gender: masculinity

My besties gave me a copy of the target toy catalog for 2009 and pointed out the front cover.

At first i thought it was just your typical run of the mill gender socialization propaganda…

White girl on the cover? Check.
Is she wearing pink? Check.
Is she wearing a tiara? Check.
Is she wearing a tutu? Check.
Is the tutu pink? Check.
Is she smiling? Check.
Is she playing with barbie? Check.
Is there a little boy in the image? Check.
Is he doing one of the following: making a mess, eating something or expressing anger? Check.

Ok, the basics are covered.

But upon further inspection, I realize that the barbie is holding Lego flowers…. and… wait a minute… are those church bells I see?!  …

This ad, found in Town and Country, features a man battling “a gift list of frightful aspect.”

Text:

THE FABLE OF THE GENEROUS GENT AND THE LOATHSOME LIST.

Once a generous sir, beset by a gift list of frightful aspect, vanquished the beast with one fell stroke of genuis in a quest triumphant at The Forum Shops.

It draws attention to what many of us feel, few of us say, and very, very few advertisers would emphasize: the gift giving mandate associated with Christmas (and, to a lesser degree, other U.S. holidays) can be an incredible emotional and financial burden, as well as a time suck.   I have no doubt that expressing dissatisfaction regarding gift giving is more acceptable, in general, for men than women (despite the fact that women do the majority of holiday-related chores).  Thus, it’s no accident that this ad is aimed at men.

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.

Elizabeth T., my awesome former student, asked us to write about Taylor Lautner’s Rolling Stone cover.

Of course, everyone’s been talking about  It’s either “oh he’s so hot!” or “he’s just seventeen! child pornography!”  But what I think is hilarious is the fact that they had to have him posing with a football.

You see, in this photograph, Lautner is a sex object.  And, as I’ve written before, a “sexual object is to be presented as passive, consumable, inert (remember, only one person gets “fucked”).”  And who does the fucking?  Men.  Real men.  And who gets fucked?  Women and womanly men (you might know them as “fags”).

So Lautner, by virtue of being objectified, threatens to also be seen as gay:

Apparently they’d rather break one of the golden rules of photography (don’t have anything coming out of the subject’s head), than allow Lautner’s sexual objectification call his sexuality into question.

Yes, yes we get it.  Lautner is a guy’s guy.  I mean, wait a second, he’s a girl’s guy.  Wait!  I mean he likes dudes!   No, not that way!  In a bros before hos way.  He likes dudes best, unless it’s for sex, then he likes girls!  He likes girls!  Even though he’s all sexy and wet and objectified, he’s not a fag okay!  We swear!  Look!  THERE’S A FOOTBAAAAAALLLLLLL!

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.

Benno K. sent in a link to some ads he saw in the Netherlands for the Discovery Channel, which Benno describes as “the channel that used to be for science, but is now mostly explosions and motor bikes.” In both posters the men have “women’s” eyes–that is, they appear wide-eyed and long-lashed, with mascara:

The caption says:

Not for women’s eyes. Discovery Channel has television men want to watch. Exciting, smart, interesting, adventurous, and most of all real. Watch for yourself.

I know that as a woman, I hate smart, interesting stuff. It’s just too hard to understand and it makes my brain hurt. I try to only watch TV shows that are dull, dumb, boring, cautious, and totally fake.

In a sweet anecdote, Sociologist Michael Kimmel talks about how he was playing the game of opposites with his son.  “What is the opposite of up?”  “Down.”  “What is the opposite of awake?”  “Asleep.”  “What is the opposite of man?”  He asked.

And his son replied, “Boy.”

Kimmel tells this story as a glimpse into an alternative world in which men do not define themselves in opposition to women, but see manhood in terms of maturity.

We don’t live in that world.  And Dockers thinks it can sell khakis by encouraging men to define themselves as not-women in its new man-ifesto ad campaign (text after the jump):

Of course, what is really interesting about this ad is the way that it defines manhood as in opposition to all kinds of things: womanhood, of course, but also boyhood, and feminine manhood, androgyny, and whatever disco, plastic forks, latte drinking, and salad represent.  What do men get?  Being in charge of women and children… and dirty hands (maybe the dirt is metaphorical).

I’d much rather live in Kimmel Jr.’s world.

(Thanks to Christina W. for encouraging us to write about this ad.)

For a similar ad, see this Ketel One commercial expressing nostalgia for a pre-feminist time.  And, for lots of material documenting the new pop culture version of masculinity, browse our gender: masculinity tag.

Jump for a transcript of the text:

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Chelsea S. snapped a photo of this ad outside of Macy’s in the King of Prussia mall:

Two things here: the assumption that men have wives to purchase their clothes for them (gendering of marital roles, anyone?) and the implication that having to wait while your wife does so is such an annoyance. Maybe this is just me, but if someone else is doing errands for you, the least you can do is not act like it’s a burden to accompany them.

Masculine!

Masculine! Masculine! Masculine!

Masculine!

(Thanks for the link, Michael C!)

P.S.: Girls and sissy boys suck!

UPDATE: In our comments threat, Reader adilegian offered this great breakdown of the commercial:

0:04. The voice over’s question “Should a phone be pretty?” is visually answered with an effect reminiscent of melting celluloid. The rupture starts on top of the woman’s head, exploding her “pretty” face.

0:06. Women are beheld as dolls.

0:08. Images appear superimposed over images beneath a verbal judgment. The beauty queen (fake) made out of plastic (fake) shown on a television (fake) is definitively stamped “CLUELESS.”

0:10. The commercial erased its first woman by destroying the medium of her representation (supposedly celluloid). The commercial again destroys its second “woman” by destroying the medium of her representation (a television).

0:10 – 0:13. Words across the screen: FAST, RACEHORSE, SCUD. Images: Lightning, racing horse, ripping off duct tape, SCUD missile. Combining these motifs into one single image, we see the SCUD missile flying across the screen with the word RACEHORSE as though it were written with lightning.

0:14. Droid applications: Reality Browser 2.1, Google Sky Map, Qik, Mother TED, CardioTrainer, Where. While I doubt that these applications were developed with the commercial’s themes in mind, their selections reinforce the messages thus far enforced visually: reality (woman of burnt celluloid, destroyed television), sky (SCUD missile), quick (FAST, RACEHORSE), mother (a Freudian slip recognizing the infantile nature of a power fantasy? ^_~), exercise (beef up for manliness stat +4), and going places (which SCUD missiles, race horses, and THE MANLIEST OF MANKIND’S MEN all do).

0:15. Word overlay: DOES. Men do things. Women are pretty and useless.

0:16 – 0:18. Buzz saw cuts banana over a brief yellow outline of a robot.

0:18. Three slim pretty boy models. Again, we see a conflation of all things hitherto condemned: prettiness and effeminacy (designer clothes on fancy-pants, unmuscular pretty boys) and superficiality (plastic people).

0:19 – 0:21. Fruit appears now as a weapon. Hardcore Droid-using man (who is also most likely a fancy, beautiful, professional male model IRL, natch) throws apple at sassy plasticman’s hat, suggesting a Victorian upstart’s rambunctious bucking of all things pretentious with a snowball thrown to knock off a businessman’s hat. Succeeding apples create gore effects.

0:21. Porcelain sheep crushed between the maws of raw, unrelenting MANROBOTPHONE power. Porcelain sheep also conflate all previously condemned messages: prettiness, delicacy, weakness, and artifice.

0:23 – 0:25. Sissy phone explodes into a milky white substance, suggesting ejactulate, with the word NO followed by an image of a woman holding the same ejaculate-phone in her hand with her lips parted. The word PRINCESS is superimposed with glitter effects.

0:25 – 0:27. Layers within mechanical layers give way to reveal the Droid phone.  The Droid phone now appears in the palm of a man’s hand. From his POV (deliciously male gaze, yes?), we see him traveling the world at blinding speed (FAST, RACEHORSE) with city lights blitzing past (lightning).

0:28 – 0:29. MANBOT phone breaks through a white, crumbling wall, again conflating the previously condemned ideas (bland superficiality as connoted by white porcelain sheep, white plastic male models, and light pink plastic Miss Pretty).

A PHONE THAT TRADE HAIR-DO

FOR CAN-DO.

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.

I am so a lover of everything dinosaur that my good friend Emily once nicknamed me “Lisaur.” She still calls me that. You can call me that, too.

Well too bad for me; or should I say, “Thank you, Everything Dinosaur, for being gracious enough to include girls in your website… by marking them as dinosaur-loving-in-a-girl-specific-way.”

The website, sent in by C.G.T. genders dinosaur-loving by having dinosaur everything and, then, a special link to “Dinosaurs for Girls.”

Because dinosaurs aren’t for girls, you see. Dinosaurs are for boys (which goes without saying), so we have to make an special space full of stuffed animals, origami, diaries, and necklaces for the girls.

But what is driving this?

We live in a world where girls are allowed to do boy things (play sports, wear pants, like cars, etc), but boys are simply not allowed to do girls things. When boys do girls things, they are considered sissies or fags or whathaveyou. Girlified things, then, can’t be sold on a gender-neutral website. And because girl things can’t be sold to boys, girl things must be segregrated, lest they contaminate the feminine-free space that we insist boys inhabit.

For an explanation of androcentrism, or the idea that boy things are good for everyone but girl things are only good for girls, see here.  And for examples of androcentrism, visit our posts here, here, and here.

UPDATE! Mike Walley at Everything Dinosaur sent us a thoughtful note in response to this post.  He explains the difficulty involved in balancing a gender-free site with the fact that parents and guardians, themselves, have gendered expectations.  It’s an important sociological point: Individuals and companies don’t make choices free of context, so they can’t just reject all gender norms without suffering consequences.

Dear Lisa,

We have watched with great interest the comments that have appeared on your blog site regarding our company Everything Dinosaur and the section of our site that refers to a specific section entitled dinosaurs for girls.  It is very encouraging to see such a lively debate, we do all we can to promote a positive role for women within the sciences and I have been fascinated to read the comments and views that have been expressed.  Rest assured, if any one of your readers wishes to contact us directly to gain further information with regards to our company mission we shall do all we can to help inform them with regards to our proactive approach to this subject.

It is interesting to note that one of your commentators picked up the relevance of the dinosaurs for girls with regards to search engines, one of the reasons for establishing this part of our website was to enable us to have a dialogue and raise the profile of gender issues within the sciences particularly the Earth sciences.  Our own research (admittedly based on a sample from the United Kingdom), identified a number of barriers that prevented parents and guardians from encouraging young girls (our target market is from 3 years of age), to take an interest in prehistoric animals. We wanted to find a way of addressing some of these issues and guided by our research programmes the concept of a specific search engine optimised area of the website came into being.

Ironically,  we are torn between acknowledging a need to recognise that dinosaurs are perfectly valid for girls and populating this particular section of our site with a wider range of items.  It is a matter of managing the expectations of many parents and guardians who find our site using search engine terms when they are looking for something specific for a girl, which in many cases can be as young as three years of age and they land specifically at this part of our site, before exploring the other sections. One of the important outcomes from our research was to ensure that other areas of our site were named in non-gender bias ways, for example, we have sections dedicated to “Young Scientist” and “Young Artist”, the objective here being to help breakdown perceptions and stereotypical barriers when considering how young children develop through creative play.

…

If you require further information, or indeed if you have any further queries I would be more than happy to assist you where I can.  In the meantime, please feel free to visit our web log – http://blog.everythingdinosaur.co.uk this is a free resource we set up many years ago with the purpose of helping to communicate information about palaeontology and other Earth Sciences.  I am sure you will find in the huge archive a number of articles related to girls and dinosaur, including a number that acknowledge the role of women in science and reflect our positive attitudes towards encouraging young girls to take a greater interest in Earth Sciences.

Regards,

Mike Walley
Everything Dinosaur

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