gender: marriage/family

This commercial affirms the notion that only women can be expected to do housework because children and husbands are absolutely useless.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fwTtJZ6Db4[/youtube]

I find the wife’s acceptance of her husbands ass-ish behavior (still her “best friend”) particularly disheartening.

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.

Here is a video for Hasbro’s Rose Petal Cottage. Could be good for discussing gender socialization:

Great find, Sherryl K.!

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

Super creepy TAB commercial:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBJ2ktSZpI[/youtube] Another doozy from Molly M!Here’s another on the same theme (youtube says it’s from the ’60s):[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbVyDYqsEK0[/youtube] Here’s another from 1982:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhGJvGhIzaw[/youtube] And this one, from 1984, cannot be beat for it’s essential ’80s vibe:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kymo2Vj6nw[/youtube] 

This product nicely captures the fallacious ideas that (1) to be a “liberated” woman is to do what men do and (2) that “liberated” women necessarily emasculate men in a zero sum game.

Thanks to my awesome student, Molly M!

An ad for a floral shop: “He chose her. She chose us.”

Found in Zions Bank Community magazine, January/February 2008 issue.

Here is a link to a book called I Love It When You Talk Clean to Me: Porn for Women, published by the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative.

Text: “Ooh look, the NFL playoffs are today. I bet we’ll have no trouble parking at the crafts fair.”

Text: “As soon as I finish the laundry, I’ll do the grocery shopping. And I’ll take the kids with me so you can relax.”

Text: “Why don’t I get a minivan, love, so you can drive something fun.”

Thanks, Jessica C.!

NEW! In a similar vein, the hoax website Porn for Girls by Girls, sent in by Giorgos S., implies that what women really want isn’t sexual material but images of men cleaning, wedding dresses, and jewelry:

Thanks, Giorgos!

I love this picture!*

It’s a wonderful illustration of the way in which we tend to project a gendered nuclear family model onto animals in ways that make that model seem more “natural” and “universal” than it is. (For the argument, try Donna Haraway’s Teddy Bear Patriarchy.)

Chickens, at least in captivity, do not live in lovely nuclear families like the nice chicken family above. They live in harems with just one rooster and lots of hens. Notice, too, how the hen is looking down (lovingly? maternally?) at her chicks, while the rooster is looking out into the distance (for danger? the protector?). Or maybe he’s checking out all those other “chicks” he gets with.** You know, a man has got to sow his seed. Oh wait, he’s not a man, he’s a CHICKEN!)

Even their bodies match our culturally and historically specific norms. Their height difference nicely matches the ideal in our society for male/female pairs (but not the reality, see here). To take the anthropomorphization further, you can almost see the hen’s fertile hips and the rooster’s strapping shoulders (am I going to far?).

* Unfortunately, I’ve had this picture for a long time and I’m afraid I don’t remember where it came from.

** Did you see that? I managed to get in the infantilization of adult women, um, hens, and the sexualization of young girls, um, chicks.

Here is a link to the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, a publicly-sponsored marriage-promotion program. The idea behind it is that increasing marriage, particularly among poor women, would decrease poverty and, therefore, welfare rolls.

Here is a link to the parenting section. Among other things, couples will learn “the benefits of marriage” and “strengthening the father-child bond.” Nothing is said about the mother-child bond–presumably it’s just fine. Note also that in the artwork for the page is very gendered–the woman is holding the baby, the male figure is standing over or protecting her. If you go to the photos section (pictures of actual participants), there are pictures of men holding their babies.

It might be useful to read the article “The Marriage Cure,” by Katherine Boo, in the August 18 & 25, 2003, issue of The New Yorker as well–Boo follows several poor black women as they go through the program and try to figure out how to find marriagable men (and it is made clear to them that they need to look for a man, any man).

I’m going to use this in my Intro to Sociology course as a way to discuss the idea that poor women wouldn’t be poor if only they would get married–to anyone.