gender

In lieu of commentary, I am just going to transcribe the text of this ad, sent in by The Sexual Buzz:

Question: Why won’t your wife let you buy this wagon?

“It looks like a bus.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”

Do these sound familiar?  Your wife is not alone.  It is hard to convince some women what sense the VW Station Wagon makes.

It’s chunky shape, for instance, allows it to hold more than the biggest conventional wagon.  (Yet it is a good four feet shorter, and a lot less exasperating to park.)

She might like the easy way it loads.  The side doors give her almost 16 sq. ft. for big supermarket bags, a baby carriage, etc.

The Volkswagen Station Wagon does not have to take anything lying down.  She can cart home an antique chest, standing up.  Or delicate trees from the nursery.  (Wide things, too.  It will hold an open playpen.)

She can comfortably pack in eight or more Scouts, with all their cook-out gear.

She can give the family some extra sun on the way to the beach.  (Why no other station wagon has a sun-roof is a mystery.)

Even if the traffic is bumper to bumper on hot days, she will not have to worry about the radiator boiling over.  There is no radiator, no water.  (The Volkswagen engine is air cooled.)

She may get a kick out of beeping to the other women who drive VW Station Wagons.  (They have a kind of private club.)

Or maybe she likes to see where she is going. (The VW wagon has incredible visibility on hills and curves.)

If these facts don’t convince her, tell her it’s only $2655 and you aren’t made of money.

UPDATE! Commenter jfruh had a nice observation:

Interesting in that vans (and the VW Bus pretty much was the first van) are now fully feminized in the US, associated with “soccer moms.” I’m guessing a gendered van ad today would involve a wife extolling just these sorts of practical features to convince her husband to buy a “wimpy” van instead of the sports car that he wants.

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

Liz C. sent us a link to a segment of The Daily Show featuring Kristen Schaal and John Stewart (aired July 1st).  They discuss Sarkozy’s ban on burkas and, in doing so, question whether the burka is truly oppressive and whether American fashion is, in contrast, oh-so-liberating.

We covered Heelarious here.

See also this confessionechoing Stewart and Schaal’s conversation.

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

Usually when we get submissions about ejaculation imagery we add them to our existing post on the topic. But I felt this was worth its own post. The Huffington Post has a link to this lovely Dutch commercial:

Often when we see ejaculation imagery, it’s at least somewhat subtle, or anyway not so blatant–the fluid isn’t white, or it comes out of a bottle instead of appearing to so clearly be associated with, or near, an actual penis.

In another example of ejaculation imagery, Dangger and Dmitriy both sent in a supposed German Sprite ad making the rounds…but for the record, AdFreak says it’s fake. [I also did quite a bit of googling about the Dutch ad, just to be safe, but didn’t find anything indicating it’s not real.]

UPDATE: Reader Jody B. says, “The Dutch commercial is real; I lived in Amsterdam from almost 4 years and saw it on daytime television.” Thanks for letting us know!

I read Naomi’s Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth when it was first published in 1991. As an undergrad growing into my own version of a third-wave feminist identity in beauty-centric southern California, her words rang so true. If knowledge is power, then I and other feminists were certain that soon the tide would turn — girls and women would stop buying into this myth, stop buying magazines that promoted body-loathing, and we would rebel against unrealistic and unhealthy social norms.

Sadly, it’s 18 years later, and her message still resonates with undergrad women (and men) today. As a professor, I had the privilege of meeting Naomi when she came to speak at my campus, California Lutheran University, to present “The Beauty Myth.” As you watch this clip of her new DVD, I encourage you to ask yourself (1) How many girls and women do I know who believe in this myth? (2) Which corporations are profiting from their misery?, and (3) What am I doing to reject the myth and help others reject it?

Personally, I think make-up/hair products/push-up bras are okay as long as you don’t feel like you cannot leave the house without them — costumes can be fun as long as you love and accept yourself when you are ‘un-costumed.’  Eating healthy and moderate exercise are good goals, as long as your self-image and self-worth are not defined by your weight/size. For this post, I won’t weigh in on cosmetic surgery…that’s a whole post unto itself. But, as the mom of a 5-year-old daughter, I make sure to never criticize my appearance in front of her (though, I’m still working on not being critical in my own head), and I aim to de-emphasize physical beauty as a value in my interactions with her. Here’s wishing that Wolf’s The Beauty Myth will strike future generations of college students as truly mythical – outdated, outlandish, and out of touch with their generation…

Adina’s book, Damaged Goods?  Women Living with Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases came out in 2008.  You can see an earlier post of hers, about sexually transmitted disease and stigma, here.

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Adina Nack is an associate professor of Sociology at California Lutheran University specializing in medical sociology with a focus on gender inequality and sexual health.  You can visit Adina online here.  We are pleased to feature a post she wrote for us reflecting on a talk by Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth.

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

Cole S.H. sent in “…a set of screenshots of Google’s autocomplete feature, which is based on number of searches of a given phrase,” with comments in red written in by the creator (originally found on reddit, link to original here):

It provides some interesting insights into popular conceptions of men, women, and relationships.

Some of the search terms related to men/husbands/boyfriends: attracted to breasts, jerks, afraid of commitment, abusive, mean, selfish, grumpy. Search terms related to women/wives/girlfriends: emotional, difficult, complicated, attracted to bad boys, crazy, always mad, better than men.

Apparently both men and women are considered mean and stupid, so there is some equality. I do think it’s interesting that one of the popular search terms about women is why they are “better than men”; it’s weird to me that there’s a whole genre of jokes about women being smarter/better than men, and that I know people who tell them or find them funny who would be offended at a similar joke about men being smarter than women.

Reader SB has some similar images at The Sexual Buzz.

Also check out our post on Amazon’s gendered gift-giving suggestions.

NOTE: There’s been some confusion about what I meant about this giving “insights” about gender conceptions–I’m not saying most people think negative things about the other sex, or that this is scientific data. I just think it’s interesting that when people are searching for information about perceived negative aspects of men or women, they frame it in different ways–men are “grumpy” or “abusive,” while women are “always mad,” and men are “selfish” while women are “crazy.” Those fit in pretty well with who we associate with various emotions or behaviors. That’s all I was getting at.

Penny R. sent in this picture from c1943.  In it, two women model newly designed safety gear for working women.  The woman on the right is wearing a plastic bra designed to protect her breasts from “occupational accidents.”  Don’t worry fellas, the “girls” will be safe!

From commenter, Sanguinity, who seems to know what s/he is talking about:

I couldn’t say, not without knowing what the job in question was, what the job’s hazards, why the employer went for protective equipment instead of changing the job, nor when (or if!) breast protectors were required (as opposed to being requested by the employees).

(And frankly, those answers would only help me judge whether were useful from today’s perspective. The methods of occupational safety have changed hugely since the 1940s; quite a lot of what was common safety practice in the ’40s would be unacceptable today. Even if breast protectors for a given job wouldn’t pass muster today, they might very well have been useful then, within the context of acceptable safety practices of the day.)

No, what’s unusual about this photo to me, as a safety professional, is that they were willing to consider issuing sex-specific safety equipment at all. Nowadays, creating and maintaining sex-specific safety regs looks very much like sexual discrimination, and can easily cross the line into outright discrimination if you’re not thinking about it very carefully. (Not to mention: who’s going to check under these women’s coveralls to make sure they’re wearing their required protective equipment, assuming breast protectors are required?) Nah, even if initial analysis indicated that breast protectors would be reasonable/useful for a given job, any contemporary safety pro worth his or her salt is gonna work pretty hard to find another way to do things.

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

Months ago Ryan emailed us about a video game called Katawa Shouju (sometimes translated as Disabled Girls or Crippled Heart). From the website:

Hisao Nakai, a normal boy living a normal life, has his life turned upside down when a congenital heart defect forces him to move to a new school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends—and perhaps love, if he plays his cards right.

A design sketch of the girls:

An article at GameSetWatch refers to the game having a “perverse and contemptible premise.”

Ryan says,

A lot of the discussion about this game seems to be about the disabilities of the girls and how disgusting it is. I don’t really share that opinion personally…I don’t really see what’s wrong with casting a girl with burn scars on her face as a love interest within a game. Or for that matter , what’s wrong with casting a girl with no legs or deformed arms as a love interest? I mean, it’s one thing to fetishize…but on the other hand it might be good for someone who has similar disabilities to feel like they can be desirable.

It’s an interesting point. I suspect there are things about the video game I would find disturbing, and if the girls are portrayed in a ridiculing way, that’s problematic. But some of the reactions to it seem to assume that having a person with a disability as a potential love interest is automatically ridiculing them. But why would that be? Why would it be more “contemptible” to portray these women as romantic/sexual interests any more than other women in similar games? Some of the objections to the game are based on the idea that you must be laughing at people with disabilities if you show them as sexy or romantically interesting. But that’s based on the idea that of course they can’t really be sexy, so it’s mean to portray them that way…which points out some interesting assumptions about people with disabilities and their romantic and sexual lives.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Reader Magnetic Crow says,

I think what bothers me about this is the premise of a “school for disabled kids only”, the fact that the girls are ‘othered’ from the get-go by this isolation, and the fact that this is probably being made to play to an exploitative fetish. Were it any other dating sim, and one of the girls available for dating just happened to have been born with no arms, or had lost her legs in a traffic accident, I would feel a lot more comfortable.

Other posts about video games: Evony’s boob ads, gender and race in RuneScape, Border Patrol game, Miss Bimbo and Sexy Beach 3, Rape Simulator, My Life, Medal of Honor’s all-White military, a game called Battle Raper that is exactly what it sounds like, blaming moms for video game addiction, sales of Grand Theft Auto, and “military entertainment.”

We also have a posts of a girl with a limp as an ugly friend, Goodyear ad featuring a sad kid in a wheelchair, nude calendar of Paralympic athletes, dolls with Down’s Syndrome, models with disabilities in a British Top Model show, representing people with disabilities, what is an “alt model”?, and amputee model Viktoria.

I love this 1981 Lego ad, sent in by Nora R. (found at Flikr):

This is what I looked like as a kid. Except that I have naturally curly hair that my mom couldn’t control, so add a halo of frizz sticking out everywhere. And it’s been a while since I’ve seen an ad that shows a girl like this–wearing clothes and playing with a toy that aren’t meant to be specifically “feminine” in our current version of that. She’s playing with regular Legos–not some special version for girls that makes a shopping mall or purse or tube of lipstick! And she’s beautiful!

I’ve seen other ads from the ’70s and ’80s, particularly for Tonka trucks, that show girls like this–in clothes that look like they’re actually made for playing instead of making a fashion statement, and playing with toys in the same way boys would, even if it means getting dirty (gasp!). When we see ads that always show girls in pink, playing with “girl” versions of toys, or engaged in passive activities, that’s a particular marketing choice, not some inevitable, obvious way girls need to be depicted to sell products.

[Note: In the comments, we’re getting a lot of love for the Legos. That’s fine and all, but I must speak up for Lincoln Logs, which were way more awesome if you wanted to build corrals to hold your Breyer horses.]

[Note 2: Holy crap! Someone remade the “Thriller” video with Lego people! I have to admit, Legos probably work better for this purpose than Lincoln Logs would.]

NEW! Nov ’09 I found three more examples of ads that seem devoid of gender differentiation (here, here, and here):