gender: beauty

A Daily Mail story reports that women lawyers are being told by “image consultants’ that to appear “professional” they should enhance their femininity by wearing skirts and stilettos, but avoid drawing attention to their breasts.  Thoughts about the word “professional” after the screenshot (thanks to Jason S. for the link):

A spokesman for the company doling out this advice says that it’s about being “professional.”  This is a great term to take apart.  What do we really mean when we say “professional”?

How much of it has to do with proper gender display or even, in masculinized workplaces, simply masculine display?

How much of it has to do with whiteness?  Are afros and corn rows unprofessional?   Is speaking Spanish?  Why or why not?

How much of it has to do with appearing attractive, heterosexual, monogamous, and, you know, not one of those “unAmerican” religions?

For that matter, how much of it has to do with pretending like your work is your life, you are devoted to the employer, and your co-workers are like family (anyone play Secret Santa at work this year)?

What do we really mean when we say “professional”?  How does this word get used to coerce people into upholding normative expectations that center certain kinds of people and marginalize others?

Eva M. sent in an image (found here) of a Beauty Smile Trainer:

Presumably you’re supposed to wear it regularly to train yourself to smile the big, wide smiles needed to win beauty contests. It’s another example of how we no longer think of beauty as something “natural,” but rather as something that you get through products, training, and, if necessary, surgery. I guess you can wear this along with your teeth-whitening treatments to get the perfect smile.

Thanks, Eva M.!

Michael Kimmel argues that, for contemporary Americans, science is a superstition.  Scientific explanations are comforting and often accepted without critical thought.  The word “natural” rolls off our tongue and frequently gets conflated with “good.”  We are obsessed with finding the biological origins of sexual orientation, gender difference, political proclivities, happiness… everything.  Once a biological basis is found, it is considered the whole explanation.  It is as if biology is more fundamental and more true than things like culture or society. 

Our “faith” in science, then, is useful to marketers insofar as they can claim that their product is objectively tested, engineered, or otherwise scientifically sound.  This brings me to this Marquardt Beauty Analysis website, sent in by Kiran D.  The website explains the science behind beauty.  The main page includes a woman’s face overlaid with complex geometric shapes:

Here is part of the mission statement (emphasis mine):

MBA is dedicated to proactively researching human visual aesthetics, including its biological and mathematical bases, and to utilizing the results of that research to develop and provide information and technology with which to analyze and positively modify (i.e. improve) human visual attractiveness.

MBA further is dedicated to tailoring and formatting this technology to specific uses for direct applications in the fields where human attractivenss is a factor or parameter (i.e. those fields interested in human visual attractiveness) including medicine, dentistry, psychology, anthropology, biology, anthropometry, the arts, cosmetic makeup, and fashion, as well as for direct use by the individual consumer.

Notice how they use scientific buzzwords like “bases,” “formatting,” “applications,” and “parameter.”

Here is a screenshot showing how they have tried to “scientize” beauty and make their endeavor look like legitimate science:

On the page below they claim that their formula works across history (elsewhere they also claim it works across race), so they argue that their science is objective and not culturally or historically contingent:

The website, of course, is not really about research on beauty; it’s a mechanism with which to sell make-up, cosmetic surgery, and other products.  Here is a screenshot of the first part of the links page:

The page includes links to L’Oreal, Clinique, Cover Girl, Neutrogena, and Revlon; five “aesthetic surgery” links; three “aesthetic dentistry” links; and a handful of academic-y sounding links.

Thanks Kiran!

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.

Breck C. encouraged us to post about photographs of body building women from a new book.  When Feministe and Boing Boing posted about them it, predictably, prompted a rash of comments to the effect of “those women are gross/disgusting/unattractive.”

I think Roy at No Cookies For Me says it best:

It doesn’t matter if you find those women attractive or not. They’re very likely not doing it for you. That you find body building “grotesque” is completely beside, behind, or even miles away from the point. Nobody gives a shit that you find it disgusting. If you find it disgusting? Don’t do it. [And n]obody is trying to make you become or date a body builder…

Nicely put.  This reflexive judging of women’s attractiveness reveals the entitlement that many feel to be aesthetically pleased by women’s appearance and, thus, the expectation that women owe it to the world to be attractive (as the world defines it, of course).  It also demonstrates the related idea that women are, first and foremost and no matter what else they do, sexual objects.

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.

Over at Kate Harding’s site, user Daminique writes about an ad she saw in a Dutch train station:

The idea behind this ad: the fat lady gets distracted by a bag of candy, ‘loses her head’, and people could see her PIN number because she wasn’t paying attention.

I could get really analytical here, but I run the risk of vitriolic sarcasm. I’ll just say that this ad is a great illustration of the societal connection between “health” and moral goodness, not to mention a cheap-shot joke at the expense of fat people.

Telefono Donna, a rape crisis hotline in Italy, designed a poster to raise awareness of rape in honor of November 25, the International Day to for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Some conservative politicians in Milan object to the Christ-like pose taken by the bare-breasted model in the poster. From the UK Telegraph:

“We’re calling for the poster to be withdrawn because an important day like this should not be debased by such a sexual provocation,” said councillor Carlo Fidanza, a member of the right-wing National Alliance party.

But the president of the Telefono Donna rape helpline, Stefania Bartochetti, said she was surprised by the controversy because the poster had raised no objections in other Italian cities.

“As a Catholic I can’t see anything offensive or blasphemous. We chose a strong image to encourage more rape victims to break their silence,” she said.

The poster poses the question: ‘Who Pays For Man’s Sins?’ and a caption which reads “Only four per cent of women who suffer sexual violence report their assailants.”

Left-leaning politicians said their opponents’ concerns were out of step with contemporary Italian society.

“If you applied these standards to Italian television, you’d have to get rid of 70 per cent of what the main channels broadcast,” said Pierfrancesco Majorino, of the Democratic Party.

Small reproduction of the poster, showing bare-breasted woman [NSFW], below the cut. more...

Marc sent in a link to some sexist vintage ads found at Blog of Hilarity [note: I had an actual link to Blog of Hilarity, but commenter LillyB pointed out that when she clicked on it, she got warnings from her AntiVirus about the site; I just had the same thing happen, so I decided for safety’s sake to remove the link]. Some of them I’ll be adding to other posts, but I thought these deserved their own post.

This one, for Love’s Baby Soft, is so creepy I can hardly stand to look at it:

The shape of the bottles, the sexualization of young girls…ick. A teddy bear? Really? The text below the bottles:

Love’s Baby Soft is that irresistible, clean-baby smell, grown-up enough to be sexy. It’s soft-smelling. Pure and innocent. It may well be the sexist fragrance around.

Notice it’s not grown up…it’s grown up enough. Jean Kilbourne uses this, or a similar Love’s Baby Soft, ad in her documentary Killing Us Softly 3 when she discusses how young girls are sexualized and adult women are encouraged to infantilize themselves.

Here’s an ad for Kellogg’s PEP vitamins:

I know I always look super cute when I’m scrubbing the kitchen.

Finally, this Trix ad seems sort of creepy to me, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the way the girl is staring at the camera, or that her pupils seem fixed and dilated:

The text isn’t exceptionally interesting, but it does use the word “gay” in the original sense of “happy,” something a company would certainly not do today.

Thanks, Marc!