gender: objectification

A reader who asked to remain anonymous sent in a video about a recent interview by Star Jones with the lawyer for Kelsey Peterson, a teacher accused in 2007 of fleeing to Mexico in order to live with a 13-year-old student of hers (he was 12 at the time they began having sex together). In the interview, the lawyer for Peterson says he “resents” the boy being referred to as a child because he is a “Latino machismo teenager” (a phrase that doesn’t even make sense) and “manly”:

Notice that the lawyer also argues, at about 1:25, that teen boys have a high sex drive, which somehow excuses an adult woman having sex with a 12-year-old. In addition, at 3:30 in Jones mentions that some individuals have implied the kid couldn’t be a victim because he was physically larger than other kids his age (5′ 6″ in 8th grade, which doesn’t sound super unusual to me); it sounds like Peterson’s defenders have questioned his age because of his size.

Jones calls him out on his implication that Latino teens are hyper-sexual and therefore this boy shouldn’t be seen as a victim. At about 5:45 one of her guests discusses the adultification of non-White children — that is, the way they are often treated as adults, regardless of their age. Ann Arnett Ferguson discusses this process at length in her book, Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity. This adultification includes assumptions that they are sexual at earlier ages than White children.

From what Jones and one of her guests say, it also appears that the fact that he was an undocumented immigrant has also been used as a way to undermine his ability to claim victim status. At about 7:55 a guest discusses the way that referring to people as “aliens” dehumanizes them, making it easier to deny them equal legal protection. (Side note: Jones mentions the history of immigration in the U.S. and in doing so says everyone in the U.S. is descended from immigrants, something Native Americans might find surprising, though I suppose if you go back a few thousand years to the migration from Asia to North America, technically yes, they are immigrants.)

When I searched for news stories about the case, I came across one at ABC news in which the boy is described as “a sexually-active sixth-grade student with a crush on her,” which seems to me to be reminiscent of the way female rape victims are often asked about their sexual history, as though they cannot be true victims if they have been sexually active.

The ABC story contains this quote from Peterson’s lawyer:

From the beginning, he was trying to entice her. There’s no question about that…He would try to kiss her, he would grab her, he would do these things. She didn’t initiate this relationship. That young man did.

Again the blame is placed not on the adult woman but on a 12-year-old boy. Peterson says she was shocked the first time he kissed her, which was in her kitchen — a place that maybe a thinking person wouldn’t have a 12-year-old student in. She also says his parents knew about and were fine with their sexual interactions; they dispute this.

Perhaps drawing on the stereotype of macho Latino men, her lawyer said,

He used to tell her what she could wear. And whether she could wear makeup and the length of her skirts in terms of where they were gonna go and what they were gonna do…He had a very, very strong influence over her in terms of controlling her behavior.

The comments to the ABC story are pretty fascinating too.

This is a disturbing example of the way that boys, and particularly non-White boys, are generally denied victim status when it comes to sex because our cultural beliefs include the idea that boys want sex and attempt to get it at an early age, and thus can’t really be vulnerable to sexual assault or coercion. For another example, see this post about how Jimmy Kimmel reacts when Lil’ Wayne confirms that he lost his virginity at age 11.

Stacey Burns wrote in to tell us about her successful effort to fight an ad campaign that objectified women and trivialized sex work.  She explains:

USI Wireless, an Internet provider that has a ten-year contract to provide wireless to the city of Minneapolis, recently launched a new ad campaign promoting its service. The ad features the image of a young woman who we are clearly meant to read as a sex worker, accompanied by the text “FAST, CHEAP, and SATISFACTION GUARANTEED.”

A photo of the billboard was placed on Facebook, which she saw on a friend’s page, and then re-posted with a critique.  She contacted the company, whose representatives were “polite but dismissive, telling [her] that they test-marketed the ad and it did well in focus groups.”  The photo of the billboard went viral and she took it to the City Council, who “responded to public outcry and succeeded in getting the ad pulled from the 12 locations it was posted” (story here).

Burns’ story is a nice example of how collective action, facilitated by the internet, can make a difference.

For more examples of this kind of resistance, read about fights against the Obama sock monkey, a Target ad, Mr. Wasabi, Frito Bandito, Motrin’s idea of motherhood, and the rebellyon.

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

Many of you have probably by now seen this video of a group of young girls dancing to Beyonce’s Single Ladies on the World of Dance tour.  Huong L., Jeff S., and Dmitriy T.M. sent it in and asked us to comment on it.  First, the video… which is stunning:

I think I’ve watched this a half dozen times and I’m mesmerized.

But to the analysis…

After the Single Ladies video came out there was a rash of parents uploading videos of their kids dancing along to the video.  We featured a particularly impressive example of a preschool-aged girl dancing to the video and offered it as an example of how kids are active agents in their own socialization.  You might also apply this idea to this video, sent in by Heather B. (which I am not going to comment on because I can’t figure out the context).

Certainly children do make choices about what to mimick.  In a culture that highly sexualizes young girls, we shouldn’t be that surprised when they make choices that we find incongruent with (our beliefs about) childhood.  The World of Dance routine, however, is not simply an example of children being active in their own socialization and responding to the powerful messages of self-objectification aimed at girls of all ages.  In this case, many, many adults were instrumental in producing the product: their dance teacher(s), the choreographer, their parents, and the producers of the tour, to name the obvious.  These girls are performing a highly sexualized routine because many adults chose to sexualize them.

For more examples of the sexualization of young girls, see our posts on sexually suggestive teen brands, adultifying children of color, “trucker girl” baby booties, “future trophy wife” kids’ tee, House of Dereón’s girls’ collection, “is modesty making a comeback?“, more sexualized clothes and toys, sexist kids’ tees, a trifecta of sexualizing girls, a zebra-striped string bikini for infants, a nipple tassle t-shirt, even more icky kids’ t-shirts, “are you tighter than a 5th grader?” t-shirt, the totally gross “I’m tight like spandex” girls’ t-shirt, and a Halloween costume post.

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

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 swore months ago to never post another Evony ad. I’ve seen so many, and the direction they’re going seems pretty clear.

But today I’m breaking my vow. I submit to you this screencap, taken by spinach, of an Evony pop-up ad featuring a faceless woman’s torso, obscuring the website spinach was viewing at the time: a biography of feminist poet/theorist Adrienne Rich.

A moment of silence, please.

Jose Marichal, who blogs at Thick Culture, forwarded us this compilation of Bob Barker’s infantilizing and harassing behavior on The Price is Right during the 1970s.  It’s pretty stunning:

I’d like to say that men don’t call women “girls” these days… but I’m watching Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution.

Source: FourFour via The Daily Dish.  More examples of calling women girls, both vintage and contemporary.

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 the theme of selling everything with sex, I present Del Monte’s “fruit undressed” campaign.  First I saw this along the side of a webpage I was perusing (for you, readers, for you):

Damn it; I clicked.  The product is, like, a reinvented fruit cocktail:

It’s being marketed with these ads suggestively suggesting that the fruit is nude:

Notice that that last one is referencing Mardi Gras.  Flash those pineapples, baby!

But don’t get too cocky, the ad campaign reminds us, you still look fat in clothes and should be horribly insecure about it:

Yeah, so sexual objectification and hatred of women’s bodies all in one!  Just to sell fruit cocktail!

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.

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.

In “The Yellow Fever Pages” (full citation below), Karen Eng discusses a recurring problem she, as a Chinese-American woman, faces when dating: that many men, particularly White men, who express interest in her are not interested in her as an individual, but rather in a generalized Asian woman and the fantasies that are associated with them. Eng sums up the fantasies many men hold about Asian (particularly Japanese) women:

The fantasy Asian is intelligent yet pliable, mysterious yet ornamental…perpetually pre-pubescent–ageless and petite…high-pitched, girly–while simultaneously being exotic and wise…She comes from a culture where women traditionally serve men… (p. 68).

Thus, when men ask her out, Eng has to figure out whether they are asking her out because they think she specifically is interesting, or whether they’re asking her out because what they see is an Asian woman to whom they attach all kinds of expectations about exoticism, subservience, and so on. As she puts it, regardless of how she presents herself, the interests she expresses, the type of music and clothing she’s interested in, “…they still see a little Oriental flower.”

I could not help but think of Eng’s article when one of my students, Casandra L., let me know about the dating website ClassyAsianLadies:

The website specifically markets Asian American women to men in the U.S., drawing on all of the stereotypes Eng describes. Here are some images from the site; I highlighted some of the most blatant examples of the “Asian women as hot but also passive” stereotypes in red:

So they aren’t trying to use you to get to the U.S. (though, after stating these are women living in the U.S., they are always described as Asian, not Asian American). And the men who want to date them just love and respect “the Asian culture” (and, you know, there’s just one culture in all of Asia). And how do you show your appreciation for a culture? By marrying someone who personifies the elements of that culture you have romanticized.

Notice the guys using the site appear to expect quite a lot in a woman: she has to remain “a lady,” be “sweet, gentle, beautiful, loving, fun,” but also be “intelligent and independent.”

I don’t know to what degree the website specifically targets White men. There were three photos of Asian women with men on the site; two showed Asian women with White men, one showed an Asian woman with an Asian man.

In case you aren’t convinced yet, here’s some more information on why you should marry an Asian woman:

Unlike “the average woman” (which presumably means White women in the U.S., since we’re the majority of women and all), Asian women haven’t become too competitive (just intelligent and independent! But that’s different!) and certainly aren’t “masculine.” Again we see the romanticizing of a certain stereotype of “Asian culture,” with Asian women having a “well-known cultural attitude of gentle and caring support” and “Eastern values,” which apparently involves being sweet and supportive. Though they’ve also “learned Western values,” which here is associated with being “outgoing…independent and fun…”. Thus, the West = independent, fun women, while the East = supportive, submissive ones.

Notice the last line in that image:  “…that perfect Asian girlfriend or wife.” This is what Eng was getting at: this isn’t about finding the perfect girlfriend or wife; this is about a fantasy of the perfect Asian girlfriend/wife. “Yellow fever” refers to the fetishization of Asian women by men who have a specific idea of what Asian women are like and view them as particularly desirable mates based not on their unique personalities but because of the “Eastern values” they supposedly adhere to. The women thus become somewhat interchangeable. Eng’s frustration grew largely out of the difficulty of getting men to notice her, as opposed to her status as an Asian American woman.

Some other gems:

Asian women are exotic but also make a lot of money (no gold-diggers here!). Men find them “intoxicating.” They’re loyal, and “dedicated to their men.” An Asian woman “always thinks of her man first!” They’ll help with financial planning without being “intrusive”–that is, they’ll make suggestions, but it’s ultimately up to him to decide and she’ll accept whatever he decides on.

They’re “easy to be with…rarely complain…and constructive with their criticism.”  One of my students said the whole “Wonderfully easy to be with” section made her think of the way people describe breeds of dogs: “Get a Labrador! They’re smart, fun, and easy-going! They’ll make a nice addition to any family!”

The translation to all of this: Asian women will offer their wisdom and support, but will then step back and let their men decide. They aren’t bitches who will nag at you or criticize you in a nasty way, or complain that you aren’t doing half the housework, or expect to have an equal role in financial decisions. And she won’t let herself go and become a fatty, so be assured–what you see now is what you can expect she’ll stay like forever.

Aside from the objectification of Asian women (and “the Asian culture”) as having a predetermined set of characteristics you can count on, this says a lot about concerns surrounding changes in gender roles in the U.S. These women are being marketed as the antithesis of the “average” woman in the U.S., who is demanding, hard to get along with, too competitive, and doesn’t stay sufficiently attractive. Female assertiveness or insistence on gender equality is de-feminizing and unattractive; it turns us into masculinized women who won’t submit to men’s authority to take our ideas into consideration but make final decisions based on what they think is best.

For a certain group of men, then, dating an Asian woman is a way to reclaim a romanticized gender hierarchy in which women mix cultural elements associated with the “East” and the “West.” They’re independent and make money (the fun part of female empowerment, unless the independence goes to far and they get uppity), but they retain “Eastern” gender roles in which their independence is, ultimately, limited by their passivity and submissiveness to men, as well as appropriate displays of femininity (being thin, beautiful, and exotic). And, thus, this type of relationship allows men who believe they have been victimized and emasculated by the women’s movement to reclaim some of the overt patriarchal power the believe they’ve been robbed of.

NEW! (Mar. ’10): Rachel K. sent a link to this t-shirt, which ThinkGeek says translates as “now accepting applications for Japanese girlfriends.” It’s a great example of the fetishization of Japanese women:

(“The Yellow Fever Pages.” 2000. Bitch issue 12, p. 68-73.)

Also check out Lisa’s post on marketing Asian women to specifically anti-feminist men.

NEW! (May ’10): Sophie L. sent in this spam message she got on Skype, offering “a sweet lady that will be caring and understanding” in case ” European and American women are too arrogant for you.” In this case the source of of these nice, lovely women is Russia…which, yes, is part of Europe, but don’t get caught up on geographical details. You can find yourself a woman with “royal blood and royal look”!