gender

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.

Ada A., Katrin, Filip S., and Missives from Marx all let us know about PinkStinks, a campaign in the UK that “challenges the culture of pink which invades every aspect of girls’ lives”.

The aim is a worthy one: the webpage discusses concerns about girls’ body image, self esteem issues, the sexualization of young women, and so on.

They link to this video, which I thought was neat:

While I totally get the idea and support the effort to provide girls with a wider set of images of what they can aspire to do or be like, the “pink stinks” name, and some of the t-shirts on the site, give me a some pause.

If you read different parts of the site, it’s clear that pink is a stand-in for the socialization of girls into a particular type of femininity, and the campaign is attempting to combat the narrowing of girls’ aspirations and role models. But it brings up an issue I face whenever I’m trying to pick out clothes for my 3-year-old niece: how do you reject the trappings of that socially-approved version of femininity without devaluing femininity, girls, and women themselves? All things equal, I’ll usually pick a green t-shirt instead of a pink t-shirt for my niece because I feel like giving her a pink t-shirt signals to her an approval of all the things we associate with “pink culture”–valuing looks over smarts, worrying about boys, and so on, and because I know she is frequently encouraged to declare pink her “favorite” color by those buying her gifts.

But we often see that in the attempt to provide girls with more options, those who accept elements of mainstream femininity are devalued. My students who are trying to distance themselves from ideas of passive femininity often disparage “girly-girls,” those they see as unambiguously accepting pink culture. Thus, wearing a sparkly barrette or painting your nails pink becomes inherently problematic, a sign that you must be boy-obsessed, dumb, superficial, and so on.

I don’t think this campaign overall is doing that–if you read through it, the message is more complex and clearly about giving girls a wider array of options to choose from as they construct their identities. But much of the online discussion of it seems to miss the nuance and veer more into the simplistic interpretation of “pink stinks” as “empowering girls means rejecting and devaluing everything currently associated with femininity, as well as those who do it,” and the t-shirts seem to play into that a little.

Many of the things associated with femininity–being nurturing, say, or liking to cook–are, in fact, quite lovely, and problematic only when we say that only girls can/should like them, that all girls ought to, and that they’re less worthwhile than things boys do. Adding to the devaluing of women and femininity in an attempt to resist gender norms is, ultimately, counter-productive.

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

Laura Malischke, a friend and lovely photographer, sent in an ad featuring “women’s sizes”:

The phrase “women’s” is perhaps the most common euphemism used in the U.S. (I’m not sure about elsewhere) to refer to clothes made for women who wear sizes 14 and up.  What’s amazing about the term is what it implies about the “regular” sizes.  If non-“women’s”-sized clothes are not for women, who are they for?

I’ll take hypotheses…

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.