gender

Arielle S. sent in an image of an ad for a Christmas party two years ago at a nightclub in Miami. The ad says it’s a “bad Christmas sweaters party,” but as it turns out, that’s only if you’re a guy. For ladies, it’s apparently a sexy outfit party:

Because even at a party expressly about looking silly in ugly clothes, women aren’t allowed to not be sexy.

Similarly, Save S. saw these ads for GNC at the mall that make it clear what characteristics men and women are supposed to aspire to have:

So apparently  men aren’t worried about being sexy. And women want to look…radiant? I’m not sure what product at GNC would make you radiant, but I can’t imagine it’s good for you.

Jessica B. sent in a link to a really great post over at Pigtail Pals. The author, Melissa, analyzed the contents of a number of holiday-season catalogs advertising toys. She tabulated how many girls and boys appear in each, how many are shown doing gender-stereotypical vs. non-stereotypical activities, and the main themes of the toys.

Here are the results for Toys ‘R’ Us:

Images from the catalog:

Wal-Mart:

Target:

It’s particularly striking to me how few images there are of girls and boys playing together, a predictable outcome, I suppose, of our insistence that boys and girls need different toys — since, if must play with different toys, they won’t be playing together.

Melissa discusses the specific images on several pages of the catalogs — check her full post out for more commentary.

Camille S. sent along a characteristic example of advertising for kids’ toys.  From KMart, the catalog specifies very different ideas for boys versus girls:

In contrast to the KMart advertising, Shannon H. sent a link to the advertising at Bazoongi. Their website, featuring slumber bags and play structures, is both multiracial and breaks down gender stereotypes. Notice that the boys and girls are both modeling boy-ish (blue, sciency) bags and girl-ish (pink, pony, butterfly) bags:

And this “dollhouse,” for example, shows mixed-sex play:

As does this “superhero hut”:

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.

Today I’ve got another of my occasional posts of various items related to gender and technology. All of these examples either reflect the male gaze in tech-related media or reinforce the idea that the primary creators and users of science and technology are males.

Morgan A. pointed out a recent cover of Wired, which she read about on Cindy’s Take on Tech:

In her post, Cindy points out that Wired often sexualizes or trivializes women when it puts them on the cover, or uses women to illustrate stories about other topics rather than focusing on their accomplishments. A few examples:

So the first one mentions being naked, the second has a woman displayed synthetic diamonds, the third uses a woman to illustrate a story about being famous even if you’re a “nobody,” and Uma Thurman appeared because she played a character in a movie based on a novel by Philip K. Dick.

I looked at all Wired covers from 2005 through 2010. Of those, 46 had people on them, in either human or cartoon form (including body parts, such as the boob cover), whose sex could be fairly well inferred. And 12 of those, or 26%, had a woman (or female character, as with the manga cover) either alone or pictured with men. Those 12 included several of the covers pictured above, as well as one showing the lower half of a woman’s face as she puts a pill in her mouth. The accompanying text is for an article titled “The Thin Pill.” When I went to the article, I found this set of photos:

So we have part of a naked woman’s body to represent the idea of thinness itself, one image of a male scientist quoted in the story, and another image of a clothed man who isn’t identified.

In a similar example, Julie Alsop sent us a link to a post at twatterr about covers of magazines about digital photography and Photoshop. A few examples:

The twatterr post has a link to archives to see covers of back issues of a number of digital photography magazines, and as she points out, they tend to use lots of sexualizes images of (very thin) women. Passive, sexualized female robots/cyborgs are another common theme.

Merve G. sent in this video, titled “The Power to Create,” made by the University of Copenhagen. In the video, women are sexualized, and we see the male = active, female = passive dichotomy: men have the “power to create,” while women are the things being created by them:

Barbara B. N., a Research Fellow at the Technical University of Lisbon, sent in this Nokia video in which the woman describing the features of a Nokia product first makes sure to describe herself — she’s hot — and at the end of the video tosses her head seductively and invites you to choose another video to “see more of” her:

And finally, an anonymous reader let us know about the “Geek and Gamer Girls” video, a parody of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” created by four actresses who called themselves Team Unicorn:

As the sender-inner says, she feels conflicted about the video. On the one hand, the song does celebrate girls being geeky and into science and technology and other elements of geek culture often associated mostly with guys. But on the other hand, “the difference between the message I got from the song lyrics and the message I got from the video left me rather uncomfortable. I guess it’s only cool to be a geek girl if you’re really really pretty.”

E.C.S. sent along this clip from Keeping Up with the Kardashians in which the world is introduced to Kim’s wax figure, to be installed at the famous Hollywood wax museum, Madame Tussauds. E.C. asks, and suggests and answer to, the question: What has Kim Kardashian done to earn a spot beside historic presidents and renown musicians?  Kardashian, she explains, is being honored for her capitulation to patriarchy.  She explains:

Using her attractiveness, and her sexual and social capital as tools, Kim has made herself both a career and fame by winning the attention of men…

E.C. is referring, here, to Kardashian’s patriarchal bargain.   A patriarchal bargain is a decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women in exchange for whatever power one can wrest from the system. It is an individual strategy designed to manipulate the system to one’s best advantage, but one that leaves the system itself intact.

Indeed, this is what Kardashian has done, and very successfully. So, for what is she famous? For making this bargain and getting such a good deal for herself. “Congratulations, Kim,” E.C. writes, “for being patriarchy’s perfect woman.”

Clip:

See also our post on how Tila Tequila’s patriarchal bargain ultimately backfired.

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.

Andi M. sent in a video created by J.C. Penney called “The Doghouse.” The ad tells the story of men sent to the doghouse by their wives for various bad behaviors, but mostly for giving bad Christmas gifts. A bad gift is a non-romantic gift, or a gift that is related to housework, or that implies a woman needs to lose weight or change her appearance:

As Andi points out, the ad portrays men as idiots or even actively mean-spirited. But I’m also interested in the way we define what are appropriate gifts for women. We often see “practical” gifts as perfectly acceptable to give to men. But increasingly, gifts for women are supposed to be essentially romantic, a symbol of love, not usefulness, a cultural trend the jewelry industry, in particular, has encouraged and benefited from.

In this ad, we have several “bad” gifts — more computer memory, a vacuum cleaner, facial hair remover, and a work-out accessory. All are presented as equally idiotic choices for men to make. So getting a woman something that might significantly improve her computer is just the same as giving her something to work out with, while actively mocking her body and eating habits. Any non-romantic gift is risky, even if accompanied by an attempt to be sweet (see the poor computer memory guy).

I’ve discussed before research on low-income women who complain when they feel that men waste money on romantic but non-essential gifts rather than stuff they actually need. On the other hand, I asked one of my classes about what they would consider an acceptable gifts, and I was (probably stupidly) surprised that many of the women in the class were adamant that useful or helpful items were nice to get, but only in addition to a romantic gift, never as the “main” gift itself. A couple said they’d feel bad if their female friends were showing off jewelry they got for Valentine’s Day or Christmas and they didn’t have anything to show, because their friends would assume their boyfriends/husbands weren’t romantic or didn’t love them very much. So it was less about whether they wanted jewelry than that they knew other women did, and thus feared their friends would judge their relationships if they didn’t get the right gift to “prove” they had good partners.

I think ads like this both reflect and reinforce this social pressure to buy the “right” kind of gifts for women. J.C. Penney tapped into an existing cultural norm about what kinds of gifts women want, and then reinforces it by presenting jewelry as the only means available to men to get out of the doghouse, and shows all women as being in complete agreement about what an acceptable gift is.

UPDATE: Reader Josh Leo pointed out that the ad also portrays the doghouse as a place men are tortured by having to do feminine things:

…all they are fed in “the doghouse” is Quiche and Chai Latte’s. This is clearly a statement that these foods are feminine an almost a form of torture for “Real Men.”

Alyssa M. sent in an ad that gives us a window into the advertising aimed at tween and teen girls.  The ad, for Auntie Anne’s pretzels (an American chain that appears mostly in shopping malls) appeared in Seventeen magazine.  The copy reads “Pick A Reason to Get One — Any Reason” and, in the background, is a long list of reasons.

The ad:

I’ll let Alyssa take it from here:

..the reasons in the background reflect gendered expectations that are placed on [teen girls]. One of the reasons, for example, is “I’ll run another lap during P.E.”  This reflects the idea that women should feel guilty about eating food, and that they should make up for eating a salty pretzel by exercising more. It also illustrates that women must justify eating by promising themselves that they will prevent any weight gain, which would stray from the type of woman that society deems best (the thin woman).  Another reason provided is that “It’s the one thing at the mall that always fits!!”  This again reflects the social necessity for women to be thin, as it implies that women are concerned with the fact that clothes at the mall are often too small, which implies that the women are too large. This ad very much focuses on girls’ size and waistlines and illustrates that a thin girl is the best girl, and that to be accepted by society, teen girls must act in accordance with this expectation.

Another theme seen throughout the ad is that food can be consumed in order to ease the emotional pain of a traumatic event such as a breakup. For example, two other reasons given are that “My almost-boyfriend dumped me” and “It’s the perfect breakup snack.” Both suggest that a breakup warrants an unhealthy indulgence like a pretzel, but this also implies that unhealthy foods like this are only acceptable during a bad experience like a breakup. Eating is okay when you need it to comfort yourself, but if you are not going through such an experience, then you need to watch your weight and “run another lap during P.E.” Those who break this rule are at risk of being policed by others and losing the body type that society appreciates most. This ad therefore supports the expectation placed on teen girls to be thin and concerned with their weights.

Close ups:

Alyssa’s analysis reminds me of Jamal Fahim’s argument for how chocolatiers convince women to indulge in their product.

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.

Larry Harnisch, of The Daily Mirror, sent in a link to a story at the NYT regarding study released by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media about the under-representation of women and girls in “family” movies — that is, movies rated G, PG, and PG-13. The authors looked at all English-language fictional G-rated films released in the U.S. or Canada between September 2006 and September 2009 (a total of 22 movies). They also looked at the 50 highest-grossing films for both PG- and PG-13-ratings, meaning a total of 122 movies is included in the analysis. They focused on characters that were either mentioned by name or spoke at least one word in the movie, leading to a sample of 5,554 characters. Of those, 70.8% were male and 29.2% were female.

Consistent with patterns in Hollywood in general, women made up a small proportion of directors, writers, and producers in the movies studied:

The authors found that movies with female directors and/or writers had more female characters than those with male directors/writers, with writers seeming to have a stronger effect than directors:

Of course, this could be because female directors/writers actively try to incorporate female characters into movies or because studios are simply more comfortable hiring female directors/writers to work on movies with female characters than they are other types of films, leading to a concentration of women working on such projects.

Comparing the results of this study to an earlier analysis of films from 1990-2006, we see that the gender imbalance isn’t improving over time (though since the methodologies differed slightly, the data aren’t absolutely comparable and so are more indicative of a general trend; the authors did make statistical adjustments for the methodological differences):

Of course, none of this gets at the content of the films. The study found that female characters were generally younger than male characters, made up only 17% of group or crowd scenes, and often had plotlines that centered entirely around interests in romance.