Marc Sobel sent in this IBM memo from 1951 that announces a “temporary modification” of corporate policy to allow married women to work at the company:
This is the type of thing that often turns out to be a hoax so I spent some time searching, but I can’t find any evidence that it isn’t authentic.
Also see: reasons not to hire women and if you don’t fire women, men have to be bums.
Chloe Angyal (from Feministing) sent me a link to an interesting, if disheartening, segment of her from GRITtv with Laura Flanders about women’s willingness to suffer as they try to meet beauty ideals. Seems that if you want to discourage women women from using tanning beds, don’t warn them about skin cancer. Just tell them it’ll make them ugly. For instance:
The women in the study were more concerned about avoiding ugliness than about avoiding potentially deadly cancer.
UPDATE: Be sure and check out the comments to the video over at YouTube. Really fascinating: lots of comments about Angyal’s appearance and statements like, “chole looks like a feminist, very ugly.” For an interesting discussion of the “feminists are ugly” reaction, read this post at Yes Means Yes.
Thanks to Raluca-Elena, I am now disturbed to discover that the makers of heelarious, fake high heels for infant girls, are now selling teethers in the shape of a credit card with the name “Ima Spender.” Get it?
Let’s train those girls to consume above their means before they even get their first teeth!
Okay okay, infants aren’t going to get the joke. But why is it so funny to encourage infant girls to grow up to be shallow, gold digging, divas? Or is this me stereotyping the high-fashion-conscious?
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.
Neha M. sent us this fun little video that looks at women in beer commercials. Enjoy!
Today we’ve got two examples of the sexual objectification of Black men.
Margaret M. sent us this commercial she recently saw on TV in Budapest. It’s for an ice cream bar called Maxi King, and I think it’s not stretching to say that the ice cream bar is a stand-in for the guy’s penis:
The placement of the container she takes it out of, her sexy look, the shot of the ice cream with the white center and the caramel goo…yeah, that’s a penis. And the commercial is playing on the stereotype that Black men are particularly well-endowed. Massive satisfaction!
In both cases, Black men’s sexuality is fetishized for White audiences. They represent a fantasy of exotic, hypersexual, and sexually-gifted Black men. While the stereotype could appear positive — after all, they’re presented as desirable sexual partners — the flip side is that Black men are thus also often presented as more animalistic and sexually aggressive than White men, a stereotype that has been used against them time and time again.
And as we see in the second commercial, representing a fantasy means you are interesting because of that fantasy, not because of who you are. When the man failed to live up to the woman’s fantasy, not only did she no longer find him attractive, she and her friend found the situation laughable…because you certainly wouldn’t want to sleep with, or even date, a Black man from Shropshire. If he’s not an exotic sexual fantasy, what’s the point?
UPDATE: Reader Carlo says,
I took the joke in the second commercial to be on the woman. She allowed her race based assessment of the man as an exotic other to make a fool of her when the man proved to be just like her (from somewhere local). Even though this commercial is obviously playing on recognized stereotypes (women find exotic men attractive), it sort of points out the ridiculousness of those assumptions. In the end, her friend is laughing at her for being, essentially, that daft white audience that equates blackness with the exotic.
For another take on fetishizing Black men, see our post on male sex workers in the Caribbean.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Lisabee received an Amazon ad in her inbox for “Father’s Day Kitchen Gifts” that, at first glance, appeared to challenge the stereotype that men don’t cook. Upon opening it, however, it turns out that it masculinizes cooking activities. It’s a nice example of the trend of de-feminizing items in order to make them safe for dudes who generally have to stay far away from the stigma of femininity. What do we have?
Corn peelers with “good grips” for those aggressive peeling sessions;
A blender with a “polycarbonate jar” (how science-y!);
A corkscrew named after a famous magician and a John Wayne-themed tumbler;
Stuff for “Mr Bar B Q”;
A fryer (and what’s more masculine than fried food);
Stuff for meat.
And there’s other stuff, too, but I would bet that cooking items marketed for Mother’s Day would look significantly different.
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.
Cross-posted at Love Isn’t Enough.
Diego Costa sent in an image of Jaden Smith, star of the remake of The Karate Kid, at a recent promotional event in China. In it, 11-year-old Jaden has lifted his shirt to show off his abs, while co-star Jackie Chan and a man I presume is the event host marvel at them:
What struck Diego is how this image was received differently than a similar image of an 11-year-old girl pulling up her shirt to show off her abs might be seen. For instance, The Huffington Post showed the image without any comment about its content. We might compare that to the public outcry over the images of Miley Cyrus wrapped in a sheet that came out two years ago. I also suspect The Huffington Post article might say something about the adult men in the above photo if it were a girl rather than a boy they were touching/ogling.
Apparently when he went on The View, Jaden said he’s “already a great kisser” and the audience cheered, though I can’t find a video of it.
Diego says,
Why is the exposure of boy bodies deemed appropriate whilst the revealing of girls’ bodies must always accompany relentless probing, judging and outrage? If we agree that we shouldn’t sexualize children, then let’s not do it to any child. And, while we are at it, let’s also not assume infantile heterosexuality by asking if boys already have “a girlfriend.”
Excellent points. I suspect if an 11-year-old girl went on The View and said she was a good kisser already, she and her parents would be attacked in the press, people would express horror, and rumors would circulate about whether she’s been sexually abused, is already sexually active, etc. etc. But when an 11-year-old boy does it? That’s cute! He’s on his way to being a smooth-talking ladies’ man!
I can’t decide if, or to what degree, race might be at play here. There is certainly a tendency to adultify non-White children — that is, to treat them as mini-adults rather than children at much earlier ages than White kids are. This includes sexuality (for instance, teachers often assume Black girls are sexually active at younger ages than White girls). My recent post on the hypersexualization of a 13-year-old Latino boy discussed this topic.
But I’m not sure if that’s playing a major role here, or if gender assumptions and him being the son of a much-beloved celebrity couple are the more important factors. Thoughts?
For another example, see our post on the Rolling Stone cover with Taylor Lautner.
Tom Megginson of Change Marketing and Kandirra sent us a stunning example of the objectification of women in advertising. It’s a commercial for Rosgosstrakh, the largest insurance company in Russia, advertising their car insurance. How do they do so? By painting pictures of vehicles on (headless) women’s breasts and showing various hands fondling/smushing/jiggling them.
Reader lizardbreath pointed out that showing breasts on TV wouldn’t be as shocking in a lot of cultures as it would be in the U.S., which I think is a valid point. What makes it seem objectifying to both of us isn’t just the breasts themselves, but the headless women (so you have disembodied breasts). I also noticed that at one point a woman pushes the (also disembodied) male hands away, which implies she’s being groped when she doesn’t want to be.
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