gender

Crossposted at Jezebel.

Simon O. sent in this Ukrainian army video meant to recruit women:

The translation (taken from YouTube, and I think it’s a somewhat rough translation; I cleaned up the punctuation and spelling a bit):

Girl 1: Would you take us for a ride in your BMW?
BMW-driver: Even to the end of the world!
Soldier: Hey, I’d like to drown [drink?] some vodka, girls!
Girl 1: Just a second!
Girl 2: Where do you live?
Soldier: Right here- daytime at work, and at night in the clubs!
Girl 1: Which work???
Soldier: Contract, of course!
Blonde girl: Contract? Marriage contract or what?
Girl 3: Army contract, stupid!
BMW driver: Hey, don’t you wanna ride in my car?
Girls: Forget it, take yourself for a ride!
Narrator: It’s about time for new heroes! With contract-based service in Ukrainian armed forces!

Apparently the Austrian army thought it was awesome and made their own version:

Translation (again from YouTube):

Audi Driver: Hey girls, wanna go for a spin in my fast ride?
Girls: Ehh not sure, there’s not even enough space for all of us.
Soldier: Wazzup girls, in the mood for a joyride?
Girls: *Yaaaaay*
Soldier: Join the army if you wanna drive a tank.
Soldier2: Jump in, starting engine.
Audi Driver: Hey, what about the spin?
Girl: Forget it, I want to drive something big.
Narrator: The Austrian Armed Forces offer unique opportunities for young people who are at least 18, everything else is just everyday life.

Both versions play on the idea of women as materialistic, looking for the guy with the best car. Vehicles become a stand-in for masculinity; the bigger/faster the ride, the more attractive you are to women. And what’s more manly than a tank, with a long, phallic-shaped barrel? Women are simply entranced and can’t help running off after the biggest, strongest, manliest vehicle they can find…and, if we take the phallic imagery seriously, presumably the guy with the largest penis, too.

When American figure skater Evan Lysacek won the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, he was the only man on the podium who had not attempted a quadruple jump in either of his two skating programs. The silver medalist, 2006 Olympic Champion Evgeni Plushenko of Russia, was quick to point out that “a quad is a quad. If an Olympic champion doesn’t do a quad, well I don’t know… Now it’s not men’s figure skating, it’s dancing.” Plushenko’s website later proclaimed (though the claim was soon redacted) that his superior performance had earned him a “platinum” medal. Figure skaters and others who heard his comment understood this wasn’t just sour grapes; by questioning Lysacek’s jumping ability, Plushenko was also questioning his manhood.

As Daniel, a former singles and pairs skater, knows from personal experience, when you look below the surface of figure skating, a coded gendering of the sport emerges. Figure skating has both athletic and artistic components, and traditionally these have been apportioned to men and women, respectively. Men are expected to be able to land enormous jumps. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to grab one of their feet and pull it up behind their heads, sometimes while spinning fast enough to set off a nose-bleed, as Mirai Nagasu did in Vancouver. Women’s programs also emphasize a great deal of emotion when they skate, while men are expected to display their athletic strength and power.

This is not to say that women are not expected to jump or that men can be soulless automata, but there are lower expectations for each in the other gender’s territory. A male skater who doesn’t emote passionately can be forgiven if he has a fantastic triple axel, and a woman can even win the Olympics with jumps that aren’t fully rotated. Artistry and flexibility are where women are expected to excel, while boys strive to jump higher and rotate more. To this day, only one woman (Japan’s Miki Ando) has landed a clean quadruple jump in competition, while it has become a mainstay of men’s event. This video shows Ando’s jump, at a 2002 competition:

In the aftermath of his silver platinum silver medal finish in Vancouver, Plushenko questioned the qualifications of Evan Lysacek to win gold without a quad. Aside from being poor sportsmanship, his approach highlighted the deep association of jumps with male figure skating. Though, in the women’s event, Mao Asada completed the technically difficult triple axel on three separate occasions, no fuss was made over her second-place finish behind the ethereal Kim Yu-Na. Kim has strong jumps, to be sure, but what sets her apart from her competitors is that she skates in a way that is graceful, balletic and undeniably feminine.

Ironically, one of the most promising things about a young Evgeni Plushenko when he arrived on the international skating scene in 1997 was his blending of artistry and athleticism. His style was avant-garde and overwrought, and his jumps were magnificent; he had, in skating parlance,”the whole package.” It might seem excessive to map gender onto his performances, but he is famous for being one of the only men to perform the Biellmann spin, in which the skater grabs the blade of one skate and pulls it up behind the top of his or her head.

This was a clear and unabashed case of gender-bending, as the spin had previously been the province of women. The figure skating world, after being sufficiently impressed by the flexibility of his hips, shrugged and moved on. No one thought any less of him for doing a “girly” spin.

Compare this to the skating world’s reaction to two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt, who was often said to skate “like a man.” Witt had big jumps (and big thighs to go with them), and skated to the soundtracks of epic movies, a practice that was usually reserved for men, while other women tended to skate to classical ballet suites. Witt’s artistic style was also not typical of women skaters: while her competitors demonstrated flowing, balletic arm movements to match their floaty chiffon skating dresses, Witt opted for stronger, cleaner arm movements and famously skated in leggings and a tunic in a program set to music from Robin Hood. She also skated with a stoic bearing that was similar to that of Canadian Elvis Stojko, who won the silver medal in Lillehammer in 1994.

Despite the popular perception of figure skating as a uniformly “girly” sport, there exists within the figure skating world a unique and nuanced code for constructing and understanding gender. In the figure skating world, as in the rest of our culture, that code changes over time, with different representations of masculinity and femininity being rewarded, marked down, or phased out entirely as the sport evolves. And as Plushenko’s comments about Lysacek demonstrated, figure skating’s coding of gender can be invoked by skaters trash-talking their rivals in subtle, but complicated, ways. As yet, Plushenko has made no comment on Lysacek’s upcoming appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” but it’s not hard to imagine what he might have to say.

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Chloe Angyal is a Contributor at Feministing.com, where she writes about gender in popular culture. She is also a failed figure skater. Daniel Eison is a former nationally-ranked pairs and singles skater who retired in 2005. He is not a failed feminist.

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Gender differences in figure skating are also institutionalized in the form of costume requirements. Women are required to wear dresses, while men are not allowed to wear leggings or sleeveless outfits.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff says,

This isn’t true anymore; “this rule was repealed in 2004, allowing women to wear tights, trousers, or unitards” [1] ([1] http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/faq/rules.shtml)

Thanks for the correction!

Related posts: Johnny Weir and Canadian skating gets tough.

Liz C. sent in the video for the song “A Kiss with a Fist (Is Better Than None)” by Florence and the Machine. She analyzes it nicely:

The lyrics seem to condone domestic violence, and the video seems to trivialize it, in the sense that the lead singer prances and jumps around while singing about getting punched in the face, having her leg broken, and having plates broken over her head by her partner, while she, in turn, hits and slaps him, breaks his jaw, and refers to “The Burning Bed” by setting fire to their bed.

The lyrics:

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

My black eye casts no shadow
Your red eye sees nothing
Your slap don’t stick
Your kicks don’t hit
So we remain the same
Love sticks
Sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit

A kick to the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better then none

A kiss with a fist is better then none

I broke your jaw once before
I spilled your blood upon the floor
You broke my leg in return
So sit back and watch the bed burn
Love sticks
Sweat drips
Break the lock if it don’t fit

A kick to the teeth is good for some
A kiss with a fist is better then none

A kiss with a fist is better then none

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

You hit me once
I hit you back
You gave a kick
I gave a slap
You smashed a plate over my head
Then I set fire to our bed

UPDATE: Reader Kyle pointed out another example, Chester French’s video for the song “She Loves Everybody.” He asks whether we can imagine seeing this video if the gender roles were reversed:

And commenter Dave gave us a link to a recent discussion of this topic at Jezebel.
Also see our post on sexualized violence in Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” video.

Though it’s certainly here now, pink didn’t stabilize as a girls-only color until sometime in the 1950s.  During that decade, pink was the in-style color for bathrooms in residential homes.  Notice that this ad, sent in by Penny R., features a boy in a pink bathroom with no threat of emasculation:

Pam Kueber, at Retro Renovation, estimates that:

…some 5 million pink bathrooms went into the 20 million+ homes built in the United States from 1946-1966… 1 in 4 — at minimum — mid-century homes had a pink bathroom.

She quotes a 1958 Electrical Merchandising that said: “If forced to pick one color as leading this year, most industry men say pink is tops.”

Pink is so strongly associated with women now that it hardly seems appropriate for a family bathroom.  Kueber bemoans that home owners are taking sledge hammers to pink tiles and encourages us to preserve the bathrooms because we all look excellent in pink-tinted light.

See men in pink (then, now, and now).

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.

In the theme of selling everything with sex, I present Del Monte’s “fruit undressed” campaign.  First I saw this along the side of a webpage I was perusing (for you, readers, for you):

Damn it; I clicked.  The product is, like, a reinvented fruit cocktail:

It’s being marketed with these ads suggestively suggesting that the fruit is nude:

Notice that that last one is referencing Mardi Gras.  Flash those pineapples, baby!

But don’t get too cocky, the ad campaign reminds us, you still look fat in clothes and should be horribly insecure about it:

Yeah, so sexual objectification and hatred of women’s bodies all in one!  Just to sell fruit cocktail!

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.

Kevin, XM, and Laura let me know about an interesting article in the Guardian about acceptable vocabulary in tampon commercials. Kotex recently came out with a new ad campaign that makes fun of some of the usual tropes of tampon commercials–the euphemisms, the dancing around in fields of flowers, and so on. The ads also address the embarrassment or discomfort many people feel about tampons.

In this spot from the Kotex website, a guy asks for help picking tampons for his girlfriend:

Here’s one commercial intended for TV that parodies tampon commercials in general:

The original version didn’t go over well, apparently, and several TV networks rejected the commercial. From the NYT via Gawker:

Merrie Harris, global business director at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in advertising by three broadcast networks, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead saying “down there,” which was rejected by two of the three networks. (Both Ms. Harris and representatives from the brand declined to specify the networks.)

So a TV commercial poking fun of the euphemisms in tampon commercials is rejected by not being euphemistic enough…and apparently even the phrase “down there” is too specific. We can talk about erectile dysfunction or leaky bladders, but “down there” just crosses a line.

Related posts: tampons are modern, Tampax ad features menstruating teen male, concerns about tampons and virginity, weird Australian tampon ad, and tampons and female workers during World War II.

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

Crossposted at Jezebel.

My friend Larry Harnisch at The Daily Mirror found this gem, published in the Los Angeles Mirror News on March 21 1960:

A clearer photo:

That’s right: this woman’s body was so distracting to male students that it required intervention by school officials or campus discipline would break down. And the intervention wasn’t to tell men to grow up and stop ogling their female classmates, of course, but to ask her to make herself less visible.

I’m sure the muu-muu fixed everything, though.

The next year she competed in a  beauty contest sponsored by the Young Democrats.

I can imagine a world in which gender difference did not translate into gender inequality… a world in which feminized tasks — nurturing others, creating beautiful and comfortable homes, cooking delicious, nutritious meals, and adorning oneself for the pleasure of oneself and others — were actually valued and, importantly, both respected and compensated in ways that reflected that value.

But alas. We don’t live in a world in which gender difference co-exists with gender equality. We live in a world in which boys go to the moon; and girls are princesses…

…at least, according to these “cookie pans” sent in by both Ash and Karen A.:

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.