gender: masculinity

Below a pro-birth control public service announcement, by a sex-ed-type organization called Sex Really, that makes the argument that all men are total assholes, therefore women should make sure they use birth control…

…but they should still have sex with them of course!  Duh!

Trigger warning for sexist language:

Source: Salon, via Jezebel.

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.

Crossposted at Jezebel.

Simon O. sent in this Ukrainian army video meant to recruit women:

The translation (taken from YouTube, and I think it’s a somewhat rough translation; I cleaned up the punctuation and spelling a bit):

Girl 1: Would you take us for a ride in your BMW?
BMW-driver: Even to the end of the world!
Soldier: Hey, I’d like to drown [drink?] some vodka, girls!
Girl 1: Just a second!
Girl 2: Where do you live?
Soldier: Right here- daytime at work, and at night in the clubs!
Girl 1: Which work???
Soldier: Contract, of course!
Blonde girl: Contract? Marriage contract or what?
Girl 3: Army contract, stupid!
BMW driver: Hey, don’t you wanna ride in my car?
Girls: Forget it, take yourself for a ride!
Narrator: It’s about time for new heroes! With contract-based service in Ukrainian armed forces!

Apparently the Austrian army thought it was awesome and made their own version:

Translation (again from YouTube):

Audi Driver: Hey girls, wanna go for a spin in my fast ride?
Girls: Ehh not sure, there’s not even enough space for all of us.
Soldier: Wazzup girls, in the mood for a joyride?
Girls: *Yaaaaay*
Soldier: Join the army if you wanna drive a tank.
Soldier2: Jump in, starting engine.
Audi Driver: Hey, what about the spin?
Girl: Forget it, I want to drive something big.
Narrator: The Austrian Armed Forces offer unique opportunities for young people who are at least 18, everything else is just everyday life.

Both versions play on the idea of women as materialistic, looking for the guy with the best car. Vehicles become a stand-in for masculinity; the bigger/faster the ride, the more attractive you are to women. And what’s more manly than a tank, with a long, phallic-shaped barrel? Women are simply entranced and can’t help running off after the biggest, strongest, manliest vehicle they can find…and, if we take the phallic imagery seriously, presumably the guy with the largest penis, too.

When American figure skater Evan Lysacek won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, he was the only man on the podium who had not attempted a quadruple jump in either of his two skating programs. The silver medalist, 2006 Olympic Champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia, was quick to point out that “a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn’t do a quad, well I don’t know… Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing.” Plushenko’s website later proclaimed (though the claim was soon redacted) that his superior performance had earned him a “platinum” medal. Figure skaters and others who heard his comment understood this wasn’t just sour grapes; by questioning Lysacek’s jumping ability, Plushenko was also questioning his manhood.

As Daniel, a former singles and pairs skater, knows from personal experience, when you look below the surface of figure skating, a coded gendering of the sport emerges. Figure skating has both athletic and artistic components, and traditionally these have been apportioned to men and women, respectively. Men are expected to be able to land enormous jumps. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to grab one of their feet and pull it up behind their heads, sometimes while spinning fast enough to set off a nose-bleed, as Mirai Nagasu did in Vancouver. Women’s programs also emphasize a great deal of emotion when they skate, while men are expected to display their athletic strength and power.

This is not to say that women are not expected to jump or that men can be soulless automata, but there are lower expectations for each in the other gender’s territory. A male skater who doesn’t emote passionately can be forgiven if he has a fantastic triple axel, and a woman can even win the Olympics with jumps that aren’t fully rotated. Artistry and flexibility are where women are expected to excel, while boys strive to jump higher and rotate more. To this day, only one woman (Japan’s Miki Ando) has landed a clean quadruple jump in competition, while it has become a mainstay of men’s event. This video shows Ando’s jump, at a 2002 competition:

In the aftermath of his silver platinum silver medal finish in Vancouver, Plushenko questioned the qualifications of Evan Lysacek to win gold without a quad. Aside from being poor sportsmanship, his approach highlighted the deep association of jumps with male figure skating. Though, in the women’s event, Mao Asada completed the technically difficult triple axel on three separate occasions, no fuss was made over her second-place finish behind the ethereal Kim Yu-Na. Kim has strong jumps, to be sure, but what sets her apart from her competitors is that she skates in a way that is graceful, balletic and undeniably feminine.

Ironically, one of the most promising things about a young Evgeni Plushenko when he arrived on the international skating scene in 1997 was his blending of artistry and athleticism. His style was avant-garde and overwrought, and his jumps were magnificent; he had, in skating parlance,”the whole package.” It might seem excessive to map gender onto his performances, but he is famous for being one of the only men to perform the Biellmann spin, in which the skater grabs the blade of one skate and pulls it up behind the top of his or her head.

This was a clear and unabashed case of gender-bending, as the spin had previously been the province of women. The figure skating world, after being sufficiently impressed by the flexibility of his hips, shrugged and moved on. No one thought any less of him for doing a “girly” spin.

Compare this to the skating world’s reaction to two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, who was often said to skate “like a man.” Witt had big jumps (and big thighs to go with them), and skated to the soundtracks of epic movies, a practice that was usually reserved for men, while other women tended to skate to classical ballet suites. Witt’s artistic style was also not typical of women skaters: while her competitors demonstrated flowing, balletic arm movements to match their floaty chiffon skating dresses, Witt opted for stronger, cleaner arm movements and famously skated in leggings and a tunic in a program set to music from Robin Hood. She also skated with a stoic bearing that was similar to that of Canadian Elvis Stojko, who won the silver medal in Lillehammer in 1994.

Despite the popular perception of figure skating as a uniformly “girly” sport, there exists within the figure skating world a unique and nuanced code for constructing and understanding gender. In the figure skating world, as in the rest of our culture, that code changes over time, with different representations of masculinity and femininity being rewarded, marked down, or phased out entirely as the sport evolves. And as Plushenko’s comments about Lysacek demonstrated, figure skating’s coding of gender can be invoked by skaters trash-talking their rivals in subtle, but complicated, ways. As yet, Plushenko has made no comment on Lysacek’s upcoming appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it’s not hard to imagine what he might have to say.

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Chloe Angyal is a Contributor at Feministing.com, where she writes about gender in popular culture. She is also a failed figure skater. Daniel Eison is a former nationally-ranked pairs and singles skater who retired in 2005. He is not a failed feminist.

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Gender differences in figure skating are also institutionalized in the form of costume requirements. Women are required to wear dresses, while men are not allowed to wear leggings or sleeveless outfits.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff says,

This isn’t true anymore; “this rule was repealed in 2004, allowing women to wear tights, trousers, or unitards” [1] ([1] http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/faq/rules.shtml)

Thanks for the correction!

Related posts: Johnny Weir and Canadian skating gets tough.

Anna sent in another example of a brand marketing itself as for-manly-men-only.  Add this one, featuring McCoy Crisps, to some of our other examples: Dockers, Klondike Bar, Alpo, Oberto beef jerky, and Ketel One.

The first thing that the McCoy Crisps Pub site requires is that you tell it what kind of shoes you’re wearing:

If you answer “incorrectly,” the website says: “No, not right.  Get inside and learn how to be a real man.”

When you enter the online pub, the first thing you see is a woman that you are supposed to be disgusted by.  Immediately a set of beer goggles flies up onto your face (because you wouldn’t want to look at her for more than a split second, apparently):

Then you see this (phew! that was close!):

Alongside playing darts, drinking games, and playing manly trivia, you can get tips on how to be more manly.  Such as “How Not to Look Like a Girl Watching TV” and “How to Get Away with Not Ironing”:

And you can also take a manly quiz to find out how manly you are.  The quiz nicely tells you exactly how you are allowed to behave and what you are allowed to like.  Some examples of questions:

So being a guy means manipulating women with puppies, making fun of your brother-in-law for being a good husband and father, making women cook for you, eschewing personal grooming and healthy eating as much as possible, objectifying women, and enjoying the Pirelli company calender.

Oh, and, if you haven’t seen the Pirelli calendar, you really, really, really don’t want to click here (NSFW; trigger warning).

So there you have it: another marketing campaign that assumes that men are stupid, shallow, sexist, sport-o-holics.  I don’t understand why men tolerate it.

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.

The March, 2010 issue of Details, sent to us by m&k, “stars” Robert Pattinson. Other than Pattinson, the most important part of the magazine is the discussion of “the remasculation of the American man,” but that’s for another day. What struck me was the way that the photo shoot uses naked women as props for Pattinson’s masculine display. Not safe for work, so after the jump…

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Finally, a push-up panty for the penis!

It’s here and, thanks to Luis J.C.R., we all know about it.

Images and discussion after the jump because not safe for work.

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Sanguinity and Jen B. sent in a “That’s Gay” segment discussing, humorously, the discourse around figure skater Johnny Weir’s sexual orientation and whether he should be allowed to skate the way he does:

Quoting from The Sport Journal, Jen writes:

While figure skating is rumored to have the highest proportion of homosexual men of any amateur competitive sport, it is ironically a sport in which men must exhibit the most blatantly heterosexual signs to be successful and to receive commercial endorsements… at the 2001 World Championships in Vancouver when a well-known male Canadian skater was contacted by a gay magazine about the possibility of doing a feature story on him, he was told by Skate Canada that he must decline the request. As one coach said to me, “that is not the sort of picture that Skate Canada wants to paint for the country, especially in an international forum.” Every effort is made to construct such skaters as heterosexual.

We’ve posted on Skate Canada’s get “tough” campaign here.

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.

Lynne S. clipped this coupon for a “lovers special” at Cassano’s Pizza.  Notice it both presumes heterosexuality and genders meat as masculine and veggies as feminine.

We saw the same gendering of food in the Brick House Tavern Menu, TV dinner categories, and a vintage Campbell’s soup ad.

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.