gender

Or, as Angry Asian Man noticed, the white cast of Glee.

I get it, these are the show’s main characters. It’s just a obvious reminder that it’s awesome to see such great diversity on Glee… but never forget who the show’s real stars are supposed to be, and who usually gets relegated to the periphery.

With panties, of course.  Because without panties, there would be nothing at all going on on this cover.  Booooriiiiiiing.

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.

A 6-year-old I know brought home a reading assignment from kindergarten. It’s called The New Nest, by Sandra Iversen, with illustrations by Peter Paul Bajer. An innocent tale of Mama Bird and Papa Bird working together to build a nest from 20 twigs, straw and wool. At the end, Mama Bird is sitting on her eggs wearing pearls. Papa Bird is in a white collar and blue tie.

It’s curious to use men’s and women’s accessories (tie, necklace) to identify the gender of the couple, when the species itself provides a reasonable degree of sexual dimorphism.

That’s seems comparable to the dimorphism found in humans.

Using both gendered clothes and bodies is not necessary, but together they are a powerful teaching tool for children, forming a lesson on the concordance of gender and sex differences: matching the different bodies with the appropriately different clothes.

This book is actually featured in a write-up on teaching reading from the journal The Reading Teacher.

I don’t know what the intentions of the article writers were, but there is nothing in there about teaching about sexual dimorphism, or gender norms and practices.

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

Crossposted at Jezebel.

The role of women as both fans of and participants in organized sports has varied greatly in the U.S., as Karlene Ferrante demonstrates in her article* about gender and baseball. In the Victorian Era, a number of women’s baseball teams existed, and some women even played on men’s teams. For instance, Jackie Mitchell joined the Chattanooga Lookouts, a men’s team, when she was 17. In an exhibition game against the Yankees, she struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig…which people then attributed to them being nice and striking out on purpose. Discomfort with women in baseball increased over time, and eventually softball was created to provide an alternative perceived as being less strenuous and fast-paced.

In baseball and other sports, a taboo against women emerged. Many sports were seen as too rough to be appropriate for women to watch, but players and fans also worried that women presented a threat to male players, who might be distracted by the presence of women and thus not focus exclusively on the game (for a more recent example, see our post about Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo). Many believed that sex sapped a player’s strength, and many players avoided sex for several days before a game. Ferrante writes,

…in the early days of baseball women were allowed to watch games only if they were escorted. Unescorted women, and sometimes even escorted women, were harassed by cursing, spitting [fans]. (p. 249-250)

I thought of this when I saw the article Larry Harnisch (of The Daily Mirror) sent me from the L.A. Times, published on April 17, 1910. The story is about Maud Effinger, a woman who dressed in her husband’s clothing so she could attend a prizefight, which women were barred from attending (she writes about having to slip past police at the entrance):

The story, written by Maud herself, who seems rather saucy (sorry the last image is so small):

I don’t know why, exactly, women weren’t allowed into boxing matches. I suspect it might have been a combination of a belief that it was too rough for women’s delicate sensibilities, that scantily-clad men were inappropriate for them to see, and the taboo against women and their distracting ways. But the fact that she had to go incognito, slip past police, and sit in an area where she wouldn’t attract much attention indicates that the ban on women was taken quite seriously.

* Karlene Ferrante. 1994. “Baseball and the Social Construction of Gender.” Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values.

In “Women and Their Hair: Seeking Power through Resistance and Accommodation,” Rose Weitz* discusses how women use their hair — its color, how they style it — to send messages about themselves. For instance, some women with professional careers (lawyers, etc.) talked about cutting their hair shorter because they felt they’d be taken more seriously if they downplayed their femininity. African American professionals said they often straightened their hair to counter the stereotype of the “angry Black woman.” Hair styles may also send signals about our political views or religious affiliations.

I thought of that article when I saw a video sent in by Tom Megginson (author of the blog Change Marketing). The video was produced by HairLoss.com; they describe it as a public service announcement. From a story at PRWeb:

HairLoss.com, the Internet’s most comprehensive resource for unbiased consumer information and education concerning hair loss solutions and conditions, has released the second of a series of animated, one-minute-long public service announcements titled “Hair is Important”.

According to Michael Garcia, spokesman for HairLoss.com, this second video release “aims to illustrate to the public that men and women who are trying to restore their hair are really trying to restore much more than just their hair.”

Here’s the video:

The video illustrates Weitz’s point: hair is presented here as a way to “project who we are, what we believe in…and how we view the world.” The right hairstyle — which clearly means having hair — gives you the confidence to do something extraordinary. A lack of hair keeps us from “looking like ourselves and feeling like ourselves again.” If you go bald, you’ll lead a sad, lonely life and won’t get married.

HairLoss.com sponsors a video contest. Part of the description:

Create a 60-second “Public Service-Style Announcement” that captures one or more of the following ideas and concepts:

• Hair Loss is no Laughing Matter.
• Restoring Hair is about Restoring Life
• Hair is important.
• Accept Your Hair Loss (I am More than my Hair)
• You may also create a video designed around your own compassionate and positive message.

The fourth option in that list — Accept Your Hair Loss (I am More than my Hair) — is an interesting contrast to the others. Clearly hair loss is presented as problematic by the organization; it’s “no laughing matter,” getting it back “restor[es] your life,” and hair loss may require compassion…something you generally feel toward people facing a serious difficulty. Throwing in the option of accepting hair loss feels like women’s magazines that have a one-page article on accepting your body, surrounded by pages of articles on dieting and using fashion to camouflage your “problem areas.”

A HairLoss.com rep also warns that you may not realize how miserable you are if you’re experiencing hair loss until you find a cure to your sad condition:

“Restoring hair is about restoring self-confidence and self-esteem,” said Garcia. “There’s an emptiness that follows losing one’s hair. Oftentimes, the hair loss sufferer doesn’t even realize just how much they have lost, besides hair, until they find a solution to their hair loss and get it all back.”

In his post about this “PSA,” Tom points out individuals with bald heads (voluntarily or otherwise) who still managed to inspire, entertain, lead, express a political viewpoint, and so on.

This emphasis on the need for men to have a full head of (not-too-grey, of course, definitely not grey) hair is interesting given that men are increasingly told they need to eliminate hair on other parts of their bodies (when not being ridiculed for doing so).

It also illustrates how we think about aging. The “real” you is a youthful you, before any signs of hair loss appeared. Hair loss robs you of your essential personhood, turning you into another person; getting your hair back makes you look and feel like yourself again. The message here is that aging isn’t a natural process that you go through. An aging you isn’t really you at all. Signs of aging steal your true self, turning you into a different, inferior, person. The way you looked in, say, your 20s and 30s, is the essence of you, and you must maintain/regain that look to remain truly you.

* In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior, 3rd edition (2010), p. 214-231.

Andrea t. B. sent in some photos released by Britney Spears from a series she did for Candies.  Below, you can see the images side-by-side, before and after retouching, and get a sense of just how impossibly perfect our physical role models are made to be:

(From the Daily Mail.)

Jessica Simpson also appears on the cover of May’s Marie Claire without makeup:

I spoke with a reporter at the Associated Press yesterday who asked me if releasing photos without retouching or being photographed with out makeup was a trend.

Gwen and I agreed that, yes, it is a trend… but only insofar as the rules against doing so are so powerful that even a handful of female celebrities going sans makeup or retouching makes it SO AMAZING.  In reality, what’s so amazing about this trend is that these women are choosing to release these photos.  Photos of Simpson and Spears looking less than perfect are all over the internet, thanks to paparazzi.  So it’s not as if un-retouched or unflattering pictures of these celebrities are anything new… it’s the voluntariness of the releases that is so fascinating.

The romantic might say that they really want to be role models for young girls.   The cynic, however (e.g., me and Gwen), might suggest that there are ways that the might benefit from the release of these images.  In both cases, this could be interpreted as an excellent career move.

Simpson has a new show, The Price of Beauty, questioning the cultural construction of beauty (with questionable success).  So her photo shoot is likely a way to gain publicity for her program.

Spears’ motivation is less clear.   On the one hand, she can claim the romantic narrative and gain the respect and admiration of (more) fans. On the other hand, some of the attention to those (often awful) paparazzi pictures may be displaced by these pictures.  The truth is that she has a lot more control over these non-retouched photos than she does the candid shots.  In the photos above, she has been made up by professional make up and hair artists and she is being shot by a professional photographer with perfect lighting and excellent instruction.  She is also having these photos taken at the height of her fitness when her career is back on track  instead of at a low point (psychologically, physically, and career-wise).  So, given that all those truly unflattering photos are out there, these really re-represent the “real” Spears.  They may draw just a bit of attention away from those images of her bald and attacking a car with an umbrella.

Of course, the motivations of Spears and Simpson, as well as the rationales of those in charge of their images, is left mysterious.  What do you think?  How much of this is about being an excellent role model?  What else might be driving their decisions to take the risk of appearing without make up or retouching?

More discussion and examples of re-touching can be found through our retouch tag.

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.

Considering what obvious justice suffrage for women was, it’s surprising that it took 62 years from the birth of the U.S. suffrage movement to come up with an equally simple way of making the case. But in 1910, the National American Woman Suffrage Association distilled their best arguments into one-paragraph gems printed on postcards. Their “Think It Over” series proved to be not only an excellent consciousness-raiser but fundraiser as well, since NAWSA received a commission on each card sold. Here’s a particularly insightful one:

Some other sample sayings on these postcards:

The Declaration of Independence was the direct result of taxation without representation. Either exempt WOMAN from taxation or grant her the right of Equal Suffrage. What is sauce for the GANDER is sauce for the Goose.

Woman, if granted the right of Equal Suffrage, would not endeavor to pass new laws for the benefit of WOMAN only. She would work and vote with MAN on all legislation. …

WOMAN should not condemn MAN because she has not the right of franchise–rather condemn parents for having trained their sons since the beginning of time, in the belief that MAN only is competent to vote.

Of course, suffragists didn’t rely entirely on gentle logic. At the bottom of each card was the phrase, “An ounce of persuasion precedes a pound of coercion.” Symbolism was employed as well. In the upper left corner was a shield of stars and stripes shown as having a dark spot in the center, labeled “The ballot is denied to woman” with “The blot on the escutcheon” inscribed underneath.

Though people today generally associate black and white images and grim determination with the suffragists, here’s proof from 1916 that they could be colorful and whimsical:

The disarming image of a child was common and popular, as above and below. The following image from 1913 was created by  Bernhardt C. Wall (1872-1956), an exception to the rule that most postcard artists labored anonymously:

No doubt the suffragists were well ahead of their time, but the card that follows from about 1916 is unusually far-sighted. (Of course, Victoria Woodhull had already run for president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket.)

Lots of adults were expressing similar sentiments in 1914, when the card below was in circulation. On May 2, 1914, there were more than 1,000 coordinated demonstrations, parades and rallies nationwide, and that same year the all-male Senate took its first vote on a suffrage amendment since 1887. (It gained a majority, 35-34, but was still well short of the 2/3 required). Of course, the term most suffrage workers in the U.S. preferred for themselves was “suffragist,” because “suffragette” was originally used by opponents in Britain and then the U.S. as a derisive term implying “little voter,” or to give the false impression that all supporters of woman suffrage were female. But in this case it seems uniquely appropriate, since it’s a cute little girl with a ballot in her hand.  The postcard was sent as a Valentine on February 12, 1914 from “Marjorie” to “George”.

Finally, this still-appropriate postcard, issued in Great Britain in 1909 by the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, shows a woman being pulled away from “Justice” by “Prejudice.” The WWSL was founded in June, 1908, by playwright Cicely Hamilton and novelist Bessie Hatton “to obtain the vote for women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods are those proper to writers–the use of the pen.”

Today we might say “the use of the blog,” but the message still rings true !

All postcards are from David Dismore’s personal collection.

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David Dismore is a television news archivist and feminist history researcher for the Feminist Majority Foundation.  As a teenager he was inspired by a photo and a few paragraphs about the suffragists in his high school history textbook in Greenville, Ohio.  The post below, originally published at Ms. magazine, looks at some of the propaganda that helped earn U.S. women the vote. You can read more from David at Feminism 101.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Coincidence?  Or based on stereotypes about women and, especially, PMS?

From Dr. Grumpy, sent in by Dan S.  Also from Dr. Grumpy, the shaming vending machine.

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.

Below a pro-birth control public service announcement, by a sex-ed-type organization called Sex Really, that makes the argument that all men are total assholes, therefore women should make sure they use birth control…

…but they should still have sex with them of course!  Duh!

Trigger warning for sexist language:

Source: Salon, via Jezebel.

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.