gender: femininity

Rachel O., writing from New Zealand, sent in an interesting example of gendered energy drinks.  Other than their being gendered, I thought there were two things worth noting.

First, the only difference between the male and female version of the drink (other than the marketing, which is downright diametrical) is the number of calories.  The female version, Angel, is low calorie; the male version, Demon, is not.  So dieting, an imperative towards thinness, and femininity (not to mention innocence) are all lumped together in the marketing of the product.

Demon (don’t click… loud, scary music):

Angel (safe to click):

The second thing I thought was interesting about these two drinks was that it took a lot of digging to find evidence that they were made by the same company (though I finally found it here).  As far as I can tell, neither website admits the existence of the other.  This is a really strong separation of the two products, as if femininity and masculinity threaten to spoil each other, it’s best to keep them as far away from one another as possible.  God forbid we know that the makers of the aggressive Demon drink sissy it up to also make the sweet, low cal Angel drink.  Best to keep our masculinity and femininity pure.

This reminds me of the fact that Dove and Axe are owned by the same company.  The two products are sold with divergent marketing campaigns — the former claims to empower women, the latter produces some of the most sexist advertising on TV — but they are both part of Unilever.  Only our ignorance of this fact makes Dove’s marketing strategy seem earnest.

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.

Rachel sent in a commercial for Dove chocolate that, as she says, sends “mixed messages…about unrealistic beauty standards for women.” Here’s the video:

Transcript:

We’re only human, but we try to be perfect.
We pretend that high heels are comfortable, and that waxing just takes getting used to.
We pretend we can manage anything that’s thrown at us, and sometimes we can.
And other times, we just have to cut ourselves some slack, and take a moment.
Because although we’re only human, that’s more than enough.
Your moment, your Dove.

The commercial seems to want to have it both ways. On the one hand, trappings of conventional femininity (heels, waxing, as well as being a superwoman who can handle “anything that’s thrown at us”) are accepted as “perfection,” elements of an ideal version of us we aspire to. On the other hand, it’s drawing on the idea that we should just accept ourselves — we’re “more than enough” — but in a way that implies that we have to do this not because there’s something wrong with an ideal of perfection that requires women to put ourselves through painful rituals, but just because sometimes we can’t manage to meet that ideal and have to give ourselves a break and eat some chocolate (of course!) to console ourselves before we get up the energy to throw ourselves back into the search for perfection again. As we often see in advertising, it uses a women’s empowerment message (you’re great the way you are! You can do anything!) in a superficial way that simply suggests consumption as a solution rather than truly challenging the beauty ideals it appears to be critiquing.

My friend Matt M. let me know about this video from The Second City Network that nicely sums up some of the disturbing messages about love, dating, and gender in animated movies such as Beauty and the Beast. Enjoy!

Also watch an earlier on on The Little Mermaid.

Nicole S. sent us screenshots of two sets of books she saw for sale online at Barnes & Noble. They provide us with some very important information about how men and women differ, as well as the types of things/activities/emotions that have been masculinized or feminized. Not sure if you’re speaking to a man or a woman? Check to see what pet they have with them:

And don’t be fooled into thinking parents are interchangeable. They serve very different roles. Dads are for playing with. Moms need to stay in the house and bake while you’re out playing catch with Dad, and then console you when you get hit in the face with the baseball:

I would provide some more sociological analysis here, but I’m distressed to realize I’m not fitting into appropriate gender roles, so I need to run to the animal shelter and trade in my dogs for a couple more cats to go with the one I ended up with when an ex-boyfriend abandoned her, which he must have done after realizing owning her was feminizing him.

As for understanding me through my cat, the other day I was ignoring her while I read a book so she came up and bit me on the nose hard enough to draw blood, so apparently I’m either a masochist or an aggressive self-involved brat, depending on whether you judge me by my cat, or by what I put up with from her.

Carol C. sent in another example of the male = active, female = passive dichotomy, this time from Lego. They have a line called Lego City, which contains four figures and various accessories:

While you can obviously pose the characters however you want, Lego’s description of the set clearly assumes men are in more active, with specific work-related roles:

Meet the residents of LEGO® City!

LEGO® City is one busy place! As the girl listens to the radio on the park bench, the nearby policeman directs cars at the traffic light, the delivery boy hurries with an important package on his cart, and the businessman heads to his next meeting. Includes minifigures, street signs, accessories and more!

The men have jobs and things they are going to do. The girl — the only one here not in a uniform — sits on a bench.

Though she’s listening to the radio (on a boombox from, like, 1989), and possibly being hit on by the delivery boy, so maybe those are supposed to count as being active.

Right?

Or, at least, we’re constantly told that women love shoes.

This ad in the August 2010 issue of Elle Canada got a “major eye roll” from JT.  Women need focus (focus vitamin water, that is), so that they can shop for shoes.  They’re just so many kiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnds!

Meanwhile, Jacob spotted this Nine West sign in the Pittsburgh airport.  It reads “Everything A Woman Wants: MORE SHOES AND PURSES!”:

Both of these ads present women as obsessed with shoes (and purses).  I am not obsessed with either.  I buy all my shoes at thrift stores (except running shoes) and I care so little about purses that Gwen actually buys them for me in Las Vegas and mails them to Los Angeles so that I don’t carry the exact same purse until I die.

That is all.

See also: Men hate shopping.

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.

Etan B. sent in an interesting case of both stereotyping women (generally as annoying) and interpreting everything they do through the lens of gender difference. Dan Steinberg posted an article on D.C. Sports Blog, a blog of the Washington Post, about comments yesterday by Rob Dibble, a sports commentator for Fox News and for the D.C. baseball team the Nationals on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network channel during televised games. Dibble was apparently fascinated by the fact that a group of women attended the game and, like, talked and stuff. Here are the women to whom he repeatedly referred (he’s also the one who circled them on the screen so viewers could clearly see them):

Steinberg transcribed some of Dibble’s comments:

Those ladies right behind there, they haven’t stopped talking the whole game…They have some conversation going on. Right here…There must be a sale tomorrow going on here or something….Their husbands are going man, don’t bring your wife next time.

Then:

…now they’re back there, they’re eating ice cream and talking at the same time…

Later:

…they’re right there, still talking…

And:

I was just thinking, those women, there’s a new series, Real Housewives of D.C., that just came out…Maybe they’re filming an episode?

This is a perfect example of the way we interpret behavior depending on the gender of the person engaging in it. While I’m by no means a big fan, I have been to baseball games, everything from my nephew’s Little League game for 6-year-olds (seriously hilarious, since the kids mostly run from the ball, stare into space, and have very little idea what’s going on) to major-league games. Everyone eats and talks during the game, at the same time, even. Quite a few spectators consume a lot of beer, after which their conversations become more animated. Sure, they pay more attention at some times than others, but going to a baseball game is a pretty social event that does not involve staring intently at the field at all moments. In fact, the very fact that Dibble was making all these comments means he wasn’t focusing solely on events on the field himself.

But these mundane activities drew Dibble’s attention because women were doing them. Since he stereotypes women as not having a real interest in baseball, their presence, and willingness to talk and eat food, and then talk more, is a sign that they aren’t there for the right reasons and are probably ruining the game for the men around them. They must be talking about typically girly things like shopping. Or maybe they’re there because they’re part of a TV show! That is definitely the most logical explanation.

In a society where gender differences are emphasized, and where femininity is devalued, anything women do may be viewed negatively, even when (or because) men do the exact same thing. The things these women did would almost certainly go unnoticed if a group of men did them, and wouldn’t have attention drawn to them throughout the game. But because it was women, eating and talking becomes noteworthy and bizarre, if not outright annoying, and their presence at all requires explanation.

Way back in June, Eszter H., Eric B., and Kasia G. sent in an image that the Chicago Tribune ran, in early June, of Philadelphia Flyers hockey player Chris Pronger wearing a figure-skating skirt with a sparkly hem, referring to him as “Chrissy” and including the line “Looks like Tarzan, skates like Jane” (image from USA Today):

The Tribune was counting on the fact that femininity is stigmatized for men; thus, they don’t have to say anything meaningful about Pronger or make a specific claim. Just linking him to femininity — through clothing, name, and language — is enough to make fun of him. Of course, this isn’t just about mocking Pronger. By default, using femininity to ridicule men involves devaluing women and things associated with us. Someone who “skates like Jane” — that is, like a girl — is laughable.

Angela Ruggiero, head of the U.S. women’s hockey team, clearly understood the connection and didn’t appreciate it (from ESPN):

“I’d like to see that editor out on skates. I’ll take them one-on-one on the ice any day,” three-time Olympic medalist Angela Ruggiero told The Associated Press. “They obviously have never seen women’s hockey and are living in the dark ages.”

Ruggiero found out about the poster via Twitter and expressed disappointment and anger that such demeaning portrayals of women and hockey are still being made.

It’s a great example of the use of femininity as stigma, a process that harms both men (who have to eschew anything associated with women) and women (who are encouraged to perform a devalued and often ridiculed gender ideal).