gender

We’ve offered many examples of companies co-opting feminism in order to sell products.  In the video below, we see that the co-optation of feminism is nothing new:

(At Vintage Videosift.)

Actually, I shouldn’t be so flippant.  Inventions like the washing machine did, indeed, save women a great deal of time and effort.  From what I understand, however, as women’s cleaning became more efficient, standards of cleanliness rose.  So even as time-saving devices were introduced, the time women spent cleaning did not substantially change.  I’d love to hear more from scholars who have a better handle on this history.

Here’s another step in the trajectory, this one from 1971, also about cleaning appliances (found here):

Text:

The American Appliance Industry has always championed women’s liberation.

There was a time when women washed clothes by hand in water carried from a well…

…shapped every day because there was no way to refigerate food…

..tried to keep house with just a broom…

…made clothes without a sewing machine!

It’s obvious.  America’s appliances have freed women from the oppression of endlessly dull, backbreaking work.  They’ve helped liberate the American woman to enjoy a more stimulating, more interesting life…

In or out of the home.

Women who seek successful careers in the arts, sciences, business, industry, education, or the professions are finding themselves.

It’s all part of America’s new freedom of preference.  And Republican Steel Corporation, a leading supplier of steels to the appliance industry, is proud to be a part of it.

Visit your nearest appliance dealer and you’ll see hundreds of our modern steels — intricately shaped and beautifully finished in the world’s finest consumer appliances.

Like to help liberate the women in your life from some hard work and drudgery?

Buy her one of the new convenience appliances this weekend.

Or maybe a whole houseful.

Notice that women’s liberation DOES NOT involve men sharing housework responsibilities, but men replacing women’s labor with tools he purchases for her.  Ultimately, even if she has a “successful career” in “the professions,” it is her responsibility to make sure that the housework is completed (and apparently still wouldn’t be able to buy herself one of these machines).

For contemporary examples, see these posts on make up (here and here), botox, cigarettes (here and here), right-hand diamond rings, cooking and cleaning products, fashion, and other miscellaneous products (here, here, and here).

In the spirit of “Obese blamed for world’s ills” comes this little ad video that shows what happens if you fail to shave your legs to absolute smoothness every single day: utter chaos. Not only will dudes be grossed out, but they could DIE!

Look, ladies, here’s how it is: even if you’re white and thin and traditionally feminine, and you wore your sandals and your cute sundress with the cleavage and you have no problem with your boyfriend groping you on public transit, if you forgot or, heaven forfend, chose not to shave the invisible stubble from your legs, YOU HAVE DOOMED ALL AROUND YOU TO MISERY. A woman may be pinned on her back under a stranger (god, it’s almost like you WANT her to be assaulted), and a perfectly innocent man who just wants to enjoy his perfectly healthy apple despite the fact that you’re not really supposed to eat on the bus will choke almost to death AND THEN EVERYONE WILL GLARE AT YOU AND YOU WILL GET A TEXT MESSAGE FROM YOUR FUTURE SELF OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW.

Here’s the thing: this ad would be kinda cute, in its Rube Goldberg-esque way, if it didn’t start from the premise that all women should be available to groping by men at all times. No matter how much you doll yourself up, if there is any part of you that is not sufficiently hairless and smooth, you are persona non grata in terms of beauty. Stubble turns you from a hot chick into a chick so disgusting that men actually leap away from you. You’ve ruined everything by failing to meet the endlessly exacting standards of beauty, which you can only hope to meet by buying our extra-fancy new razor or beauty creme or undergarment.

And remember, even if you look hairless, since your body is available to be groped at any time, your True Hairlessness is subject to scrutiny. If you are cursed with thick body hair, or dark hair against pale skin, you should probably just carry your fancy-ass razor along with you at all times, since your stubble might be noticeable under fluorescent light or when caressed by a (male) baby.

Because I am, as you know, a humorless feminist and a noted misanthropist, I am about to do something that is so dangerous to the fate of dudes everywhere, it will probably cause the dystopian women-only future that right-wingers have nightmares about. I live in Chicago, where it fucking snowed this morning, which should give you a sense of how many months it’s been since I showed my bare legs in public. Also, I am a very pale white woman with dark, thick hair. By now, you’ve sensed what’s coming: tell the menfolk to hide in the storm cellar lest they catch a glimpse of this, my real leg:

Behold: My hairy damn leg

I have not shaved in WEEKS. Sometime I go the whole winter without shaving at all, and then I have what I think of as a Deforestation Session in March or April. It’s odd; I’ve lived with a man for six years, but he’s never mentioned the horrible chains of events that must happen to him every day because of my hirsute natural state. He must be suffering in silence, the poor thing.

This is what the beauty ideal is designed to erase: the reality of our bodies. This is what is so scary to proponents of fancy razors, diet pills, fake tans, and all that bullshit: the fact that women have hair on their bodies, just like they’re people or something. Some women are fat and some are thin. Some women have straight swingy hair and some have kinky hair and some have frizzy hair and some just stick what they’ve got in a damn ponytail. Some women have big pillowy lips and some don’t. Some women have curves and some have rolls and some have both and some have neither. Women, just like men, live in human bodies, and human bodies are incredibly diverse. We all know that, even the most brainwashed of us: but we also know we’re not supposed to know it. If we all just said that women are real people — if we said that out loud — what on earth might happen?

Chaos would ensue. Dudes might be harmed.

(Via Feministing.)

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Sweet Machine is a twentysomething queer grad student in Chicagoland, where she studies too much and fails to dress appropriately for the weather.  She has been a fat kid, a thin teen, a chubby teen, a fat adult, a thin adult, and an in-between adult. She is particularly interested in the grad school-y aspects of fat, such as its intersections with gender and disability.”

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

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For more body hair confessions from Shapely Prose, visit their posts on women having hair where they “shouldn’t” and not having hair where they “should.”

And for more from Sociological Images on the hairlessness norm for women, visit our posts on shaving the hair down there (here, here, here, and especially here) and our post on early marketing of armpit shaving.

The documentary, Hearts Suspended, points to one way that immigration policy disadvantages women.  When a non-U.S. citizen is granted the permission to live and work in the U.S., their spouses are often given permission to accompany their spouse, but not to work.  These spouses, wives more often than husbands, find themselves completely dependent on their husbands.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/Nj34k6fLpf4[/youtube]

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.

Chris S. sent in a link to a post at Korea Beat about a town in South Korea that now has parking spots designated for women only. My first thought was that maybe they were for pregnant women–when I lived in Utah I’d sometimes see parking spots that were reserved for expectant mothers. But no. These are just for women in general. Here’s a photo:

Part of the English translation of the original article, from Korea Beat:

The “pink lines”, painted pink, are 2.5 meters wide rather than the standard 2.3, offering aid to women drivers unskilled at parking.

This in a city chosen by a South Korean official as “the first woman-friendly city.”

I wonder if there’s any evidence that female drivers in South Korea are involved in more accidents or have a harder time parking than men. What, exactly, led to this? I don’t know a ton about South Korean culture; for those of you who do, is there a good reason we’d expect women to be less skilled at driving/parking than men? Are women generally discouraged from driving or something? Insights will be greatly appreciated.

NEW! (July ’10): Majd Al-Shihabi sent us a photo of similar parking spaces in Croatia. They are next to the parking spaces for those with disabilities and are about 50% wider than standard spaces:

Toban B. wrote in with an observation about Facebook avatars. The default avatar is “white” and appears to be male:

In contrast to the individual avatar, Facebook’s illustration of global connection uses orange avatars of both sexes:

“Evidently,” Toban writes, “the orange is supposed to be a sort of compromise skin colour.”

So when Facebook wants to represent global humanity, the avatars are orange and of mixed sex; when Facebook is charged with representing an individual, the avatar is white and male.  This is not random or accidental.  Globally, as Facebook, ironically, reminds us, people are not “white.”  Representing people in this way centers men, Western countries, and whiteness (because there are non-white people in Western countries, too) and marginalizes women, non-Western countries, and non-whites (though one might argue that at least ALL of the avatars aren’t white and male).

UPDATE: I write this update in August of 2010.  Since then it appears that Facebook has added a generic female avatar.  This one was sent in by Amber F. (it’s her mom, Ginger’s, profile):

See our other posts on how whiteness and maleness are the characteristics we attribute to “person,” unless there are reasons to do otherwise, here, here, and here.

I could make some sociological comment about the linking of the marketing for Easter candy and professional wrestling… but really I just think this is hilarious.  Not only is it a linking of the marketing of Easter candy and professional wrestling (go, Jesus, go?), but there is something so wrong (or is it so right?) about the proximity of the words “EGG” and “RAW” (NOT appetizing) and also the phrase “Jelly-filled mallows” (so soft and sweet!) next to the ripped, muscle-bound dude in the middle.  I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Also in wrestling: No Nipples Allowed!!!

(Image at CMM News.)

An  interactive graphic at Newsweek allows us to explore the amount of money women spend on beauty by their tweens, teens, 30s/40s, 50s, and, then, over the course of their lifetimes.  Below is a screenshots of the summary, click here to visit the graphic, and visit here for details on the numbers.

Instead of affirming the idea that husbands and wives cooperate to raise a child, this commercial affirms the idea that women nurture their children alone. Her husband is not her partner; he is just another human in the home whom she is responsible for nurturing. Women, then, are mothers and wives whose sole job is to nurture children and husbands. Accordingly, the husband and the child are, inevitably, pitted against one another.