gender: femininity

At first I thought this ad (found at Jezebel) creeped me out because of the equation: Disney princess + girl power. But then I remembered that that’s pretty much been the whole Disney princess gimmick since, oh, Sleeping Beauty or so. Then it hit me. It’s the infantilization.  Disney princess + adult woman = shivers up my spine.  Is it just me?

Text:

I learned a long time ago that a true princess makes her own happy ending.  So I train.  I sweat.  I succeed.  That’s my fairytale. A nd with a new Disney half marathon celebrating women, it makes my commitment worth it.  It’s not just a race… it’s a reflection of me.

From the Disney Princess Half Marathon website:

The Inaugural 2009 Disney’s Princess Half Marathon Weekend will bring women of all ages together to participate in a magical event designed just for them. The Disney Princesses are the inspiration for the weekend’s events and will focus on the attributes every princess possesses: commitment, courage, determination, fantasy, perseverance, and strength. Every woman is a princess, which princess are you?

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.

Click here if this second video doesn’t come up.

NEW! Bumpersticker for sale at CafePress:

Multicult Classics posted these two Spanish-language Fruit of the Loom ads.  They are an extra nice example of the way that color is used to communicate gender:

Text: “Your world, now much more feminine.”

See also this post of kids with their stuff, these pictures of the Toys ‘R Us aisles, these breast cancer PSAs, and these guns marketed to women.

It’s obvious to us, today, that pink is for girls.  But it wasn’t until about the 1950s that our current gendered color scheme became widely accepted.  Before that, the colors were reversed.  In this excerpt for a vintage advice column (found here), we learn that:

“…the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.  The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl.”

I took this picture of a “rapid weight loss” product at a Walgreens:

I think this product it all-too-clearly illustrates Jean Kilbourne‘s contention that, when it comes to women, “less is more.”  Aspire to be a size zero.  Aspire to be nothing.  Aspire to be defined by what you lack.

Emily Martin, in her article “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” (Signs 16(3), 1991, p. 485-501) critiques the way biological texts generally portray sperm as active, brave adventurers and eggs as passive damsels waiting for a sperm to save her lest she be flushed out as waste during menstruation.

For example, this cartoon was linked in our comments by Noumenon:

As Noumenon notes, the first sperm to arrive is not necessarily the one that “wins” the right to merge with the egg. More often than not, it is not because the necessary chemical reaction that allows fertilization needs many sperm, not just one.

Relatedly, in a comment Ranah pointed out this image (found here), which depicts how the egg plays a much more complex part in guiding some sperm in while limiting access to others than common perceptions of fertilization recognize:

Further, sperm do not swim. They are not making a break for the egg. They do not have brains, desires, or goals. Their “tails” are randomly thrashing around due to the energy provided by the fluid produced by the prostate gland. They go in every direction (not just toward the sperm) and only by random chance do some of them end up at the egg.

Here is a clip from The Family Guy showing Stewie as a sperm or, more accurately, a spermship, competing with other sperm to capture the egg:

Notice also that in both the Phelps and the Stewie examples, the sperm contains all of the future of the identity of the individual.  The contribution of the egg is made invisible.   This is a very old idea.

NEW!  This image is drawing by Dutch physicist and microscopist Nicolas Hartsoekerfrom from 1694.  In the head of the sperm, you can see a tiny, but complete figure sitting with his head down (found here):

ALSO NEW!  Here’s another contemporary image (found here) affirming this idea:

Text:

If you sometimes feel a little useless, offended or depressed… Always remember that YOU were once the fastest and most victorious little sperm out of millions.

ALSO ALSO NEW! Similarly, this condom ad suggests that Hitler was once a sperm (found here):

Martin mentions that one of the few (non-scientific) cultural depictions of sperm that doesn’t draw on this imagery is in Woody Allen’s movie “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* *But Were Afraid to Ask,” where Allen plays the part of a sperm frightened of going out to face contraceptives or the possibility that it’s a false alarm (masturbation, gay sex) that won’t even get him close to an egg.

Here’s a clip from the movie showing that scene:

I’m going to show it the day we discuss Martin’s article in my women’s studies class when we address the way women’s bodies have been historically constructed, both scientifically and non-scientifically.

See also this Viagra ad that shows a sperm exploding an egg open.

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

Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town put up these nice images comparing Australian women’s and men’s athletic uniforms:

As tigtog mentions in another post, if these skimpy uniforms were really about performance, men would be wearing them too.  But that, of course, would look ridiculous:

Tigtog also points out that this degree of sexualization is new.  Here are pictures comparing the men’s and women’s runners uniforms at the 1984 Olympics:

Found at the Onion thanks to Caroline H.!

I took these two photos of pacifiers for sale at a Babies-R-Us in upstate New York:

I hate the way we start labeling girls at a young age as high-maintenance divas who are vain, boy-crazy, and spend a lot of money. And we now start socializing infants into gendered stereotypes that portray girls in ways that, though superficially humorous, also imply that we expect girls and women to be self-centered, ridiculous people. For other examples of these types of messages, see here, here, and here.

NEW: Blanca M. took a picture of this sign for Little Divas, a store here in Vegas that provides a great example of the association between little girls and diva-hood:

Thanks, Blanca!

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