gender

Cute Bruiser brought our attention to some Halloween costumes for girls that illustrate parallel trends. Her pictures are from a Shoppers store in Canada.

1. Girls as bratty. In this case, the Drama Queen (“It’s all about me!”):

(I know, that costume doesn’t even make sense.)

2. The sexualization of young girls. In this case, The Ravager from The Covenant:

Since that’s a little blurry, here’s an image from a website:

Miley Cyrus’ 9-year-old sister, Noah, chose to go this direction, as reader Kristyn G., Spagnoli F., and Jen C. pointed out:

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Earlier, in our comments thread to this post, junequest observed:

I also find it disturbing that many of the “sexy” costumes are highly sexualized versions of characters who are supposed to be little girls–Alice (in Wonderland), Dorothy, Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, and other popular or fairy tale characters.

The fact that many women dress up as sexy little girls points to both the sexualization of female children and the infantilization of adult women.

Jillian York linked to an example from her flickr page, Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz:

Goldilocks from Goldilocks and the Three Bears:

Alice from Alice in Wonderland:

Little Red Riding Hood:

The phenomenon isn’t restircted to the fairy tale.  There is always the classic sexy school girl:

And its zeitgeist version (also from Jillian’s flickr):

And the related Girl Scout, eh em, Cookie Girl:

Just to see, I did a search and I found these sexy “baby” and “girl” costumes:

Actually, I’m not sure if the baby doll is a “sexy” costume, or if I’m so overwhelmed by women + Halloween = sexy that I can’t see anything else.

For more material showing the conflation of women and little girls, see these creepy posts: the cover girl mouth, innocence is sexier than you think, and compete with your daughter’s little girl look.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Because there is nothing funnier than a person, disadvantaged by the perfect storm of race, class, gender, and body-size being forced to give lap dances to feed herself (source):

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Another doozy in the sexualization of young girls: “Girl’s Fishnet Tights.”

Borrowed from Lotería Chicana’sflickr set.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Joshua found a post over at Letters of Note about this letter, written by an Australian government employee in 1963 to the Director of Trade Commissioner Services, arguing against hiring women:

Text:

WOMEN TRADE COMMISSIONERS?

Even after some deliberation, it is difficult to find reasons to support the appointment of women Trade Commissioners.

In countries where publicity media is well developed, such as North America and England and where there are no other major drawbacks, such as the Islamic attitude towards women, a relatively young attractive woman could operate with some effectiveness, in a subordinate capacity. As she would probably be the only woman Assistant Trade Commissioner in the whole area, as other countries employ women in this capacity hardly at all, she could attract a measure of interest and publicity.

If we had an important trade in women’s clothing and accessories, a woman might promote this more effectively than a man.

Even conceding these points, such an appointee would not stay young and attractive for ever and later on could well become a problem.

It is much easier to find difficulties, some of which spring to mind are:-

(i) Women are not employed, except to an extremely minor degree, as career Trade Commissioners in any known service;

(ii) It is difficult to visualise them as Trade Commissioners, firstly because they could not mix nearly as freely with businessmen as men do. Most mens clubs, for instance, do not allow women members;

(iii) Relationships with businessmen would tend to be somewhat formal and guarded on both sides. This would make it more difficult for a woman to obtain information;

(iv) It is extremely doubtful if a woman could, year after year, under a variety of conditions, stand the fairly severe strains and stresses, mentally and physically, which are part of the life of a Trade Commissioner;

(v) A man normally has his household run efficiently by his wife, who also looks after much of the entertaining. A woman Trade Commissioner would have all this on top of her normal work;

(vi) If we engaged single graduates as trainees, most of them would probably marry within five years;

(vii) If we recruited from the business world, we would have a much smaller field from which to recruit, as the number of women executives in business is quite small;

(viii) A spinster lady can, and very often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years. A man usually mellows;

(ix) A woman would take the place of a man and preclude us from giving practical experience to one mail officer. She could marry at any time and be lost to us. she could not be regarded as a long term investment in the same sense as we regard a man.

CONCLUSION

It would seem that the noes have it.

(Signed)

(A. R. Taysom)

13th March, 1963.

P.S. I have since ascertained the following, which, it would seem, only serves to support the foregoing views –

Mr. H. W. Woodruff, U.K. Trade Commissioner:

They have a few women Trade Commissioners but only in capital city posts, for they have found that women cannot operate where contact with businessmen is necessary.

The women are fairly senior people from the U.K. Departments and presumably handle trade policy work only.

Mr. N. Parkinson, External Affairs:

Since their recruitments of trainees are made under the Public Service Act, there is no way of precluding women from applying and in fact, many more applications are received from women than from men. Some are chosen and all appointments are made on the basis of the quality of their educational achievements. About one woman is appointed to every twelve men. This year one out of sixteen, last year one out of twelve and the previous year, none.

They have to be trained for 18 months before going to their first post. The average marries within five years.

It is a very expensive process, but External Affairs lack courage to slam the door because of parliamentary opinion, pressure groups and so on.

(Signed)

(A. R. Taysom)

I find point (v) particularly fascinating, as it expressly recognizes the benefits to male professionals of having a wife at home doing many types of behind-the-scenes labor that contribute to his success, and that a female professional might be at a disadvantage in a world in which she is expected to compete against men who do not have to do a “second shift” of childcare and housework after they get home.

I am 34 and unmarried. Do I qualify as a “spinster lady” yet?

See also our recent post on a U.S. letter from the 1930s begging for women to be fired so men could have their jobs and this rejection letter, based on sex, from Disney’s Painting Department.

These two Halloween costumes in a mall display, snapped by Deeky (here and here, via Shakesville), make a joke of women working in masculine occupations by suggesting that they’re, essentially, sex workers.

Captain Layover:

Free Rides:

See our other Halloween-related posts: two extra-special costumes (the Anna Rexia costume and the Sexy Scholar), Max Weber jack o’lantern (by yours truly), Obama mask sold as terrorist mask, a Sarah Palin effigy, handling sex offenders on trick-o’-treat day, and costume catalog analyses (here and here).

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s a vintage ad for Swift canned meat products for babies:

(Found here.)

Are parents still encouraged to have “husky” babies? I have a feeling our changing ideas about body size and health have affected how we view babies as well (and I’ve heard of a couple of recent cases where insurance companies turned down infants for being too fat).

We’ve long seen meat associated with strength, particularly when it comes to men. And while the connection between meat and healthy growth is interesting–for instance, think of what we mean when we say someone is a “vegetable,” compared to the message here–what grabbed my attention was a line from the next-to-last paragraph of the ad text:

Baby’s choice of delicious beef, lamb, pork, veal, liver, heart.

It’s a great example of the social construction of what kinds of foods are appropriate and tasty. I highly suspect if Gerber’s put out a line of liver or heart baby food, it wouldn’t sell particularly well. I searched Gerber’s website and couldn’t find anything of the sort available (though they do still have veal with veal gravy). Most Americans simply don’t think of liver and heart as desirable foods any more, and would probably consider canned minced beef heart a more appropriate food for dogs than babies.

Of course, if you call liver paté or foie gras and make is sufficiently expensive, then it can become desirable again.

Rihanna’s first new single since getting beaten by boyfriend Chris Brown is titled “Russian Roulette.”  On the cover, she is wrapped in barbed wire with an eye patch that looks like a black eye:

The lyrics include:

And you can see my heart beating
You can see it through my chest
And I’m terrified but I’m not leaving
Know that I must pass this test
So just pull the trigger

And:

So many won’t get the chance to say goodbye
But it’s too late too pick up the value of my life

Given the many, many young girls that blamed Rihanna for her beating, releasing a song that posits that love is simply dangerous is really… disappointing.”

You can read a more thoughtful discussion about this by Anna North at Jezebel.

—————————

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.