S. Alfonzo sent us a link to the abridged version of The Codes of Gender, in which Sut Jhally, known for a number of documentaries on pop culture, analyzes current messages about masculinity and femininity in advertising, applying the ideas of Erving Goffman regarding gender and cultural performance. Definitely worth the time to watch:
The Media Education Foundation has provided a full transcript and tips for using the film in the classroom.
Father’s Day advertisements are a peek into what we think dads are all about. As cultures change, advertising shifts too, giving us a peek into the social construction of fatherhood.
Karl Bakeman pointed us to a series of vintage Father’s Day ads at Retronaut. They label them with the range from 1943 to 1981. Perhaps we can have fun guessing which was when. According to these ads, great gifts for dads include recliners, whiskey, cologne, and a pack of smokes. Today the perfect Dad’s Day gift appears to be meat and meat.
Ties were timeless, until 1981:
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.
Annie C. and another reader sent us a link to a post by Ryan North at what are the haps about a set of gendered “survival guides” for kids published by Scholastic (and which the publisher now says it won’t continue printing). Boys and girls apparently need very different survival skills, which the other sex shouldn’t know anything about:
In his post, Ryan provides the table of contents for each. What do boys and girls need to be able to survive? For boys, no big surprises — forest fire, earthquake, quicksand, your average zombie or vampire attack, that type of thing, many including, according to teen librarian Jackie Parker, practical and useful tips:
How to Survive a shark attack
How to Survive in a Forest
How to Survive Frostbite
How to Survive a Plane Crash
How to Survive in the Desert
How to Survive a Polar Bear Attack
How to Survive a Flash Flood
How to Survive a Broken Leg
How to Survive an Earthquake
How to Survive a Forest Fire
How to Survive in a Whiteout
How to Survive a Zombie Invasion
How to Survive a Snakebite
How to Survive if Your Parachute Fails
How to Survive a Croc Attack
How to Survive a Lightning Strike
How to Survive a T-Rex
How to Survive Whitewater Rapids
How to Survive a Sinking Ship
How to Survive a Vampire Attack
How to Survive an Avalanche
How to Survive a Tornado
How to Survive Quicksand
How to Survive a Fall
How to Survive a Swarm of Bees
How to Survive in Space
Girls seem to require a very different set of survival skills. Like how to survive a breakout — a skill boys don’t apparently need, though they also get acne. Other handy tips are how to deal with becoming rich or a superstar, how to ensure you get the “perfect school photo,” surviving a crush, whatever turning “a no into a yes” is (persuasiveness, I suppose), picking good sunglasses, dealing with a bad fashion day, and of course “how to spot a frenemy”:
How to survive a BFF Fight
How to Survive Soccer Tryouts
How to Survive a Breakout
How to Show You’re Sorry
How to Have the Best Sleepover Ever
How to Take the Perfect School Photo
How to Survive Brothers
Scary Survival Dos and Don’ts
How to Handle Becoming Rich
How to Keep Stuff Secret
How to Survive Tests
How to Survive Shyness
How to Handle Sudden Stardom
More Stardom Survival Tips
How to Survive a Camping Trip
How to Survive a Fashion Disaster
How to Teach Your Cat to Sit
How to Turn a No Into a Yes
Top Tips for Speechmaking
How to Survive Embarrassment
How to Be a Mind Reader
How to Survive a Crush
Seaside Survival
How to Soothe Sunburn
How to Pick Perfect Sunglasses
Surviving a Zombie Attack
How to Spot a Frenemy
Brilliant Boredom Busters
How to Survive Truth or Dare
How to Beat Bullies
How to be an Amazing Babysitter
Aside from the multiple items clearly focused on appearances, Ryan points out that several others emphasize looks. Camping is “excellent for the skin,” while the seaside survival chapter provides a lot of fashion tips.
Many of the girls’ tips are about surviving social situations or dealing with emotions — embarrassment, keeping a secret, dealing with bullies. These are all probably more useful to kids than knowing how to survive quicksand, and tips for handling stardom are statistically more likely to be useful at some point than dealing with a T-Rex. So the issue here isn’t that the boys’ guide is inherently more useful or smarter or better; probably all kids should be issued a guide to surviving Truth or Dare (also, dodgeball). But the clear gendering of the guides, with only girls getting tips about dealing with social interactions, emotions, and looks, while outdoorsy injury/natural disaster survival tips are sufficient for boys, illustrates broader assumptions about gender and how we construct femininity and masculinity.
Today I thought we’d do another round-up of gendered children’s stuff, since we’ve gotten a number of submissions. So here we go.
Missy C. noticed that the manufacturer’s product description listed on Amazon for one of the Fisher Price Imaginext Sky Racers took for granted that the toy was for boys, not, say, “kids”:
Monica C., meanwhile, noticed another example of the association of girls with a diva-ish princess center-of-attention persona when looking at onesies for sale at My Habit. Options included “born fabulous,” “high maintenance,” “born to wear diamonds,” and “it’s all about me,” among others:
Similarly, Melanie J. saw some baby booties for sale at retail chain JR’s in North Carolina that reinforce the idea that boys are mischievous while girls are materialistic:
You can buy them gendered vitamins as well. Nathan, who writes at 1115, sent in this photo he took at Target:
Pete & Emily in Norwich, UK, noticed that you can now allow your hamsters to inhabit gendered worlds too, if you’d like; they sent us this photo they took at a pet store:
But we do have two counter-examples this time! Jackie H. took a photo of a kitchen set she saw for sale at Meijer, which shows both a boy and a girl using it:
And Isabeau P.S., Jesse W., and Anne Sofie B. all sent in images from the catalog for Swedish toy maker Leklust (two of the images were discussed at Mommyish):
U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine) and Representative Carolyn Maloney (D, New York) have both gone on record claiming that having more women employed in the Secret Service would prevent scandals like the one involving Colombian prostitutes.
In classic Daily Show form, Jon Stewart and his “correspondents” respond (thanks to Dmitriy T.M. for the link!):
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.
In a fantastic editorial in the New York Times, sociologist Amy Schalet interprets new data from the CDC that shows that young men and women are now losing their virginity at about the same age. Never-married males between aged 15-19 have essentially the same probability of being a virgin as females:
Schalet draws on her own research comparing American and Dutch teenagers to explain this trend, citing fear and love. Regarding fear, she writes:
…I found that American boys often said sex could end their life as they knew it. After a condom broke, one worried: “I could be screwed for the rest of my life.” Another boy said he did not want to have sex yet for fear of becoming a father before his time.
The other reason for the increase in the age of virginity loss among boys is romance. Even in the face of cultural narratives that tell boys that all they want is sex, they tell personal stories of love and emotional connection (yes, even to grown-up lady sociologists). This loosening of rigid gender roles can be credited to feminism, Schalet contends, and even if it has “largely flown under the radar of American popular culture,” it is nonetheless given boys the “cultural leeway to choose a first time that feels emotionally right.”
For more about Amy Schalet’s research, see Consequences of U.S. and Dutch Approaches to Teen Sex and Talking Sex, Relationships, and Teen Health with Amy Schalet.
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.
Laura McD. sent in an extra-disturbing sexist ad from Turkey. The ad, for Biomen shampoo, uses the ever-so-common marketing tactic of shaming men for any association with femininity. The voiceover says:
If you’re not wearing women’s clothes, you shouldn’t be using women’s shampoo either. Here it is. A real man’s shampoo. Biomen. Real men use Biomen.
So far, so predictable. But this ad has drawn intense criticism because the exhortation to avoid girly stuff is recorded over historical footage of Adolf Hitler:
Via AdWeek.
According to Adland, it was still airing as of a couple of days ago, despite complaints from Turkey’s Jewish community and other groups, but JTA reports it was finally pulled.
Here we have another great vintage ad (1962) that upsets the idea that today’s norms are trans-historical. First, the idea of having a “pint about midday” would be considered inappropriate by many U.S. employers (though, as several commenters have pointed out, not necessarily elsewhere). Second, the large print — “Beer, It’s Lovely!” — sounds unmasculine today, even though these grizzled sea-farers likely would have seemed perfectly masculine enough at the time.
From the RAF Flying Review, found at Retronaut.
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.
