gender

Shoshannah F. sent in this video of a group singing what is titled “Eid Mubarak India Song.” Shoshannah says,

“Eid mubarak” is a traditional Muslim greeting reserved for use on the festivals of Eid ul-Adha and Eid ul-Fitr.

Eid al Fitr, by the way, is the festival celebrating the end of Ramadan; it was celebrated last week.

There are several things in the video I think are interesting. First, it might be a good example of the diversity that exists in the Muslim world. As we’ve talked about before on Soc Images (see here and here) , in the U.S. Islam is often associated very strongly with “the veil” or even “the burqa.” This is used as evidence that Islam is automatically and uniquely oppressive to women. Yet in this video we see some women wearing scarves that cover some of their hair and other women whose heads are completely uncovered. It might be a useful video to show (at least a bit of it) if you’re talking about stereotypes of Islam and the idea that all Muslim women have to wear head coverings.

I can also imagine using a short clip from it to illustrate the fact that students’ frequent belief that Muslim = Arab = Middle Easterner is actually inaccurate. I assign a reading in my race class by Nadine Naber titled “Ambiguous Insiders: An Investigation of Arab American Invisibility” (2000, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies vol 23, number 1, p. 37-62). She argues that Islam has been racialized in the U.S., such that most Americans assume all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are Arabs, and negative stereotypes of Arabs and Arab Americans are extended to Muslims in general. On a global basis, only a minority of Muslims live in the Arab-speaking world (which is, by the way, the definition of “Arab”); the largest Muslim population lives in Indonesia, and though they are predominantly Muslim countries, neither Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, nor Afghanistan are Arab countries. I might show a small portion of this video as part of a lecture on the inaccuracy of equating Muslims with Arabs.

Another element that really struck me was how certain aspects of the type of masculinity on display here differ from our ideas of how men should act in the U.S. The men are wearing pastel colors that are generally only worn by women in the U.S. (though as this post shows, men are, under certain circumstances, allowed to wear pink). The men also dance closely and hug in ways that would not be acceptable between straight men in the U.S. The video could be used as an example of the social construction of gender, and how the things considered appropriate for men or women to do in one culture may not be viewed the same in others.

Now, I have no idea what the meaning of the guys looking all aghast at the guy in the business suit (at about 3:45) until he starts dancing is. I don’t know what that is supposed to signify–that he’s Westernized and might not take part in the festival? If any readers have any insights on what the meaning of that exchange is, I’d love to hear them.

Thanks, Shoshannah!

UPDATE: Commenter Silviu G. makes a good point:

What struck me was that, in commenting the video, the blogger didn’t emphasize the strict segregation of women and men.

Indeed I didn’t…thanks for pointing out the oversight in my analysis, Silviu! That might add to an interesting discussion of how, in the U.S., we would view men who interacted primarily with one another, hugging and dancing together, and remained entirely separate from one another. In the U.S., such behavior would almost certainly lead to the men being defined as gay; however, I don’t think that is in any way implied in this video, which again points to the variation in norms of gender behavior.

Also, just to clarify…Silviu suggests that I was “praising” Muslim TV for showing women with uncovered hair. That was not my intention–in fact, it would be terribly condescending of me to be all “Hey, look! How nice! They let some women be in public with no headscarves!” My point in mentioning that the women’s heads aren’t covered was just that, at least among my students, there’s often a belief that all Muslim women cover their hair all the time (I’ve had them ask if they have to cover their hair while they sleep), and that this video might be used just to get the point across that there’s no single way that Muslim women dress, any more than all Christian women dress the same, which many of my students found very surprising.

Last week, in my Race and Ethnicity class, I was talking about how race was used by white elites in early American history to divide and conquer the poor who, black or white, had a joint interest in undermining the class structure from which those elites benefited.  I then show them this video by Tim Wise making this same argument and suggesting that using race to divide and conquer is still ongoing.  One student said: “No offense, but Tim Wise said it better than you.”  It’s true.

Anyway, I bring up this argument–that race is used to divide and conquer the poor and working class for the benefit of economic elites–because of a recent speech made by AFL-CIO Secretary/Treasurer Richard Trumka.  In this speech, below, Trumka argues in favor of bridging racial (and gender) divides in the labor movement specifically because of the phenomena that Wise describes.  In other words, Trumka calls for a join and resist strategy.  I think the two speeches nicely illustrate two sides of one conflict coin.

Don’t miss Tim Wise.

And here’s Richard Trumka:

You might also see this post on the way in which lefty movements and companies tend to focus only on one axis of inequality at a time, such that they are all undermining each other and, thus, the entire left agenda.

Hat tip to Peter D.

I use TV dinners to show my students that nearly everything, even things they’d never expect, are awash in race, gender, and class meaning.

Hungry-Man is probably the most obviously meaning-laden of the TV dinners.  It is aimed directly at men, of course, with one and a half pounds of food, an excellent blue box, and a strong font in all capital letters.  But it also advertises a particularly working-class masculinity.  In these two boxes, notice the references to “backyard barbeque” and “sports” (XXL).  The food itself, barbeque chicken and pork, mashed potatoes, and beer battered chicken, reinforces this class message.  But this is also about race, as the working-class masculinity is implicitly white.

Stouffer’s, in contrast, is more moderate.  The font for the brand is cursive, for the meal in lower-case.  Without being over the top, it still passes as masculine.

Stouffer’s bistro, in contrast, is a feminine version.  References to a “bistro” makes you think of France (a notoriously feminized country) and the meal here is a “crustini” (something a “real” man would never eat).

Healthy Choice seems to go further towards neutralizing its brand.  The green color is neutral and using the term “healthy,” instead of “diet” or a similar word, keeps the brand from being too feminine.  Plus, there’s a running MAN in the logo.  Still, there’s a feminine feel to the food choices.  The first meal is “Roasted Chicken Marsala… in Wine Sauce with Penne Pasta [and] Green Bean and Red Pepper Medley.”  The second includes “Caramel Apple Crisp” and “Broccoli Florets.”  Descriptions of truly manly food would not include “wine,” “medley,” “crisp,” or “florets.”

The Cafe Steamers sub-brand further feminizes Healthy Choice.  Notice the cursive font and the double reference to “merlot.”

Lean Cuisine is the most feminized brand.  Between the turqoise and orange color scheme, the reference to slimness with the word “lean,” and the delicate all lower-case font on the boxes, the fact that the product is aimed at women is clear.  There is also a class message.  Who eats “Szechuan Style Stir Fry with Shrimp”?  Not the same guy that eats “Backyard Barbeque.”

p.j. sent me two images that she received in an email forwarded to her. The subject line of the email was “Harley…Any questions?” and the text said,

Food for thought.  I’m telling you folks, this should be all you need to know to make the right choice.

Here is the first image, of Sarah Palin sitting on a Harley:

The second image showed Barack Obama on a bicycle:

The email also said,

Note:  Her Harley is made in the US and his bike is made in China…..

There are a couple of things going on here. Clearly we’re supposed to take from this that because Palin once sat on an American-made form of transportation and Obama once sat on a form of transportation made in China, that Obama is unAmerican and, thus, unworthy of the presidency. Because trying to use less imported oil and reduce pollution by riding a bike totally makes you unworthy of running the country.

But there’s also a clear gender message here. We are supposed to take from the first image that, because she leans on American-made tough motorcycles, Palin is tough and strong. On the other hand, the picture of Obama riding a bike (in a bike helmet, no less) is, I believe, meant to imply that he is a weak, effete city boy who wouldn’t know how to shoot a moose if the need arose. The effect is that Palin, a woman, is depicted as more masculine than Obama. It’s a good example of how masculinity and femininity are characteristics of not just people, but also things, and that both men and women can adopt symbols of masculinity and femininity. However, because masculinity is more valued in our culture, women usually benefit from associating themselves with aspects of masculinity, whereas men are usually ridiculed for appearing feminine in any way. In this case, Palin’s connection to the hyper-masculine Harley makes her seem, to those forwarding this email around, tough and cool. Obama, on the other hand, can’t benefit from appearing more feminine in the way that Palin can benefit from appearing more masculine, because being feminine is stigmatized.

Of course, you might also discuss how big motorized machines are associated with masculinity, while caring about the environment (including things such as riding a bike to work) is often associated with femininity.

Thanks, p.j.!

UPDATE: Lea R. made a good point in a comment:

I’m not entirely convinced that what’s going on here is the “masculinization” of Sarah Palin. The “Harley babe” is a pretty standard trope of advertising those bikes, particularly when it comes to staking the objects out as masculine in themselves. Palin isn’t riding the motorcycle, after all– she’s posing with it. Pretty women posing with motorcycles aren’t really being presented as “masculine;” they set off the implied masculinity of the motorcycle, and reinforce it as a heterosexual accessory.

I think that’s an excellent point, and well said. I do think the Harley pic plays into Palin’s image as a rough, outdoorsy type of woman who engages in other masculine activities, like hunting, which have been been used to make her seem cool, strong, and “authentic.” But at the same time, she reinforces her femininity with her clothes and make-up, so she’s not in danger of being too masculinized, to where she’s threatening or stereotyped as a lesbian.

JT, in another comment, pointed out:

It looks like Obama might have a child on a trailer bike behind him — see the front of the trailer?  Another piece of info that might contribute to the gender roles discussion.

Thanks for the excellent commentary!

UPDATE 2: In another comment, Will asked if the bike Obama was riding is actually manufactured in China, as the email claims. It is a Trek, a very popular brand. According to Wikipedia, there is some “high-end” domestic production and “assembly,” and “Trek also imports bicycles manufactured in Taiwan and mainland China.” I suspect this means that some of the expensive models are made in the U.S., and some cheaper models have the parts imported and put together here, but that most of the cheaper, regular-use bikes, like the one in the picture, are imported. I suppose the type of reader who would make a decision about voting based on these images would not care that Taiwan is not, in fact, China, and so if the bike was manufactured in Taiwan, the statement is technically incorrect.

Jessica at Scatterplot notes the difference between the BBC coverage and the U.S. coverage of a recent research report noting that the real gender gap is between men who believe men should be breadwinners and women homemakers and everyone else (men who believe women and men should share in both breadwinning and homemaking, women who believe the same, and women who believe that they should be homemakers and men breadwinners) (i.e., at msnbc).  Here are two screenshots of the coverage:

Did you catch the difference?

A recent installment in the Sexist Body Wash Ad category [see any Axe ad for others], Old Spice’s Double Impact body wash uses a centaur [man/horse hybrid] to suggest that the hybrid product will boost users’ sexual potency. The centaur calls himself “two things at once.” The first time, he says he’s “a man AND a smart shopper.” The second time, he says that he’s “a man AND a provider.” The viewer thus easily links the “man” with the human part of the centaur and the “smart shopper,” along with the “provider,” with the equine part by process of elimination. Drawing in the idea of a particularly potent man being “hung like a horse,” the ad implies that users of Old Spice body wash are not only “smart shoppers” and good “providers,” but also that they are heterosexual [notice the woman as prop, signifying the centaur’s heteronormative orientation] dynamos in the sack [stall?] with really big penises! The message, however, is complicated by the fact that the centaur is apparently composited from a male model and a female horse, who is obviously not hung. Hooray for polysemy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtN9CW01QDM[/youtube]

For further interesting hybrids, you can see video at the product’s Web site shows the same male model combined with different animals, including a slug, an octopus and a snake, as well as non-animal things, such as a tree, a cannon and a fish stick [?]. I’m not sure what to think about them….

In the 1950s, Clearasil started a new marketing campaign called Clearasil Personality of the Month. These were ads disguised as advice columns that ran in magazines. They featured the stories of real girls who wrote in to Clearasil to talk about their own struggles with acne and, of course, how they finally overcame this horrible affliction with the help of Clearasil. Here is an example (found here), a piece on a college student named Linda Waddell:

Sorry, the resolution isn’t good enough for me to be able to read all the text, so I don’t know what it says. The general layout was that teens and young women wrote in with little bios about themselves and descriptions of the problems they’ve experienced with pimples.

Notice the connection between clear skin and popularity–we see a picture of Linda surrounded by friends in the upper right corner (and, most importantly, a guy is clearly paying attention to her).

I originally read about this feature in Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. She discussed it in the context of talking about increasing concern about acne and the rise of a whole host of products to combat it. However, I think it would be great for a discussion about advertising, particular about efforts to disguise advertising as simple information or entertainment (it’s still often difficult to distinguish these categories in women’s magazines). It’s also a good example of a marketing campaign that attempts to appeal to consumers by getting them to think of a product almost as a friend–here, the product is personified by nice, wholesome-looking girls who were just providing friendly advice to other girls just like them.

You still see the strategy of portraying products as friends that help women–for instance, ads for food products or cleaners that depict them as friends that help women get everything done, since apparently no one in their families will. See this post for a humorous take on some of these ads.

Next time you feel all warm and fuzzy about how far we’ve come since the bad ol’ days when men weren’t encouraged to take of of children like they do now (by the way, they largely do not), remember this ad (found here):

I don’t detect a hint of sarcasm here. Do you? Or am I oh-so-not-in-touch with 1940s comedic culture?  I could be wrong.  Am I wrong?