gender

Blanca M. sent in this picture she took here in Las Vegas of a truck advertising Air Conditioning Technical Institute. The truck says “Hot City, Cool Career,” and then had this image on the side.

When you go to the website, you see a video (which I can’t embed, sorry) of a man driving up to a house in a sports car. A blonde woman comes out and gushes over the car. The man then says “Six months ago she wouldn’t have given me a second look. I had no job, no education, I was living with my parents.”

So apparently air conditioning tech school is appropriate only for men, and guarantees that you will make enough money to get the hot women you’ve always wanted. Aside from the clear objectification of women as sexual rewards for men, it reinforces the idea of women as opportunistic gold-diggers. It’s also an interesting perspective on how men should view relationships–that they should be perfectly happy to be with women who don’t like them for who they are, and who would presumably leave them if they lost their job or got a pay cut. As long as the woman’s hot, a guy is apparently supposed to be satisfied with the relationship and not worry about little things like whether his wife actually loves him–we reserve concerns about love and emotional closeness for women only.

Thanks, Blanca!

Ok, so this isn’t an image, but it seemed like something our readers might be interested in, so I’m making an exception. Larry (of The Daily Mirror) sent in a link to this story in the New York Times about efforts by the European Union to discourage sex stereotyping in ads (I think another reader also sent in the link, but I’m afraid I’ve lost the email; if it was you, let me know and I’ll give you credit!). From the article:

The European Parliament has set out to change this. Last week, the legislature voted 504 to 110 to scold advertisers for “sexual stereotyping,” adopting a nonbinding report that seeks to prod the industry to change the way it depicts men and women.

Interestingly, the author of the article refers to the measure as “laughable as a gesture of political correctness.” Advertising industry leaders call into question the link between stereotypical images and actual discriminatory or problematic outcomes in actual life. It brings up a recurring issue cultural critics face–it can be extremely difficult to show that, say, sexualized images of women leads to any particular negative outcome. We may strongly believe that the ubiquitous presence of ads that show stereotypical gender roles reinforce them…but since we haven’t yet created a society similar to our own except without the stereotyping, it’s hard to isolate the effects of such cultural messages because we can’t compare what our culture would be like without them.

Thanks, Larry!

This man, Donny Deutsch, host of CNBC’s Big Idea, helpfully tells the rest of us what the “new feminist ideal” is. Hillary Clinton’s problem, he explains, is that she “didn’t put [on] a skirt.” Enjoy:

Also in women can be anything they want as long as they’re hot: The Nerd Girls.

Found at Feministing.

Pleasant Company started off with three American Girl dolls in 1986. Kirsten was from 1854, Samantha from 1904 and Mollie from 1944. The dolls came with scads of historically accurate and really expensive accessories, as well as mediocrely written stories in which they demonstrated how caring, assertive and morally sound they were. The Pleasant Company line soon exploded in popularity, resulting in its inevitable buyout by Mattel and the current proliferation of American Girls in all colors from all time periods.

Now a “premier lifestyle brand” containing books, magazines, movies [including the recent Kitt Kittredge: An American Girl], toys and clothing, American Girl the media machine markets not only products, but a host of problematic assumptions about race, class and gender. [See screencap above for expensive fun available at the New York City location of American Girl Place.] Not only were the first wave of American Girl dolls all Caucasian characters, but the entire American Girl enterprise promotes conspicuous consumption and an aspiration to upper bourgeois “gentility” composed of salon care for your doll and $33-a-head tea parties.

In an informal discussion on Slate about American Girls, commenter Nina made the following astute observation:

I like the idea of teaching kids that quality and craftsmanship matter and that investing in special items can be OK. But it doesn’t just stop at the dolls—there’s the outfits, and the furniture, and the tea parties. And that makes me a little uncomfortable. It feels too much like a patina of morality masks conspicuous consumption. It’s the kind of rationalization that makes it seem OK to spend thousands of dollars on, say, a mint-condition Eames chair.

If you have the time for an extended radio episode, you may be interested in the segment that This American Life did about the American Girl Places. [If you follow the link, you can stream this episode through your Internet connection for free.]

Z. (of It’s the Thought that Counts) sent in this image (found at Andrew Sullivan’s blog on The Atlantic magazine’s website):

According to Sullivan, the text says, “You won’t be able to stop them (i.e. guys), but you can protect yourself. He who created you knows what’s best for you!”

Neither Z. nor I have been able to track down the origin of this image, which is supposedly a pro-hijab PSA, beyond what Sullivan provides as a source–I can’t find any evidence online of any first-hand accounts of people seeing it displayed anywhere or of what groups might be displaying it (the online references I’ve found make vague statements about it being from Egypt). I was really hesitant to post it, but it is available on the website of a major U.S. magazine, and I’m hoping maybe some of our readers might have information about the image–who put it out, if it’s actually on display anywhere, etc. If it is a real pro-hijab PSA (or even just a proposed one), it’s a great example of the way women are often portrayed as having responsibility for controlling and preventing men’s sexual advances, since men are believed to be incapable of controlling their own sexual desires. Whoever made it clearly uses that discourse about men, women, and sexual attraction; the question is, who created it?

While I was doing some online searching for it, I came upon the site Protect Hijab, a site dedicated to “the protection of every Muslim woman’s right to wear the Hijab in accordance with her beliefs and for the protection of every woman’s right to dress as modestly and as comfortably as she pleases.” Among other things, the site provides links to news stories about laws regarding hijab, including the interesting situations that come up when, say, the city of Antwerp (in Belgium) outlaws employees from wearing hijab (or any other symbol of religious or political affiliation) but then allows them to wear bandannas.

Then I came upon this video, which has the description, “A PSA Parody/Satire intended to protest the use of the veil by women. Ban the veil and ban the berqa. A Hijab is okay, however. Free Arab and Muslim women from male religious oppression.”

I’m always interested in things like this video because there is a tendency for groups with no connection to Islam to protest the hijab as a symbol of women’s oppression. This often occurs while the voices of Muslim women who argue that they don’t find the practice of hijab to be oppressive OR they have many other issues that are higher priorities are ignored or silenced. The statement “Ban the veil and ban the berqa. A Hijab is okay, however” also brings up some of the interesting aspects of attitudes toward hijab–who gets to decide what is oppressive? Why would, say, a veil be immediately and always oppressive but hijab (however the author was defining hijab) is “okay”?

Finally, I ran across this video, called “Top 10 Funniest Things a Muslim Woman Hears,” which presents 10 questions Muslim women often get about hijab/veils/scarves/etc.:

I like some aspects of this video–I’ve had Muslim students tell me they are asked these types of questions, some of which are clearly due to simply curiosity and lack of knowledge and others of which are rude. On the other hand, just like the previous video, this video is also constructing the practice of hijab, and the women who wear it, in a particular way–as something “obligatory” for Muslim women once they hit puberty. Clearly not all Muslims agree with this interpretation.

These could be really useful for a discussion of attitudes (both pro and con) toward the practice of hijab and the way it (or the version different groups portray of it) has become a symbol of Muslim (often defined as the equivalent of Arab) women’s oppression to some and of religious freedom and devout Muslim faith to others.

It could also be useful for a general discussion of whose voices are powerful in cultural conflicts. Who is speaking out against the presumed oppression of “Arab and Muslim women”? What is their interest in the issue–that is, is there a genuine concern about sexism and gender inequality, or is the issue of hijab a convenient avenue to express anti-Islamic sentiments? Which Arab/Muslim women are they claiming to speak for? Similarly, who is behind the pro-hijab activism? Are the voices of actual Muslim women represented? Do they play a role in the content of the message? To what degree do they represent the voices of (some groups of) Muslim women expressing their personal preferences and interests and to what degree is it an effort to pressure women to adopt hijab? Again, which Muslim women are they speaking for/to?

For other posts about hijab and other issues concerning Muslim women’s clothing, see here, here, here, here, and here. Also see these images of advice on modest clothing at Brigham Young University for a comparison.

Thanks, Z.!

Brenda V.P. sent in this girls’ t-shirt, available here:

It hurts me, dear readers! It hurts!

Oh, holy hell. I was about to publish this and thought to myself, “at least there’s not a ‘future MILF’ shirt.” And then I thought, “Um…is there?” Oh, yes, there is (found here):

Why do we think these kinds of messages–hey, girls! You can grow up to be an objectified accessory!–are cute?

Thanks, Brenda. Thanks.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

In the U.S. today, when infants are born with ambiguous genitalia, surgeons often operate in order to bring the child’s body into accordance with our expectations for “correct” male or female genitalia, even when the actual morphology of their bodies causes no dysfunction or harm.

Some activists, such as those involved with the Intersex Society of North America, are trying to stop these surgeries.  The Phallo-O-Meter (found here) is a satirical ruler designed to draw attention to the way in which the surgeries force bodies existing in nature into social categories of our own invention (it is attributed to Kiira Triea here).  Here it is:

The ruler is satirical (as you can tell by the tongue-in-cheek “just squeeks by” etc.), but the measurements are based on the kind of decisions doctors actually make.  Indeed, if doctors decide that a penis is “too small” or a clitoris is “too big,” an infant is in danger of having corrective cosmetic surgery.  The point here is: When bodies don’t fit into our pre-existing notions of male and female, we will force them to, even if it involves a knife.  Clitorises that are longer than .9 cm and penises that are shorter than 2.5 must be fixed.  As Martha Coventry says in Making the Cut:

The strict division between female and male bodies and behavior is our most cherished and comforting truth.  Mess with that bedrock belief, and the ground beneath our feet starts to tremble.

In Creating Good-Looking Genitals in the Service of Gender, Suzanne Kessler found that clitorises that were seen as “too big” were often described by doctors in moral terms.  They were “defective,” “anatomic derangements,” “obtrusive,” “embarrassing,” “offensive,” and “troublesome.”

Surgery on intersex infants reflects a taboo on gender similarity; a moral objection to gender sameness.  We must be separated… by at least .6 cm.

Multicult Classics posted these two Spanish-language Fruit of the Loom ads.  They are an extra nice example of the way that color is used to communicate gender:

Text: “Your world, now much more feminine.”

See also this post of kids with their stuff, these pictures of the Toys ‘R Us aisles, these breast cancer PSAs, and these guns marketed to women.

It’s obvious to us, today, that pink is for girls.  But it wasn’t until about the 1950s that our current gendered color scheme became widely accepted.  Before that, the colors were reversed.  In this excerpt for a vintage advice column (found here), we learn that:

“…the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl.  The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy; while blue, which is more delicate and dainty is prettier for the girl.”