gender: beauty

Yvette, Kari B., and Yet Another Girl all sent in links to articles about Dove Ultimate Go Sleeveless deodorant. The campaign for the deodorant focuses on the fact that it supposedly makes your armpits look better. Here’s one commercial (via The Consumerist; it’s not the best illustration of how much Dove is pushing the attractiveness angle, but it’s the only commercial from this ad campaign I could find):

According to research cited on Dove’s website, 93% of women think their underarms are unattractive and thus may refuse to wear sleeveless clothing.

Libby Copeland at Slate sums up what’s going on here:

Dove’s empowerment-via-shame marketing approach for Go Sleeveless has its roots in advertising techniques that gained popularity in the 1920s: a) pinpoint a problem, perhaps one consumers didn’t even know they had; b) exacerbate anxiety around the problem; c) sell the cure.

Ladies, it’s not enough to shave and deodorize your underarms. They need even more prettification than they’ve been getting. How this deodorant does that, I don’t know. But it does. You’re welcome.

Stephen Colbert discussed Dove and advertising based on insecurities recently:

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

There was a time when the idea of sticking needles into one’s face was something that was to be avoided at all costs.  Then there was botox.  And it didn’t take long before certain segments of society were flocking to the needlers, begging to be stuck.  Face needling has become so commonplace — so desirable, even — that non-needly products have been disguising themselves as needles, so as to attract consumer dollars.

Of what am I speaking?  A product sent in by Ella Dilkes-Frayne.  Ella saw posters in a mall in Melbourne, Australia for non-injectable beauty products sold in containers that mimicked syringes.   The product, hoping to capitalize on the new acceptance of and desire for botox, is a great example of how socially and personally acceptable bodily intervention is always changing.

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.

Way back in November David M. sent in another example of the tendency to conflate curves with women of color. This ad for a bodyshaper that appeared in the magazine i-on Glasgow (via wishiwerebaking on Flickr) says that wearing their product will give you “Latino curves,” and the code for the discount is “Latino” (which perhaps should be “Latina,” but we have much bigger issues than that to deal with).

I’m putting it after a jump because one reader said it was slightly NSFW or, more specifically, some public libraries; it’s an image of a woman in a strapless bra and body shaper, so you don’t see any nudity.

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The blog Of Another Fashion, by Minh-Ha T. Pham, serves as “an alternative archive of the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color.” The collection includes images taken from public sources as well as photos sent in by readers and provides a contrast to fashion exhibits that usually present fashion trends as almost entirely White experiences.

While the collection is fascinating overall and definitely worth a look, I was particularly struck by the photos of life among Japanese Americans forced to live in internment camps during World War II.

A legal notice requiring Japanese Americans on the West Coast to relocate voluntarily to internment camps or face arrest:

Women playing volleyball:

(Library of Congress. Photo by Ansel Adams.)

Walking to school at the Manzanar camp:

(Library of Congress. Photo by Ansel Adams.)

Women in biology and dressmaking classes:

(Both images by Ansel Adams, 1943; Library of Congress.)

One camp’s version of a beauty salon:

Intake processing at the Santa Anita center:

(From the Library of Congress’ Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information Collection (April 1942). Photographer unknown.)

Pham discusses the fact that in many of the photos of the processing centers, the women are smiling and look very happy, despite going through what had to be an upsetting, frightening, and humiliating experience. Japanese Americans were not allowed to bring their own cameras into the camps; the photos were taken by others, including Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams. And they found their subjects didn’t always cooperate with the images they were planning to provide of the camps:

According to Sue Kunitomi Embrey the chair of the Manzanar Committee, Adams hoped to capture the despair of camp life in order to stir some public sympathy for Japanese Americans but was frustrated by all the primping and posing Japanese Americans did when he was photographing.

…

…I hope that images of smiling and fashion-conscious Japanese American women…adds to and deepens our appreciation of the small acts of feeling, creativity, and resistance that happen everyday in spite of huge limitations. In an act as seemingly trivial and trite as smiling for the camera, these women interrupt and take some control of the historical, political, and visual frames through which they’re being viewed.

Jordan G. sent in a link to work by photographer Mark Laita.   Laita, after long working in advertising, decided that he was tired of producing images that were “nice”:

I felt the need to produce something that was raw and real, as life truly is, not just what we aspire to. The more shocking to our sense of what’s “right,” the better.

He decided to do so through contrast.   In his new photo series, he tries to get us to think by provocatively pairing portraits. They tell us stories about social class, consumption, social sacrifice, and standards of beauty.

Via BoingBoing and Turnstyle.

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.

When Jessie Dress of Austin, Texas started the project Fa(t)shion February for Femmes and Friends, she was responding to what she perceived as a gap in the online community celebrating “fatshion,” or fashion for fat-identified people.   She explains, “I don’t feel like the fatshion blogs I see really represent the kind of radical queer fashion that I’m into and that feels like my community.”   Jessie committed to posting “outfits of the day” (OOTD) every day in February.  Her intention was to celebrate and draw attention to three kinds of politicized fashion projects – first, fatshion;  second, the fashion of femme-identified queers; and finally, the fashion of allies of both fat and femme-identified people.

The result was Fa(t)shion February for Femmes & Friends – an inclusive space for posting OOTD for those who find themselves outside the mainstream fashion ideal.  What started as her small personal project with a close group of friends has since exploded, with over 350 people participating in some way – a number that grows by the day:

Fa(t)shion February participant Gazel (of Gazelma)

The aim of the project is to “queer” fashion in a number of ways – to celebrate the subversive possibility of fashion.  What’s exciting about how the Fa(t)shion February project has developed is the many different ways this aim has been realized.  For example, an amazing conversation has emerged through the project regarding the  “fat experience.”  Fa(t)shion February was created to be explicitly inclusive of those who are often missing from the fatshion dialogue – that is, individuals on the fattest end of the fat spectrum.  This privileging of “bigger fats” is an attempt to further radicalize the fatshion phenomenon, but it has come with its own set of dilemmas.  Some users expressed fear of participation because they aren’t “fat enough” or aren’t fat-identified.  In response to a conversation on The Rotund, Jessie wrote on her tumblr,

The kinds of difficult – but incredibly important – dialogues that are happening in and around the project are part of what makes it succeed in its mission to use fashion as a tool of social activism and community building.

[The rest of the post is after the jump just because it’s somewhat long.]

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The California Milk Processor Board, the group responsible for the Got Milk? and Happy Cows ad campaigns, produced “Medusa,” a commercial about a princess whose “ugly hair” destroys her chances for love…until, of course, a  man comes along who knows how to tame her hair, make her beautiful, and “conquer her love,” allowing her to finally get married:

I get that her hair is made up of snakes, but as a person with incredibly curly, unpredictable, shall we say boisterous hair, I can’t help but notice that the beauty ideal espoused here clearly calls for sleek, straight, controlled hair.

Sarah Haskins takes on the fairy tale trope in commercials aimed at women, including my favorite, a milk ad in which the princess’s PMS mood swings cause a tidal wave of her tears that threatens her entire realm:

Lisa and I have posted before about the way that food products are often marketed by conflating them with women’s bodies and reinforcing that the desirable female body is thin, but with the right type of curves. Non-food items are marketed this way too — for example, in one ad, Sunsilk Shampoo’s packaging underwent “a little nip, a little tuck” and came out a bit curvier.

In another perfect example of this, Mary R., Megan D., and Carey Faulkner, who is a Visiting Assistant Professor of sociology at Franklin & Marshall College, let us know about a new container from Pepsi. The new Diet Pepsi “skinny” can is, according to the company, “sassier” and a “celebration of beautiful, confident women.” The can will debut this month, in conjunction with New York’s fashion week. Reinforcing the conflation of thinness, beauty, and fashion, their chief marketing officer, Jill Beraud, said, “Our slim, attractive new can is the perfect complement to today’s most stylish looks”:

Just so we don’t miss the point, the Pepsico press release refers to the can as “attractive” three times, twice with the phrase “slim, attractive.” Because ladies, never, ever forget: thin = beautiful. Always.

Pepsi has also partnered with a number of designers for the advertising campaign, including everything from a window display by Simon Doonan to a t-shirt “inspired” by Diet Pepsi by Charlotte Ronson to giving away Diet Pepsi in the skinny can at a number of fashion boutiques in several major cities.

Don’t worry, though — CNN reports that if you prefer your soda “short and fat,” the regular cans will remain on shelves.