gender

Over at Everyday Sociology, Janis Inniss posted about interracial relationships and she offered a graph showing 30 years of marriages of white men to black women and black men to white women.  Describing it, she writes:

Looking at the graph below, you will see that the black female/white male pairings of today are about what they were 30 years ago for black male/white female dyads. (The blue line represents black husband/white wife). In other words, today, white men and black women marry at about the same rate that black men and white men married about three decades ago.

So, why would there be a difference in the marriages between white men/black women and black men/white women? I suspect that this has to do with the intersection of gender and race. Consider: according to American cultural stereotypes, black people, both men and women, are more masculine than white people. Black men are seen as, somehow, more masculine than white men: they are, stereotypically, more aggressive, more violent, larger, more sexual, and more athletic. Black women, too, as seen as more masculine than white women: they are louder, bossier, more opinionated and, like men, more sexual and more athletic.

If men are supposed to be sexy by virtue of their masculinity and women sexy by virtue of their femininity, then black men and white women will be seen as the more sexually attractive than white men and black women.  So, while white men may not find black women particularly attractive, white women may very well find black men attractive.  In this is so, we might see the patterns that Inniss demonstrates with her table.

These concrete statistics, as well as the cultural stereotypes that position black women as undesirable, help explain why interracial dating is politicized by many in the black community.  It is not trivial that black men can date outside of their race and black women are less able to do so.  It means that many black women have less opportunity to form long-term relationships.

This commercial hints at the femininity of a driver who is not driving a Chevy Silverado truck. Discourses of masculinity and femininity are pretty common in advertising, but notice that all the spokesperson (Howie Long, Hall of Fame football player and all-around manly tough guy) has to do is hint at it here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cagPZOAtZp4[/youtube]

Taylor D. sent in a link to a set of vintage ads featuring African Americans. This one is for wigs. Notice the commodification of liberation and freedom: you buy it in the form of a wig, which gives you a whole new look in seconds!

This one is for a hair straightener:

Of course, the “tamer” and “the boss” that can “stir up some beautiful new excitement in your life” can also refer to the man who is stroking her hair, playing into the idea of the man who tames a wild woman–and that all women, deep down, want a strong man to tame them.

This next one uses women’s fear that men won’t find them attractive to sell deoderant:

Thanks, Taylor!

Francisco sent in the Jan. 7th cover of The Statement, the magazine of the Daily Michigan (found here).  It features three apples: one carries male markers (giant mustache), one female markers (eyelashes, make-up, and big red lips), and the third, labeled with a question mark, carries markers for both sexes, sort of askew, and is partially missing.

Cayden writes:

[Apparently p]eople who don’t conform to the gender binary (and quite rigidly too — note the “man” apple’s huge stache and the “woman” apple’s pouty red lips) are incomplete people: monsterous and frightening.

Below is a video, found via The Daily Dish, of a girl, maybe four or five, mimicking the dancing in a music video featuring Beyonce.  She’s amazing!  Watch her go:

Wow!

Okay… now for sociological comments… these are all Gwen’s ideas, by the way, even though I’m posting it:

We often think of childhood socialization as a top-down process.  That is, we imagine that children are empty vessels and adults, mostly parents maybe, fill them up with whatever they please.  It may be true that the parents of this little girl actively, even aggressively, encouraged her to learn this dance.  But it’s also possible that this is driven by that little girl.  In which case, it may illustrate how kids can take an active part in their own socialization.  Clearly these parents don’t mind that their daughter is watching Beyonce, but she may be taking the initiative to emulate a public figure she’s seeing in the media (which surely includes messages about how to look, dress, etc.).  Even if these parents don’t like everything about that message (or other models she might follow), they can’t actually protect her from the ever-present messages about femininity that are all around her, which are going to affect how she thinks about herself, what she should be, etc.

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.

Lorë P. sent in examples of two stamp sets. She writes:

They are clear plastic you peel and put on blocks in order to stamp images… They are both made by a company called Sassafras Lass and are being sold at Joann Fabrics. One of the stamp sets is called “Girl Talk” and the other is “Boy Talk.”

“Girl Talk”

“Boy Talk”

Lorë did such a wonderful job describing these, I will leave it to her:

One of the first things that struck me was that both of these is that they have stamps that mention dad — “daddy’s girl” and “like father like son” but only the female one mentions mom (I guess it would be considered too emasculating to have “mommy’s boy?”)

Another interesting part of these stamps is that the “Girl talk” emphasizes the sweetness of girls – their giggles, their silliness, their angelic qualities (not to mention princess..). On the other hand, the male version has more objects – trucks, rockets, robots and “strong” traits – being brave and embracing adventure (and what does “all boy” mean anyway?).

The one overlap that I can see is the word “Laughter” – which on the girls segment is in very frilly cursive handwriting and on the male version written in an old cowboy font. This also points to the difference in fonts, where the male versions are more square and has no cursive. The girl version is almost all cursive, except for some very curly printing.

While I am not particularly shocked at finding this kind of stamps available to scrapbookers and cardmakers – I always wonder why we have to make the lines of difference so distinct… Of course these stamps are probably not being used by children, but by adults making things about or for children… of course, these stamps are couched in (from my experience) a predominately female dominated (although pretty conservative) hobby.

Thanks Lorë!

See also this post on gendered Disneyland T-shirts.

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.

Found via Digg. Though I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the letter (found here), it is rather interesting.

Text:

Miss Mary T. Ford
Searcy,
Arkansas

Dear Miss Ford,

Your letter of recent date has been received in the Inking and Painting Department for reply.

Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.

The only work open to women consists of tracing the characters on clear celluloid sheets with India ink and filling in the tracings on the reverse side with paint according to the directions.

In order to apply for a position as “Inker” or “Painter” it is necessary that one appear at the Studio, bringing samples of pen and ink and water color work. It would not be advisable to come to Hollywood with the above specifically in view, as there are really very few openings in comparison with the number of girls who apply.

Yours very truly,

WALT DISNEY PRODUCTIONS, LTD.

Beth sent in a link to WowWee, a company that makes robot toys, including Robosapien:

The description of Robosapien:

Robosapien™ is a sophisticated fusion of technology and personality. Loaded with attitude and intelligence, Robosapien is the first robot based on the science of applied biomorphic robotics. With a full range of dynamic motion, interactive sensors and a unique personality, Robosapien is more than a mechanical companion — he’s a multi-functional, thinking, feeling robot with attitude!

There is also a female version, called Femisapien:

From the website:

Intelligent and interactive, RS Femisapien™ speaks her own language called “emotish” which consists of gentle sounds and gestures. There is no remote required; interact with her directly and she responds to your hand gestures, touch, and sound.

So the default robot is male, with the female being not a female Robosapien but rather an entirely different product. And the photos and descriptions of Robosapien emphasize aggression, movement, personality, and “attitude,” while Femisapien speaks “emotish” (seriously?), which is “gentle”–a characteristic that seems to be missing from Robosapien, who is dynamic and, um, maybe shoots lasers from his hands.

It’s a nice example of gendered assumptions being built into product design and marketing. There’s no particular reason that the male and female versions of a robot have to look so very different, but even if they did, the decision to associate one with words and characteristics that evoke emotion and gentleness and the other with aggression and movement isn’t accidental; it’s a result of how we think about males and females.

For another excellent example of the men are people and women are women thing, see this post on the Body Worlds exhibit.

NEW! Kyle M. sent us a link to his post on the advertising for the sci-fi show Surrogates.  He makes some great observations.  I noticed, too, that the way in which the robotic components of men and women were designed differed slightly in gendered ways.  The “spines” of the men are significantly more robust than the thin, spindly spines given to the female characters.  Notice, also, that the way in which the models are posed emphasizes women’s thinness (in all of these ads, she is positioned sideways, minimizing her size) and men’s broadness (positioned so that the width of his body is emphasized).