One of our very first posts on SocImages was a Wrestle Mania billboard. It featured a bunch of muscle-bound men without shirts, but their nipples were photoshopped out. They were too suggestive of women’s nipples (which are obscene, obviously) and possibly against the law.
Nipple-phobia is back with a particularly amusing example from Facebook. Company policy requires deleting images of “female nipple bulges” (defined as “naked ‘private parts'”; male nipples, with or without bulges, are excluded from the ban). This prompted Facebook to take down a New Yorker cartoon by Mick Stevens, see if you can figure why.
To be fair, and here I begin my own mockery, we are talking about Eve here. And she had lost her innocence — and the innocence of the entire human race — with her “original” idea. So… you know, she was a dirty, dirty gal who did a bad, bad thing and would realize the importance of covering up those “dirty pillows” sooner or later. Facebook was just ahead of the curve. I guess.
The blog Street Anatomy looks at representations of human anatomy in textbooks, design, and pop culture. One aspect they look at is gendered presentations of human bodies in medical texts. Some of the examples they’ve collected are on display in the Objectify This: Female Anatomy Dissected and Displayed exhibit, which runs through September 29th at Design Cloud Gallery in Chicago.
Curator Vanessa Ruiz posted a textbook included in the exhibit. The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice, published in 1971, used naked female bodies posed in ways reminiscent of pin-ups. As the authors explained,
In our own student days we discovered that studying surface anatomy with a wife or girl friend proved to be not only instructive, but highly entertaining. Since the majority of medical students still tend to be males, we have liberalized this text by making use of the female form. But, more to the point, we have done so because a large portion of your future patients will be women and few texts have pointed out surface landmarks on the female.
Below are some sample illustrations; I’m putting them after the jump since they include nude women.
Dolores R. sent in a cartoon by rampaige. It seems unlikely that a man would randomly criticize a woman in a scoop neck t-shirt for the existence of her breasts, but it happens more often than you think.
I’m a bit busty, and a girl, and strangers have occasionally given me “advice” about my breasts. Once I was told by a man I had just been introduced to that I shouldn’t wear sweaters. Stumped — and living in Wisconsin — I asked why. He explained that sweaters have “pile,” by which he meant that the fabric was thick. The thickness of the fabric, he said, made my boobs look even bigger. Since that was a bad thing, apparently, he advised me to avoid sweaters. Weird, I know. But I’m just saying, this stuff happens.
In Gay Rights at the Ballot Box, I analyze the long history of transgender smear tactics used by the Religious Right, a large social movement that opposes LGBT rights. One area where this occurs is the production of campaign ads addressing attempts to protect transgender individuals from discrimination. The ads almost always focus on either children or bathrooms.
Back in April, voters in Anchorage, Alaska, rejected Proposition 5, which would have created a law protecting residents from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Such laws are primarily to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) residents. Transgender inclusion in the potential law was the focus of two commercials by the organization Protect Your Rights.
In both of these political ads, figures of large, hairy male-bodied individuals in dresses, described as “transvestites”, represented transgender inclusion. They present transgender individuals as grotesque and threatening. At the heart of these ads and other transgender smear tactics is anxiety about bodies in gender-segregated spaces that are typically occupied by women.
The women’s bathroom in particular is a site where gender conformity is policed. According to scholar Judith Halberstam in her book Female Masculinity, women’s bathrooms “operate as an arena for the enforcement of gender conformity…a sanctuary of enhanced femininity, a ‘little girl’s room’ to which one retreats to powder one’s nose or fix one’s hair” (p. 24). In this ad, the locker room operates in parallel way, as a space where gender conformity and bodies are strictly policed:
The other ad focused on the possibility of a “transvestite” getting hired at a daycare facility:
In addition to the use of stereotypically-presented “transvestites” to represent all transgender individuals as grotesque and laughable, the ads also argue that employers should have the right to discriminate if they think their customers are prejudiced toward a particular group or uncomfortable with them in certain jobs — an argument that has been used to resist allowing racial minorities and women into various careers. The ads also suggest that Anchorage is already sufficiently tolerant and thus doesn’t need to address the issues Proposition 5 supporters claimed were a problem.
Ads that raise fears about transvestites teaching in the classroom have been used since the 1970s during ballot measure campaigns, and the Religious Right has been raising concerns about transgender women in women’s bathrooms since the late 1980s. These two ads from the Anchorage Proposition 5 campaign are among the newest additions to the long tradition of ads that rely on stereotypes of LGBT individuals as predatory, dangerous to have around children, and having ulterior motives.
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Amy L. Stone is an associate professor of sociology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Men and women in Western societies often look more different than they are naturally because of the incredible amounts of work we put into trying to look different. Often this is framed as “natural” but, in fact, it takes a lot of time, energy, and money. The dozens of half-drag portraits, from photographer Leland Bobbé, illustrate just how powerful our illusion can be. Drag, of course, makes a burlesque of the feminine; it is hyperfeminine. But most all of us are doing drag, at least a little bit, much of the time. Here’s an example of one we have permission to use for the cover of our Gender textbook:
Last year Lisa posted about Wonder Woman’s pose on a Justice League cover and the way it revealed performative aspects of gender. DC Comics recently released a new Catwoman series. Majd Al-Shihabi sent in a link to the cover of Catwoman #0. The cover drew a lot of attention for the degree of sexualization of Catwoman, whose unrealistic and painful-looking pose maximizes the prominence of her breasts and butt:
I tried to imagine how you’d have to hold your body to even approximate that pose, but at a certain point it hurt to even think about it.
And some time ago Hark! A Vagrant presented Strong Female Characters, which awesomely parodies the “it’s not problematic to sexually objectify all your female characters as long as they’re able to kick ass ‘n stuff!” argument (thanks to Erin R. and Gabrielle M. for sending it in). Here’s just one panel; I recommend following the link to check out the whole thing:
Gamma Squad has several other examples, including one where someone tries to use a graphics design program to reproduce the Catwoman pose without breaking her spine. Results: can’t be done.
About Sociological Images
Sociological Images encourages people to exercise and develop their sociological imaginations with discussions of compelling visuals that span the breadth of sociological inquiry. Read more…
