gender: femininity

Lynn drew our attention to the American Apparel webpages for men’s and women’s clothes.  She notes a distinct difference:

On the Women’s clothing pages, the girls are modelling THEMSELVES in addition to the clothes.  You see a butt purposefully sticking out here, a shirt pulled up to there, a head thrown back in a coquettish manner, a back arched this way and that.

On the Men’s pages, the men are essentially just “standing there”, letting the clothes speak for themselves.

I’ve included screen shots of all of the models in the slide show, so you can judge for yourself (sorry for the funky formatting; there were more images of women than men).

The men:

The women:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Kristyn G. sent in this excellent image showing the clear division of the world into two paths: that of the sexually active flirt, destined to a life of shame and loneliness (by age 40), and the good girl who can become a happy mother and grandmother:

Apparently it appeared in a “social hygiene” manual in the early 1900s.

Also see these trailers for old movies about teens gone wild.

NEW! Awesome reader Maria found the boys’ version:

Not too long ago, we posted about Dora the Explorer’s makeover.  Everyone was talking about it and lots of people felt that it signified  a disinterest in strong role models for girls (Dora being one of the only ones out there), in favor of pretty ones.

A recent post at Vintage Ads reminds us that taking strong female characters and subjecting them to trivializing beauty regimes is nothing new.  Enjoy this ad for the Bionic Woman Beauty Salon:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

We have, of course, posted a number of examples of toys that socialize girls into motherhood and housework (for instance). But this 1960s commercial for the Suzy Homemaker line of toys, sent in by Monica B., is the most comprehensive example I’ve ever seen, including everything from cooking, doing laundry, vacuuming, to looking pretty:

I’m not quite sure why, but I find this commercial really creepy. Maybe it’s the underlying message that you should do housework and be pretty at the same time if you want to be “queen of your home” and, presumably, the housewife everyone else admires and envies.

From Vintage Ads, another great example of the propagation of the stereotype that women are jealous of and hateful towards one another:

The ad reminded me of the Pantene commercials from the 1980s with the slogan “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…”  The real message not being “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful…” but, “Don’t hate me because you could be beautiful too, and if you can’t, well then I suppose you’re going to have to hate me”:

More examples of this meme here, here, here, and here.

I discuss the phenomenon, and how sexism (NOT estrogen) produces this situation, in a post about Battle of the Bods.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Once again Larry at The Daily Mirror dug up something interesting from the L.A. Times archives. It’s a 1969 article about–gasp!–a female ranch hand. What’s fascinating is the way that, while discussing how she does things that aren’t traditionally considered female, the reporter describes her in ways that emphasize her femininity so we know she’s not completely un-womanly.

She’s as cute as all get-out and as strong as a heifer. She’s the only female ranch-hand (“don’t call me a cowgirl, it’s a dude term”)…

…”I was never quite like all the other little girls.” Beverly always wanted to be a cowboy–always wore bluejeans to school…

But she also succeeded in remaining ultrafeminine in an impish sort of way…She bemoans the fact that she has to keep her hair trimmed to a maximum of two inchles all over her head…

And:

Text:

“I enjoy working,” she said. “I don’t whine or cry when there is a lot to do. I love my job.” For this she is known as “comadrie,” meaning little mother…”

She’s also described as “coy”:

But to the likely relief of many readers, she goes on to say that probably she eventually will get married. Reading the entire article, I can’t help but suspect that’s more out of a sense that you have to than a real desire on her part. She kind of reminds me of my grandma, who I think got married and had kids mostly because what else could a woman do? I suspect if she’d been able to get a job as a ranch hand, she would have happily done that instead.

And while they don’t call her a “cowgirl,” this title from the second page of the article might not be what she was hoping for instead:

Now, if this was just an historical curiosity, I wouldn’t have posted it. But the thing is, we still see this type of emphasis on the femininity of women who succeed at things we consider “men’s work.” For instance, see this post on WNBA player Candace Parker, or Lisa’s post about Caster Semenya. Or even just compare the uniforms of male and female athletes.  We’re more comfortable with women who break some gender rules as long as they maintain their femininity by following other rules.

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

We posted earlier about the biology behind the controversy over Caster Semenya’s sex.  Germán I. R.-E. and Philip Cohen (who has his own post on the topic) asked that we comment on her recent makeover.

Some sociologists argue that gender (as opposed to sex) is really more about performance than it is about our bodies.  That is, we do gender and, when we do it in ways that other people recognize, everyone feels satisfied.  This is, perhaps, what Caster Semenya’s handlers were hoping for when she submitted to a makeover for South Africa’s YOU Magazine:

Notice that Semenya carries the same body into this photoshoot, but she is properly adorned with make up, feminine clothing, jewelry, a passive pose, and a pleasant and inviting facial expression (because to be feminine is to be accommodating).

Perhaps more importantly, the copy and the interview tells the reader that Semenya likes dressing up and looking pretty, another important indicator of both femininity and non-masculinity.  The cover says:

WE TURN SA’S POWER GIRL INTO A GLAMOUR GIRL – AND SHE LOVES IT!

(Notice, too, the implication that power and glamour are opposed.)

This insistence that Semenya feels (or wants to feel) feminine, as well as looks it, is mirrored in the text (as summarized by the Guardian):

It carries an interview with the 18-year-old student. “I’d like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance,” she says. “I’d also like to learn to do my own makeup.”

The lifestyle magazine quotes Semenya’s university friends saying that she wants to buy stilettos and have a manicure and pedicure. Semenya adds: “I’ve never bought my own clothes – my mum buys them for me. But now that I know what I can look like, I’d like to dress like this more often.”

You magazine says that, after the photoshoot, Semenya told her manager that she would like to buy all the outfits she had modelled.

So, in the face of the leaked and unconfirmed finding that Semenya has undescended testicles and higher levels of testosterone than the “average” woman (see note at end*), there is an assertion here that what matters (i.e., the measure of sex that we should attend to) is her gender identity (feeling feminine) and her gender performance (doing femininity).

Anna N. at Jezebel points to how the public interest in Semenya’s sex may have pressured her, and those around her, to play this gender game. She writes:

…up until now, Semenya and her family have been unapologetic about the way she looks and dresses. Her father said that she had always preferred pants, but that she was still a woman — and the idea that she has to put on a dress and lipstick to prove her femaleness to people is pretty depressing.

It is also something that almost all women in Western countries do everyday.  We perform gender, in part out of habit and in part consciously, all the time.  Semenya hasn’t cared about this performance and that is at least in part why the controversy over her sex is taking the form that it is.

* Note:  The release of male-related hormones, androgens, isn’t the whole story here.  Cells must also have the relevant receptors for the presence of the hormones to matter.  Semenya likely is lacking some of those receptors, either in her whole body on in parts of her body, because her body obviously didn’t respond to the hormones (otherwise she would have a penis and scrotum).  My point here is dual: (1) the presence of testicles and testosterone doesn’t tell the whole story and (2) even if we knew the whole story, it doesn’t tell us if she is female or male.  What if her body doesn’t detect the presence of those androgens?  What if it reads the presence of some of them, but not others?  What if she is chimera or mosaic?  All these are interesting questions biologically, but the answers will not tell us whether she is male or female because sex, like gender, is a social construction.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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.

Adam W., at Zoophobia, wrote a post calling out the Gotmilk.com website.  The website features six characters.  Here’s the front page:

Clicking on each character takes you to a page where you can play a game related to a benefit of drinking milk.  As Adam explains, through the characters the website reproduces the idea that “men do things with their bodies and women have things done to theirs; men produce things, women have things produced for them.”  He explains:

Slav, Igor and Sergie work their muscles to solve a puzzle.

Mr. Osseous works the assembly line saving a valuable product, and Chuck assembles cartons for shipment.

On the other hand, Miss Dowdy needs to be *given* a makeover by blasting from a cannon into a pool of milk filled by the truck driver and Mother Hen needs your help because she is “tense and irritable” from her PMS.

Also, Mr. Wyde A. Wake wants to be sleepy:

In sum:

While the male animals are productive laborers, the female animals are either ditsy blonds or cruel old hens not worthy of the same honor, but still customers who need milk.

That is, men produce and consume the milk, while women only consume it.  Which is, of course, where the real craziness comes in.  Adam again:

While the male animals perform all the labor in the games, the literal labor of female cows giving birth in order to begin lactating as well as the exploitation of their bodies’ labor in producing all of the milk is completely absent. It is as Joan Dunayer writes in Animal Equality: within the dairy industry, “Milking is done to her rather than by her.”

Thus the game doesn’t just erase female labor in an ideological sense (as a reproduction of gendered stereotypes), it also erases the literal labor of female animals, without with there would be no milk to get.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.