gender

Alli, YetAnotherGirl, Molly W., and Laurence D. all sent in links (via The Mary Sue and Feminist Law Professors) to a post at The Achilles Effect on gendered language in children’s toy commercials. Crystal Smith created word clouds based on 658 words in 27 TV commercials generally aimed at boys (products included “Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Kung Zhu, Nerf, Transformers, Beyblades, and Bakugan”) and 432 words from 32 TV commercials generally aimed at girls (products: “Zhu Zhu Pets, Zhu Zhu Babies, Bratz Dolls, Barbie, Moxie Girls, Easy Bake Ovens, Monster High Dolls, My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, Polly Pocket, and FURREAL Friends”).

This clearly isn’t a random sample of all toy commercials on all TV channels to all age groups; as Smith points out, it ignores toy companies that can’t afford TV ads, and it’s not a huge sample. However, given that these are popular toys that were being marketed during shows (such as cartoons) that are aimed at children, the word clouds provide a basic overview of gendered language in toy ads.

The word cloud for the boys’ list shows the emphasis on action and violence, with others depicted as opponents, a nemesis, or enemies:

For girls, the words are much more about appearance/fashion, relationships (friends, friendship, etc.), and playing mommy:

You can see larger versions at Wordle (girls and boys) and Smith says she has a reference list of all the commercials she a reference list of all the commercials available, which I requested. I’ll update the post with the list when I get it.

UPDATE: In response to my email, Crystal Smith cautioned, “This is a very small sample of brands that tend to appear frequently during kids’ cartoon blocks on TV. They are highly gendered toys, which explains the incredible contrast between the two lists.” She sent along the references; the girls’ list is available here, the boys’ list here.

Christine sent us a link to some fabulous photos coming out of Toronto. In January a member of the Toronto Police force, Const. Michael Sanguinetti, suggested to students at York University that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” (source).  In response, SlutWalk was born.  The SlutWalk, which strode just yesterday, was a march designed to draw attention to the way in which the term “slut” is used to stigmatize and invalidate women.

As Leora Tanenbaum argues in Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, the term is used to control all women, not just women who want to have sex, because it can be applied to girls and women regardless of their sexual activity (as any virgin with a slut reputation can tell you).  Young girls grow up using, and fearing, the slut label.  And that label continues to be used against them as adults, even when it comes to sexual assault, as the police officer’s comment makes clear.

In an effort to bring attention to word and  its use as a mechanism of control girls, women and men of all sexual activity levels came together on Sunday, re-claiming and diffusing the “slut” label.

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.

Men and women are told, in a myriad of daily ways, that being masculine is good and feminine bad. It sneaks into our daily language in ways that are so common that we fail to even see it anymore. For example, a recent New York Times article about Google’s effort to determine what makes managers successful featured a list, written by Google, of what makes a good boss.

I noticed that they added The New York Times added the phrase “Don’t be a sissy” to “Good Behavior” #4.  It reads “Don’t be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented.”   It’s the only Good Behavior that includes a derisive slur. And while I’m accustomed to seeing terms like “sissy” thrown around as insults, it occurred to me that the very next rule #5, “Be a good communicator and listen to your team,” could easily have been prefaced with “Don’t be a man.”

But being a “sissy” (that is, feminine) is something that we can all agree is bad, while being a man is good.  So, even when the rules suggest that men take on feminized traits, they’re unlikely to adorn the suggestion with a denigration of masculinity.

Via Teppo at OrgTheory.

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.

My great-grandma was born in 1914 and lived until 2005, so she witnessed an enormous amount of technological and cultural change during her life. I asked her once what single thing she found most impressive or was most grateful had been invented. She answered, without hesitation, “the electric washing machine.” As the mother of 7 children with a husband who did not do housework, laundry had been the bane of her existence. Getting a washing machine that had a hand-powered wringer helped, but it was still exhausting. The way she saw it, getting an electric washing machine changed her life. Her fear of ever again having to do laundry by hand with a washboard was so great that she kept the hand-crank-powered washer next to her electric one until the early 1990s, just in case.

In this TED clip, “Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine,” sent in by Dmitriy T.M., Rosling discusses the ethical problems involved in efforts to combat climate change that rest primarily on telling individuals in developing nations that because we need to use less energy globally, they just can’t have the same appliances and conveniences, like electric washing machines, that those of us living in (post-) industrialized nations do:

Transcript after the jump.

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Feminist Frequency‘s Anita Sarkeesian has released the first of her series of short videos examining the roles women are often assigned in movies and television.  In this one she goes after the “manic pixie dream girl,” or the female side character who helps the male main character find himself, love life again, or overcome some obstacle.  This character, Sarkeeisan argues, is problematic because she “perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core”; her main role is to “‘fix’ these lonely sad men, so that they can go ‘fix the world.'”  The women themselves?  They’re too busy being adorable.

(Transcript after the jump.)

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Lisa recently posted about Abercrombie Kids selling push-up bikini tops (though I just went to the website and they seem to have removed the “push-up” description). In another example of encouraging pre-teens to sexualize their bodies, Meghan L. sent in the clip “You’ve Got Snooki” from AOL Video in which Snooki, from Jersey Shore, does a makeover on an 11-year-old girl, since you’re “never too young to look bangin'” or to start thinking about how you look to boys:

In a perfect example of the tendency to sexualize women but not men, MM sent in a screen capture of an image for the graphic t-shirts section of the Urban Outfitters website, in which the men are all fully clothed and the women…less so:

Mindy Jovanovic sent in a vintage advertisement for “Stuffed Girl’s Heads”: fake heads meant to mimic the taxidermied trophies of hunted game oh-so-popular among some types.  Mindy said, “Now I think I’ve seen it all.”

Well Mindy, I hate to disappoint you, but I think I have something even more offensive to show you: Jingle Jugs.  At least the girls have heads in this “conquest,” Jingle Jugs are just fake dancing boobs mounted on a board (hard nipples included).  And they’re not vintage.  Oh no, they’re for breast cancer awareness.

Image borrowed from Dangerous Minds.

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.