gender: masculinity

Chelsea S. sent in a link to the BVD website and its BVD MANual campaign. BVD is a brand of men’s underwear. The site has several tabs that let you “study” men in various ways. In the Chemistry section we see what men are made up of (larger version here):

So guys are made up of, among other things, obnoxium, machisium, bragnausium, and larcenic.

If you go to the Sociology section you can take two quizzes. The first is about getting dressed (take the quiz here). If at the first step you answer that you are male you are taken to a second step that asks “model or guy?” If you answer model, you are directed to the female category. Once on the female track, you get to go through a series of questions playing on stereotypes of women and, apparently, men who don’t qualify as “guys”:

The second one is on being comfortable (quiz is here). In the second step you have to choose between “sensitive type”  or “guy,” and if you choose “sensitive type,” you go to the female section:

In both cases, at the end of the female path, the last question is “Wouldn’t you rather just be a guy?”

It’s a great example of the association of “real” manliness with obnoxious characteristics, while men who don’t meet the requirements for being real men are feminized. While real guys are stereotyped (they’re self-centered, obnoxious, and braggy), those characteristics are still preferable to being a “sensitive” guy with “feelings” and “needs.” And of course, it also denigrates women when being associated with femininity is a way of ridiculing men.

The Economic Policy Institute defines a “good” job as “one that pays at least 60% of the median household income and also provides health care and retirement benefits.” Based on that definition, here is a breakdown of men holding good jobs in 1979 and 2008, broken down by race/ethnicity (with Native Americans and Asians unfortunately absent):

Notice the clear decrease in the % of men in each group in good jobs between 1979 to 2008. The racial pattern is also striking, if not surprising, with Black and Hispanic men being significantly less likely to have a good job than White men in both 1979 and 2008. Notice the particularly large gap between White and Hispanic men in 2008–over 20 percentage points.

I hate you, Zach A., for making me play the Klondike Bar Mancave video game.

Are you bored of companies targeting their products at men with tired and insulting stereotypes? Well, too bad. Because ya’ll keep sendin’ them to us and it’s our job to show them to you.

In this installment of “men-are-idiots,-let’s-try-to-sell-them-shit-p.s.-women-are-annoying”: the Klondike Bar.

First, the Klondike Bar “Mancave” home page:

Notice the Mardi Gras beads?  Nice touch.

Also, is that splooge in the corners?

If you click on the video game, you get to the entry page.  It is for “Big Boys” only:

Poor Pete.  He lives in the (domesticated and feminized) suburbs and wears khakis.  Accordingly, he has become a woman:

Gah.  Being a family is so crappy.  It involves hiding in the basement while your wife takes care of “her” kids, until she cock blocks your cock rocking of course:

Not being able to watch violence and sex makes Pete’s testicles shrivel up:

And when he pops in his secret porn DVD (featuring college age women, of course), your wife just nags and nags:

YOU LOSE:

So, tell me why this guy is so appealing to so many men?  The man is selfish: his wife and the babysitter are desperately trying to get the kids to bed and he retreats from the chaos; it’s annoying that the TV is set up so as to make sure his kids don’t watch violence and sex; he hides a stash of porn featuring college age women from his wife.  But at least doesn’t have to do housework!  Amirite!?  Oh yeah, and women are annoying!  Go dudes!

It’s pathetic, really.  Sociologically, I mean.

Finally, in case you thought Klondike was equal opportunity, here is the screen shot of the generic (non-Mancave) website.  It leads you straight there:

“Dude,” now it’s “thicker.”

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

On Mary K.’s birthday she received the following birthday-related promotion from Best Buy.  Notice that the promotion is personalized: it says “Happy Birthday, Mary” in the upper right corner.  Nonetheless, the promotion features a tie as an example of a bad gift and a camera as an example of something that Mary might really want.

Given how carefully ads are now targeted to internet users (based both on the demographics it can gather about you [e.g., when you’re on Facebook] and the content of the text you’re reading [e.g., alongside email exchanges]), it’s kind of fascinating that Best Buy is apparently NOT paying attention to Mary’s sex.  This, of course, might be heartily welcomed by many of you.

But, if Best Buy is going to put together a non-sex-specific promotion, it sure seems like it would be a good idea to make it non-sex-specific (featuring, as a bad gift, something non-gendered like an electric toothbrush or something).  For whatever reason, Best Buy went with “we’re going to assume that all our customers are dudes.”

For more instances of male as the default human, see these posts: one, two, three, and four.

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

These two Halloween costumes in a mall display, snapped by Deeky (here and here, via Shakesville), make a joke of women working in masculine occupations by suggesting that they’re, essentially, sex workers.

Captain Layover:

Free Rides:

See our other Halloween-related posts: two extra-special costumes (the Anna Rexia costume and the Sexy Scholar), Max Weber jack o’lantern (by yours truly), Obama mask sold as terrorist mask, a Sarah Palin effigy, handling sex offenders on trick-o’-treat day, and costume catalog analyses (here and here).

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

Here’s a vintage ad for Swift canned meat products for babies:

(Found here.)

Are parents still encouraged to have “husky” babies? I have a feeling our changing ideas about body size and health have affected how we view babies as well (and I’ve heard of a couple of recent cases where insurance companies turned down infants for being too fat).

We’ve long seen meat associated with strength, particularly when it comes to men. And while the connection between meat and healthy growth is interesting–for instance, think of what we mean when we say someone is a “vegetable,” compared to the message here–what grabbed my attention was a line from the next-to-last paragraph of the ad text:

Baby’s choice of delicious beef, lamb, pork, veal, liver, heart.

It’s a great example of the social construction of what kinds of foods are appropriate and tasty. I highly suspect if Gerber’s put out a line of liver or heart baby food, it wouldn’t sell particularly well. I searched Gerber’s website and couldn’t find anything of the sort available (though they do still have veal with veal gravy). Most Americans simply don’t think of liver and heart as desirable foods any more, and would probably consider canned minced beef heart a more appropriate food for dogs than babies.

Of course, if you call liver paté or foie gras and make is sufficiently expensive, then it can become desirable again.

In an earlier post I discussed how men, these days, are less likely than women to enroll and graduate from college.  One theory for why involves an anti-intellectualism that is specifically male.  That is, many men learn that to be a real man means rejecting prissy intellectual pursuits.  Thinking is for chicks (and fags).

This commercial for Wrangler, aimed at men specifically, asserts this exactly:

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

Hermes sent in a link to a feature in The Morning News titled “Men at Their Most Masculine,” in which men were asked about what made them feel masculine and photographed in situations that reflect their masculine identities. Some quotes from men included in the project:

“I feel masculine when I am home, I can take care of myself. I often feel emasculated when I leave my apartment though, with everyone asking me if I need help. I don’t need any help.”

“To be masculine is to dominate in one’s field of study.”

“I want to show that, despite stereotypes, gay men can be masculine too.”

“I feel most masculine when I am lying in bed naked.”

“I am strong emotionally, have always stood up for myself, and fear nothing. I happen to be physically strong but that isn’t where I derive my masculinity.”

“I am masculine because I abandon women after taking their love. Because when you study Freud, you don’t let him study you. Because I study philosophy, not literature.”

Visit at photographer Chad States’s website. He apparently found all of the featured men via craigslist.

The photos and quotes illustrate some interesting contradictions in definitions of masculinity. Several of the men define masculinity in fairly traditional terms, using words like “dominate” or expressing masculinity as the ability to use women and then leave them. There is also an emphasis on being independent and not needing help from anyone else.

In other cases, the men redefine masculinity to at least some extent, such as the gay man who reclaims masculinity for gays, the guy who focuses on being emotionally strong, and the man shown posed in a way we’re more used to seeing with women.

It’s an interesting look at some of the ways men define masculinity at a time when we expect men to be more emotionally available and involved in family life (as opposed to the 1950s emotionally closed-off model) but provide mixed signals by also still judging men harshly if they seem too emotional or don’t meet ideals of what “real” men should be like.

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