gender: children/youth

Aaron B. sent in this 1947 video clip (found here), titled “Are You Popular?”:

Notice the caution to women: if you go “parking with all the boys,” you might think you’re popular, but you’ll ultimately find yourself ostracized and friendless. To be really popular, you need to be well-dressed, have the respect of girls at school, and carefully guard your reputation.

Thanks, Aaron!

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

In a comment a while back, Elena pointed out that Diego Velázquez’s painting “Infante Felipe Próspero” (from 1659) provides a good example of how pink was acceptable for males to wear…as were, in some cases, dresses, which the young prince is wearing:

Elena says,

…until the late 1700s little boys would wear dresses or petticoats for as long as they could until they could dress as miniature adults…This was mainly for ease of bodily functions.

Of course, today most parents would be appalled at the idea of dressing toddler boys in dresses–dresses with frills and ribbons, at that.

The painting “Pope Innocent X,” also by Velázquez (1650) shows the Pope in light pink clothing:

Both images found at the National Gallery’s Velázquez page.

You might also check out Kent State University Museum’s Centuries of Childhood exhibit for examples of how children’s clothing has changed over time.

Thanks for the tip, Elena!

Rachel M. sends us this story:  The cover for the 1976 Scorpions album “Virgin Killer” apparently not considered problematic enough for censorship at the time, was pulled from a Wikipedia webpage for being “a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18.”  The image, included after the jump, features a naked prepubescent girl in a provocative pose:

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Welcome to Christmas 2008!

Rose McM. sent us this great example of rigidly gender-coded toys from the Sears Wish Catalog (click to enlarge):

NEW! (Jan. ’10): Sarah O. snapped this photo of toys that teach girls they should cook and care for babies, while boys can build things and be doctors:

See also these posts on the Rose Petal Cottage and Tonka Trucks (“built for boyhood!”).

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.

Heather O. sent us a link to product sold at a website featuring items for girls’ rooms.  It’s a “piggy” bank for saving money for a boob job.

In case there is any question as to whether the products are aimed at girls, this is from the front page:

Thanks Heather!

The belief that men and women are “opposite sexes” doesn’t come out of thin air.  It doesn’t, very often, come out of our life experience either, as most people most of us know are not living stereotypes.  No, in fact we are TOLD that men and women are “opposite sexes” constantly.  Consider this submission from Andrea G.:

You can now buy One-A-Day vitamins for teens, boy and girl teens that is (and in case you can’t tell which one is which, they’re color-coded).  According to Women’s Health News, the vitamins “for him” have more magnesium and the vitamins “for her” have more calcium and iron.

(1) Notice the obnoxious invisibility of dad (my emphasis):

Did you know there are gender specific teen multivitamins to address the top health concerns of moms and teens?

This is annoying, of course, because it reproduces the idea that dads don’t care about or aren’t paying attention to their kids.  But it’s also kind of ridiculous because, as long as we’re going by stereotypes, if there’s one social group less concerned with health than men, it’s teenagers.

(2)  I will leave aside whether teenaged female and male bodies are so dramatically different that they need different vitamins and minerals (I am not convinced), and instead just point out that One-A-Day has gendered what vitamins are for.  Check out the first bullet point in the close-up (in case you can’t tell which is which, the “For Him” is in block letters with stripes across his torso and the “For Her” is in cursive with spirally curves):

So boys need vitamins for muscles and girls need vitamins for clear skin?

I bet these vitamins will sell like hotcakes.

Thanks Andrea!

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!

Click to enlarge:

I think it’s interesting that the National Federation of State High School Associations defines cheerleading as a sport.

(Image by Chris Uggen.  Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations.)