gender: objectification

I found these vintage (1967-68) ads for Tiparillo cigars at Found in Mom’s Basement. All answer the question, “Should a gentleman offer a Tiparillo to…” a particular type of woman.

After a tough evening with the Beethoven crowd, she loves to relax and listen to her folk-rock records. Preferably, on your stereo. She’s open-minded. So maybe tonight you offer her a Tiparillo. She might like it–the slim cigar with a white tip. Elegant. And, you dog, you’ve got both kinds on hand, Tiparillo Regular and new Tiparillo M with menthol–her choice of mild smoke or cold smoke. Well? Should you offer? After all, if she likes the offer, she might start to play. No strings attached.

Underneath that pocket of pencils there beats the heart of a digital computer. This girl has already catalogued and cross-indexed the Tiparillo slim, elegant shape. And the neat, white tip. She knows that there are two Tiparillos. Regular, for a mild smoke. Or new Tiparillo M with menthol, for a cold smoke. She knows. She’s programmed. And she’s ready. But how about you? Which Tiparillo are you going to offer? Or are you just going to stand there and stare at her pencils?

She’ll read anything she can get her hands on. From Medieval History to How-to-Build-a-24-Foot-Iceboat. Loves books. Loves new ideas. Okay. No doubt, she’s seen the unusual, slim Tiparillo shape. She’s been intrigued by the neat, white tip. She may even know that there are two Tiparillos. Regular, for a mild smoke. And new Tiparillo M with menthol, for a cold smoke. Your only problem is which to offer. P.S. If she accepts your Tiparillo, remember to fumble with the matches until she decides to light it herself. That way, she’ll have to put down the book.

I found these next two on ebay (all these vintage ads can be purchased on ebay, it turns out):

Is this the old did-it-with-mirrors ploy? Look again. Okay, that’s enough looking. What you’ve got on your hands are carbon copy twins. And what you’ve got in your hands are Tiparillo and Tiparillo M with menthol. Since Tiparillo is the slim, elegant cigar with the neat tip, would it be statistically correct to offer it to this census-taking twosome? Because all they really want is your name, address, phone number and a few other factual facts. But what they get sort of depends on what you offer.

“The doctor is a little late, sir. Will you have a seat?” She’s the best thing to hit dentistry since novocaine. “Hey Dummy,” your mind says to you, “why didn’t you have this toothache sooner?” Maybe if…well, you could offer her a Tiparillo. Or a Tiparillo M with menthol. An elegant, tipped cigar. Slim. And your offer would be cleverly psychological. (If she’s a bit of a kook, she’ll take it. If not, she’ll be flattered that you thought she was a bit of a kook.) And who knows? Your next visit might be a house call.

I will lead it to you, dear reader, to decide if there was supposed to be anything else “cleverly psychological” in any of these ads.

Eric S. sent us a link to the webpage for the Sun-Maid Girl, the girl used to represent Sun-Maid raisins. Here is the original painting of the first Sun-Maid Girl, Lorraine Collett Peterson:

The logo was most recently updated in 1970; here is the current incarnation:

In discussing the original painting, the website says,

Sometimes we forget that in 1915 there were no electric hair dryers, that television would not be invented for decades to come, and that automobiles were not in every home. Life was much simpler, more rural, a lot less hectic and sunbonnets were still part of women’s fashion in California.

I like the romanticization of the past there. In 1915…World War I was going on. I guess life was “less hectic” in that you didn’t have a Blackberry to check every 15 seconds, but overall, I’m not sure I’d say it was “simpler” in a way that implies everyone had time to just sit around eating raisins and drying their hair in the sun.

Also from the website:

To Payne, the sight of the red sunbonnet and the pretty girl in the morning sun was the ideal personification of E.A. Berg’s brand name SUN-MAID.

This might be an interesting addition to some of the images in this, this, and this post about the sexualization of food. Whereas the women in those instances are mostly explicitly sexualized, in this case, the product is being associated with an idealized, non-sexual “maiden” version of femininity. I just thought it might make a good contrast if you’re discussing connections between women and food–the use of female sexuality and idealized female chasteness as marketing tactics related to food products. I wonder if Sun-Maid has stayed with the de-sexualized icon because raisins are associated with children?

FYI, Sun-Maid was one of the companies boycotted by United Farm Workers of America, the group let by Cesar Chavez.

Thanks, Eric S.!

NEW: In a comment Adriana pointed us to Ester Hernandez’s parody of the Sun-Maid girl:

Thanks, Adriana!

Shirley Ann M. sent in this picture of a car advertising Skill Maids:

She says,

I was blown away by the blatant sexual stereotyping in this picture: the maid in high heels, bent over with knees together, Jessica Rabbit figure.

Well, Shirley, what you don’t understand, and what I can tell you because my mom cleaned houses for a living when I was a kid, is that there is no more better outfit to wear for efficiently cleaning a large house than a dress and heels. See, the heels make you taller, so it’s easier to dust the top shelves!

Thanks, Shirley!

Blanca M. sent in this picture she took here in Las Vegas of a truck advertising Air Conditioning Technical Institute. The truck says “Hot City, Cool Career,” and then had this image on the side.

When you go to the website, you see a video (which I can’t embed, sorry) of a man driving up to a house in a sports car. A blonde woman comes out and gushes over the car. The man then says “Six months ago she wouldn’t have given me a second look. I had no job, no education, I was living with my parents.”

So apparently air conditioning tech school is appropriate only for men, and guarantees that you will make enough money to get the hot women you’ve always wanted. Aside from the clear objectification of women as sexual rewards for men, it reinforces the idea of women as opportunistic gold-diggers. It’s also an interesting perspective on how men should view relationships–that they should be perfectly happy to be with women who don’t like them for who they are, and who would presumably leave them if they lost their job or got a pay cut. As long as the woman’s hot, a guy is apparently supposed to be satisfied with the relationship and not worry about little things like whether his wife actually loves him–we reserve concerns about love and emotional closeness for women only.

Thanks, Blanca!

Ok, so this isn’t an image, but it seemed like something our readers might be interested in, so I’m making an exception. Larry (of The Daily Mirror) sent in a link to this story in the New York Times about efforts by the European Union to discourage sex stereotyping in ads (I think another reader also sent in the link, but I’m afraid I’ve lost the email; if it was you, let me know and I’ll give you credit!). From the article:

The European Parliament has set out to change this. Last week, the legislature voted 504 to 110 to scold advertisers for “sexual stereotyping,” adopting a nonbinding report that seeks to prod the industry to change the way it depicts men and women.

Interestingly, the author of the article refers to the measure as “laughable as a gesture of political correctness.” Advertising industry leaders call into question the link between stereotypical images and actual discriminatory or problematic outcomes in actual life. It brings up a recurring issue cultural critics face–it can be extremely difficult to show that, say, sexualized images of women leads to any particular negative outcome. We may strongly believe that the ubiquitous presence of ads that show stereotypical gender roles reinforce them…but since we haven’t yet created a society similar to our own except without the stereotyping, it’s hard to isolate the effects of such cultural messages because we can’t compare what our culture would be like without them.

Thanks, Larry!

This man, Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s Big Idea, helpfully tells the rest of us what the “new feminist ideal” is. Hillary Clinton’s problem, he explains, is that she “didn’t put [on] a skirt.” Enjoy:

Also in women can be anything they want as long as they’re hot: The Nerd Girls.

Found at Feministing.

Brenda V.P. sent in this girls’ t-shirt, available here:

It hurts me, dear readers! It hurts!

Oh, holy hell. I was about to publish this and thought to myself, “at least there’s not a ‘future MILF’ shirt.” And then I thought, “Um…is there?” Oh, yes, there is (found here):

Why do we think these kinds of messages–hey, girls! You can grow up to be an objectified accessory!–are cute?

Thanks, Brenda. Thanks.

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

Seemingly just seconds after the news leaked this weekend that current Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was McCain’s pick for vice president, merchandise appeared to capitalize on her conformity to current white bourgeois beauty standards. [Thanks to Shakesville’s Sarah Palin Sexism Watch for alerting me to the existence of this stuff.]

For example, I found this bumper sticker on zazzle.com, a site where users can upload their own images for use on T-shirts, stickers, baseball caps, etc. The caption above the sticker says, “This year, vote for HOT!” See screengrab below.

“MILF” is a slang term for “Mother I’d Like to F**k.”

This [and the many other examples that I’m sure will be added to this post] would be useful in an ongoing discussion about the deployment of gender in this year’s presidential elections, especially comparing/contrasting the popular portrayals of Hillary Clinton with those of Sarah Palin.

The AFP disembodies Palin in a “news photo” published on September 1. When body parts of male candidates are shown, they are identified as, for example, “the hand of Candidate X was seen waving.” However, in this example, Palin is identified as her legs. [Again, hat tip to Shakesville for photo and commentary.]

Caption accompanying photo reads:

Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin stands on stage during a campaign rally in O’Fallon, Missouri on August 31. Palin got comfortable in her new role as a vice presidential candidate as she made the Republican case to stay in power. (AFP/Robyn Beck)

Dubi K. sent us the following picture that has been making the round on the Internet [it is reportedly the icon for a Facebook group called “I’d Bang Sarah Palin!”]. It is a manipulation of a photo of a woman in a bikini with a gun. Palin’s head is superimposed on the woman’s body. Snopes, clearinghouse on Internet memes and urban legends, summarily debunks the picture’s supposed authenticity and supplies simiilar examples.

An opinion piece, “The Dominatrix,” by Gary Kamiya on Web magazine Salon is advertised on the front page [as of September 9, 2008] with the following poorly done Photoshop of Palin as a stereotypical dominatrix, bringing America [as moose?!] to heel:

Note the equation of a powerful, assertive woman with non-heteronormative, kinky sexuality that some people find morally repugnant. My point is not to start a debate on bdsm, but to show that this picture and the accompanying article make the tired old connection between a powerful woman and “perverted” sex.

Laura C. sent in a link to this image (found at Carrion Bag) of Palin supporters:

Might be good for a discussion of the ways in which sexualization of Palin is coming from both opponents (see here) and supporters, and the ways that women may actively take part in sexualization that trivializes women as a group.

Thanks, Laura C.!

Finally, there are now action figures of Sarah Palin. The one below is the “Sarah Palin School Girl Action Figure.” Setting aside how I feel about Sarah Palin personally and politically, I hate to see a woman’s political power attributed to how sexy she might be. There are already dozens of groups on Facebook about how “sexy” or “hot” Palin is, and they have thousands of members.