houses, and mortgages.  (To see the reverse dynamic, click here and 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.

To self-objectify is to think of yourself as an object first and a subject second.  People who self-objectify often consider their appearance to be for others and work on their bodies and attractiveness in order to please/not offend an imagined other.  Self-objectification is usually discussed in the context of women.  It is suggested that these women take on the “male gaze,” looking at themselves through an imaginary male judge.

I found this ad in Maxim magazine.  It encourages men to self-objectify by suggesting that they should think about how an imaginary female judge might evaluate their appearance (“She’s totally checking me out MILK Nutritional Shake”).

It’s fascinating that a magazine well-known for objectifying women also participates (at least in running this ad) in encouraging men to self-objectify.  Without suggesting that women and men are equally objectified in American culture, I think it might be interesting to talk about the extent to which we live in an objectifying culture, period, and learn to self-objectify whether we are men or women.