gender

Please welcome Guest Blogger Elizabeth Allen.  Elizabeth wrote about commercial for a gastric band (found via Shakesville), an alternative to gastric bypass surgery, on her own blog, Blog of Eternal Stench.  We liked it so much (and like so much of her other stuff, too), that we asked to reproduce it here on Sociological Images.  Enjoy!

This horrid TV commercial on the Realize Gastric Band site equates the controversial stomach reduction surgery known as gastric banding with happiness, success and fulfillment. It does so with dramatized examples of 1) a fat man playing with his karate-learning kidsy and 2) a fat woman slow-dancing with her [also fat] romantic partner. The fat man in 1) says, “I want to watch my little warrior do karate” or something very similar. The fat woman in 2) says, “I want to kiss him [romantic partner] under the Eiffel Tower.”

The commercial goes on to tell viewers how the Realize Band can help them get what they want. “Ask your doctor if bariatric surgery is right for you,” the voiceover encourages. The commercial concludes with how wonderful the Realize Band is, especially since you can track your success and have a support group. Incidentally, “tracking your success” is accompanied by a picture on a user’s computer screen of a line graph showing a steady trend downward. We also see an animated female morphing from fat to less fat.

This ad is offensive for so many reasons. Where do I start?

1. The fat man and fat woman who have exciting goals in life do NOT have to undergo bariatric surgery in order to achieve them. In fact, bariatric surgery has nothing to do with their goals, which are about the people they love. Being fat does not impede one’s ability to love, support and show affection for one’s loved ones. Being less fat is not necessary in order to truly prove one’s devotion to another person.

However, the commercial for the Realize Band obviously wants to encourage potential consumers that, if they really loved their families, they would undergo controversial, risky and damaging surgery. In this way, the Realize Band perpetuates the old chestnut that a person’s weight/physicality/shape/size represents a moral issue. According to this commercial’s subtext, being fat is a deep personal failing and horrible vice.

2. I object to ads for medical procedures that motivate the consumer to say, “I want this product. Doctor, give it to me!” While I’m all for being an aggressive, assertive, inquisitive consumer and searching out a range of treatment options for any condition, I do not think that people who suggest treatments they have seen on TV are truly being informed consumers. As I illustrate in point 1, TV ads such as this one for the Realize Band work in impressions, rather than information. Realize Band’s commercial here exploits feelings of guilt, inadequacy and shame to motivate people to use its product. Feelings of personal worthlessness stemming from emotional manipulation never make a good basis for choosing a particular medical treatment.

3. The concept of “tracking your success” gives the false impression that the Realize Band will have a wholly beneficial effect on one’s life, which could not be further from the truth. Gastric reduction or bypass surgery creates a host of health effects in those who have it.

–For example, since one’s stomach has been drastically reduced and/or routed around, one loses the ability to easily absorb nutrients and minerals. One can’t just take supplements to combat these deficiencies. Anemia may result from iron deficiency. You may need intravenous iron infusions for the rest of your life.

–One’s stomach often becomes much more sensitive to spicy, hard or dense foods. One may get bad heartburn or what the business likes to call “productive burping.” Actually, “productive burping” isn’t just about embarrassing noises emanating from your gut; it’s about throwing up. Gastric bypass or banding surgery increases the chances of the survivor throwing up a whole lot.

–If a survivor of gastric surgery throws up a lot, stomach acid flows frequently across the teeth. Like people with bulimia, survivors of gastric bypass or banding may suffer rapid degradation of their dental enamel. This is not the picture of an unqualified success.

4. While the Realize Band commercial shows a picture of “success,” i.e., steady weight loss, in the form of the downward trending line graph and the shrinking woman, the story is rarely this straightforward. Gastric bypass or banding surgery often results in an initial weight loss. However, very few people keep off all of the weight that they shed. In fact, they may slowly gain it back. For example, one study associates laparoscopic bands, like the Realize Band, with “inadequate weight loss” and “uncontrollable weight regain” in some patients. Another recent long-term study of people who have had gastric bypass surgery found that about half of participants regained weight within 2 years after their surgery. A study with a 10-year perspective on gastric-bypass survivors notes, “Significant weight gain occurs continuously in patients after reaching the nadir weight.” It is very rare for a person who has had gastric surgery to go from size 22 to size 12, which it looks like what is happening in the commercial’s illustration.

5. The fat man and the fat woman look perfectly happy as they are. Maybe if they stopped internalizing the medical community’s hatred of their shapes and realized that their size does not limit their capacity for humane, compassionate, joyful existence, they truly would reach their stated goals.

Jay Livingston over at Montclair Socioblog reports on a report by the Pew Center. First this image:

Jay writes:

When Reagan asked this question in the 1980 presidential debates, most people, according to Gallup felt that yes, they were better off – 52% vs. 25% who felt they were worse off. That’s puzzling, considering the apparent success of Reagan’s question – he won the election handily.

The interesting result from the Gallup numbers is that when Reagan left office – after the “Reagan recovery” cherished by anti-tax, anti-regulation conservatives – the numbers were identical. If you look at actual changes in median family income, you see a slight decline in the Carter years and an increase in the Reagan years. But these changes aren’t reflected in how people felt, at least not as measured by Gallup.

This year’s numbers show optimism at its lowest ebb since Gallup started asking the question in 1964. “Better off” still tops “worse off,” but by only 41% to 31%. Even more surprising to me was the proportion of these self-identified middle-class Americans who rate their quality of life as low (five or less on a ten-point scale).

From my hotel room in Gallup, NM: Katie H. sent in this picture of Jessica Simpson in a shirt that says “Real girls eat meat”:

Katie points out that this could be a really interesting contrast to the PETA PSAs using sexualized images of big-breasted blond celebrities to oppose eating meat and wearing fur.

But she also provided a link to PETA’s response to the photo, “Top Five Reasons Only Stupid Girls Brag about Eating Meat.” Note reason #4:

Meat will make you fat. All the saturated fat and cholesterol in chicken wings, pork chops, and steak eventually leads to flabby thighs and love handles. I hope the upcoming “Jessica Simpson’s Intimates” line comes in plus sizes! Going vegetarian is the best way to get slim and stay that way.

Katie pointed out that some of the other reasons play on the idea of attractiveness, too–compassion is “sexy” and the meat industry isn’t “hot.” It’s a very interesting connection between activism on behalf of animals and reinforcing ideals of femininity that focus on being thin and sexy above all else.

Thanks, Katie H.!

Captain Crab sent in this image (found here) of pubic hair dye:

Here is a link to the betty website. According to the site,

In less than one year, over 100,000 happy customers are using betty to naturally match their hair above, cover gray or just for fun! Whether you’re a blonde (be a true blonde now!), radiant auburn, rich brunette, raven black or want to try hot pink for fun, our easy to use no-drip formula gives you the perfect finishing touch.

These might be useful for a discussion of the ever-increasing standards for personal beauty: once upon a time, you just worried about gray hair on your head. And taking care of things “down there” meant obsessing over odor and controlling evidence of menstruation. Now women get genital plastic surgery and “vaginal rejuvenation” (those sites aren’t work-appropriate) as they age or after childbirth, shave or wax their pubic hair, and apparently can now dye their pubic hair to be sure it doesn’t show signs of aging (or just doesn’t match their hair)–although the betty website FAQ link does mention that men also use the product. I can’t help but suspect that the mainstreaming of porn and increased access (especially online) to images of women’s genitals is providing average women with a new body part to compare to other women and find lacking.

At least the pink seems like something you’d just do for fun, not out of a concern to hide signs of aging. Although maybe there are 50-year-old women out there running around with pink pubes. What do I know?

Thanks, Captain!

Ben O. sent us this image of an H&M ad on the back of a no fare bus.  He writes:

Spotted in Atlanta’s “Atlantic Station” development: a shuttle bus called the “Free Ride” juxtaposed with an advertisement for their newest retail tenant, H&M… The result: a half-naked woman in bed, with the words FREE RIDE superimposed above her. (As a friend commented, the “Top $12.90” being advertised could be interpreted as a sexual service as well.)

Thanks for thinkin’ of us, Ben!

Myra M. F. sent us these four breast cancer awareness ads to compare and contrast (find them here).  They are all super pink-ified (because men don’t get breast cancer… oh wait, they do), but the first two use stereotypical femininity and the latter two challenge them.

(1)  Ah the lovely young middle-aged woman (I stand corrected), the ruffley white blouse, the slight head tilt, and the fashionable breast cancer scarf.  You too can look oh so good while you fight breast cancer!  Go Ford!

(2)  “Expose the Truth.”  Those awesome knockers on that gorgeous anonymous babe could someday be victims of breast cancer.  And we can’t have that!  Support breast cancer research!

Consider how different these next two are:

Here we see a woman who accepts some conventional definitions of femininity (make-up, pearls, earrings and, of course, pink), but rejects the idea that women should be ashamed to lose markers of femininity (“We can live without our hair.  We can live without our breasts.”) and instead looks bravely towards a cure (“We cannot live without our hope for a cure.”)  Plus, this image is about action (a race) instead of fashion (a scarf), suggesting that it is also a rejection of the idea that to be feminine is to be passive or powerless.

And this image actually mocks the symbolic ribbon and, I will add, bracelet activism (how feminine are ribbons and bracelets?), in favor of appropriating a masculine symbol (heavy machinery) by turning it pink and putting it to work against breast cancer.  The text at the bottom says: “Stop breast cancer!  It’s in our power!” 

Four ads, all with the same message, all mobilizing femininity, but in two very different ways. 

Thanks again to Myra!

One of my former students, Kim D., brought my attention to the old and new versions of Strawberry Shortcake (found here):

Her hair has gotten longer and sexier and she’s more “human” looking. Her clothes are also more form-fitting, and her face is thinner.

Here is a close-up on their faces, from this series of images focusing on her “makeover”:

Notice her lips are fuller and pinker and her eyes are larger. She also has fewer freckles.

The New York Times discussed her makeover:

Strawberry Shortcake was having an identity crisis. The “it” doll and cartoon star of the 1980s was just not connecting with modern girls. Too candy-obsessed. Too ditzy. Too fond of wearing bloomers.So her owner, American Greetings Properties, worked for a year on what it calls a “fruit-forward” makeover. Strawberry Shortcake, part of a line of scented dolls, now prefers fresh fruit to gumdrops, appears to wear just a dab of lipstick (but no rouge), and spends her time chatting on a cellphone instead of brushing her calico cat, Custard.

I don’t remember Strawberry Shortcake being “ditzy,” but maybe my memory is bad. And do kids really like cell phones better than pets these days? They probably do, I’m just out of touch.

Here is the original Holly Hobbie from the 1970s (found here):

The new, sassier version, from USA Today:

There’s a Holly Hobbie website where you can read her journal and watch videos.

When I started looking at these, I was puzzled; if the originals are so unappealing to today’s kids, why are they being re-released? Why not just come up with new products? I found some interesting commentary on Jezebel.com:

As part of a growing toy-industry trend (Care Bears are getting slimmed down; Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be more pumped, less aggro), vintage brands are being reworked to appeal to the kids, while still playing on young parents’ nostalgia…What I find bizarre about all this is the implicit assumption that kids can’t relate to a character who’s not exactly like themselves. Strawberry Shortcake wasn’t popular twenty years ago because we all wore bloomers and lolled around in a berry patch; it was cute and fun and the dolls smelled good. This kind of formulaic thinking presupposes a narcissism that, ironically, agendas like these seem to create.

I think she may be on to something there: the appeal is to parents, not the kids themselves. To a little kid, Strawberry Shortcake and Holly Hobbie have no history and aren’t particularly different from other toys available at the store. It’s their parents who have an attachment to the toys. But since the prevailing wisdom is that kids are more “sophisticated” and grown-up at earlier ages, the toys are tarted up a bit to look more sexified teen or pre-teen girls.

I think these images are good for showing the trend toward making girls’ toys, even those for young girls, increasingly sexy, with an emphasis on more human (as opposed to obviously toy-like) features, make-up, and flirty eyelashes and lips. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not meaning to romanticize the earlier versions as some perfect type of toy for girls or that there’s some idyllic past when childhood was sweet and innocent. Personally, I thought Holly Hobbie was boring when I was a kid, though I adored Strawberry Shortcake (or, more specifically, Blueberry Muffin and Lime Chiffon; all I really cared about was the way they smelled and the pets they came with–I was a farm kid, so animal toys were always of great interest to me). But I do think there’s something disturbing about the ways that so many of the toys we give girls today constantly reinforce the message that sexiness and being flirty are desirable attributes, even for young girls.

That might lead to a larger discussion: why are we seeing this trend? What’s going on there? What might be the cultural impetus behind the choices to design, manufacture, market, and purchase toys that incorporate these messages about femininity?

Thanks, Kim!

Emily sent me pictures of Hip Parade toys. They are figurines shaped like women’s bodies from the waist to just above the knees. There are various types and colors. They’re only $8!

This one is called “Active Girls” and for some reason says “cat” and has a picture of a cat on the butt. I don’t know what the connection between a cat and being active is.

Found here.

Found here.

This one is the “trading torso.” You can trade with others to collect all four!

Found here.

Thanks, Em! Sort of.