gender: femininity

Nico G. sent along a sweet seven-minute film short about a little girl who wants to win the heart of a boy, and does so by his equal instead of his object. It’s cute.

Directed by Michelle Lehman, 2008 award winner Tropfest Australia

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.

Kristie V. let us know about a new item in Skechers’ Shape-Ups line of shoes. If you aren’t familiar with Shape-Ups, they’re the sneakers with the specially-shaped soles that supposedly firm your butt as you walk. Now Skechers has introduced a line of Shape-Ups targeted at tween girls (via Shine):

I was particularly struck by the scene at 23 seconds in, where the girl confidently bounces along in her Shape-Up, trailed by exhausted-looking boys dressed up as food:

Apparently Shape-Ups not only firm your butt, they give you the ability to reject food as well.

Though Skechers apparently claims to be targeting childhood obesity, at least two independent studies found that these types of shoes have no benefit in terms of fitness, whether measured by calories burned or level of muscle toning. But as Morning Gloria at Jezebel points out, girls are never too young to be socialized into buying products of questionable effectiveness — and avoiding food — in the hopes of “looking good and having fun,” as the ad put it.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

gabrielleabelle sent in an online ad for Minute Maid orange juice that reinforces gender stereotypes, particularly that women are desperate to get married and feel competitive with one another regarding their progress toward this all-important goal. The ad is part of Minute Maid’s “Mmojo” campaign, which consists of ads showing people drinking Minute Maid and then instantly being more successful, desirable, and generally awesome. This ad included images of two people who clearly have lots of mmojo and asks how you compare. How could we tell? Well, the guy is covered in lipstick kisses and looks a little overwhelmed by the attention:

Now, how would we know a woman was magically charmed? Oh, that’s right — she’d have managed to get herself an engagement ring:

Because there would be no better proof of a woman’s magical powers than her ability to get a man to propose to her. I can’t even imagine how much mmojo another woman would have to have to top this.

Abby W. let us know about a disturbing scene in this week’s episode of the TV show Gossip Girl. The scene depicts an interaction between two individuals, Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf, who have turned into one of the show’s anchor couples that fans root for, always ending up together again despite their on-again off-again nature. In this episode, they’re off again and Blair has been dating someone else (a prince, of course). According to Zap 2 It, earlier in the episode, Chuck apparently humiliated Blair by talking about their prior sexual escapades in front of her boyfriend’s mother. She then goes to Chuck’s penthouse to tell him that her boyfriend has proposed to her, leading to this scene (warning: though he doesn’t hit her, if you’re sensitive to images of violence, you may want to skip the video):

So after publicly humiliating her by referring to her sexual past, Chuck tells Blair “you’re mine” and that she can’t be with anyone else, grabs her and throws her onto the sofa, and when she reiterates that it’s over, he ends up punching a window and injuring her with flying glass. And yet, in an interview with E!, one of Gossip Girl‘s executive producers says that this shouldn’t been seen as abusive behavior. In fact, if there’s anyone to be worried about, it’s Chuck:

I think it’s very clear that Blair is not afraid in those moments, for herself. They have a volatile relationship, they always have, but I do not believe—or I should say we do not believe—that it is abuse when it’s the two of them. Chuck does not try to hurt Blair. He punches the glass because he has rage, but he has never, and will never, hurt Blair. He knows it and she knows it, and I feel it’s very important to know that she is not scared—if anything, she is scared for Chuck—and what he might do to himself, but she is never afraid of what he might do to her.

Ah, Chuck…He’s such a classic romantic hero, like Rhett Butler, sort of strong enough that you can stretch him pretty far.

…

He’s always had that Gothic thing, and those guys are always imbued with a dark side in addition to their vulnerability about their girlfriends.

It’s a disturbing example of the way that controlling and violent behavior by men toward the women in their lives is often depicted as evidence of passion that the female character totally accepts (they just “have a volatile relationship,” so it’s “not abuse when it’s the two of them”). Chuck’s repeated mistreatment of Blair (apparently last season he promised his uncle he could have sex with Blair as part of a business deal) is excused (he’s drunk, and really upset about whatever he learned about his family!), and in fact, his inappropriate behavior is romanticized by the executive producer and the interviewer. A man who publicly humiliates his girlfriend, uses her sexuality as a pawn in business deals, and leaves her injured from flying glass when he finds out he’s losing control over her (not to mention tried to force a 14-year-old girl to have sex with him in the very first episode of the show, back before we were supposed to find him lovable) is still referred to as a “classic romantic hero” who should not be seen as abusive or scary.

In fact, the promo for next week’s episode reinforces the message that Chuck is acting like this because he needs Blair so much that he falls apart without her, and individuals with nefarious plans are intentionally using this knowledge to get to him. So Chuck isn’t abusive; he’s a fragile victim who just loves Blair too much for his own good:

This is particularly disturbing given that the show is popular among teens, many of whom experience abuse in their relationships but are unsure how to deal with it or whether it “counts” as abuse. These types of representations of normalize such behavior, excusing the men who engage in it and giving the message to women that being treated in such a way isn’t a major warning sign but, rather, evidence of a man’s deep passion and vulnerability.

The new “manned-up” VW Beetle is in the news again and J. Dawn Carlson, a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley, asked us to write about it.  We covered it in July of 2010, but figured this was a good excuse to revisit the post.

The VW Bug was introduced in 1938 for economical, powerful, fast, and sustained driving on the German Autobahn.  Later it jumped shores and became an icon of the California surfer lifestyle:

The New Beetle, however, introduced in 1998, quickly became associated with women because of its bubbly body and pastel colors. Feminized products, however, don’t sell well with men (or some women) because femininity is stigmatizing.  Accordingly, the Beetle is re-vamping its image; it’s getting a “sex change” for 2011.  Brit S. pointed us to a story in the Anaheim Examiner detailing this surgery.  Jim Cherry writes:

New Beetle is about to get a testosterone injection. A mean-looking chopped top, 200 H.P. motor, widened stance, and a larger interior will transform the quintessential chick car into a rock-hard rock star.

So being mean-looking, wider, and larger (with a Porsche engine) are all equated with masculinity, a characteristic that will supposedly improve the cars appeal to men (and non-girly women).  Here’s what the new testosterone-injected Beetle will look like (in red, of course):

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.

Alli sent us a link to a vintage ad posted at BoingBoing that reminds us, in the wake of the Abercrombie Kids push-up bikini top fiasco, that encouraging young girls to act like adult women, including wearing lingerie, isn’t a brand-new phenomenon. The ad, from 1959, offers bra and panties set for girls sizes 2-12:

Initially posted by Mitch O’Connell.

I wonder how this ad would have been perceived in 1959. Creepy? Just an example of harmless childhood mimicking of adults? How do we draw the line between the two?

Lauren S. sent in this ad for a used car dealership that ran in the London Free Press, a free newspaper in London, Ontario. The ad compares used cars to sexually experienced women with the lines, “You know you’re not the first. But do you really care?”:

As Lauren points out, it’s blatant objectification of women, but “in addition to objectifying women to sell vehicles, this campaign suggests that a woman’s sexual past is equivalent to depreciation.”

I suppose someone could argue that the message that you shouldn’t “care” whether your women/cars are “used” rejects the sexual double standard, but the objectification and the implication that non-virgin women are “used” undermine any apparent rejection of that double standard.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen this type of ad for used cars; we previously posted a BMW ad, but in that case, I suspect (though we’ve never been able to confirm) that it might have been a spec ad made by an ad agency but never actually used by BMW. In this case, Lauren actually saw it in print.

UPDATE 1: Well, I must give Dale Wurfel some credit. He is apparently an equal-opportunity objectifier. He ran a second ad that uses a man instead of a woman:

Via Wheels.

Of course, equal objectification doesn’t necessarily have equal effects. We live in a world with a sexual double standard. Calling a woman “used” resonates culturally in a way that it simply doesn’t for men, because we don’t punish men for sexual experience in the same way.

UPDATE 2: Lauren let us know that the car dealership issued an apology:

UPDATE: Comments closed.

Well, I’m very late posting today, obviously. It was a long day. Anyway, Elliott J. sent in an AP news story that ran on Yahoo news. The article about the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team — which was in the Final Four of the women’s tournament — focuses not on their physical prowess, skill, or competitive spirit, but rather on the fact that they’re super excited to cheer on the UConn men’s team: Of course, there’s nothing shocking about the fact that one team from a school might want other teams from the same school to win. But there’s a tendency to feminize female athletes and to highlight their relationships with and appreciation for men, to reassure audiences that they’re still appropriately feminine despite their interest in sports and amazing athletic abilities. In this case, we learn that these female athletes still support and cheer for their male colleagues…and though the women in the article say the teams support each other, only examples of the women rooting for the men are included, and despite my googling, I couldn’t find any stories about how much the UConn men’s team was pulling for the women’s team.

UPDATE: Reader twostatesystem was able to find an article about the men of UConn cheering on the women that I didn’t find in my quick googling (I tried variations on “UConn men cheer/support/pull for women” and couldn’t find anything at the time).