gender

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.

Brook M. brought our attention to Al Jazeera’s English-language coverage of Arab women athletes training for the 2008 Olympics. They include a Moroccan runner, Israeli Arab boxers, a Qatar race-car driver, and Egyptian soccer players. Among other topics, the segments address opposition the women have faced being female Arab Muslims in sports, especially concerning their clothing. The first segment is about 11 minutes long; the second one is about 12 and a half.

One thing I like about these videos is they show the diversity of Arab Muslim women, a group often depicted as a homogeneous, passive, subordinate group all wearing veils. Some of the women in the clips do not cover their hair while some wear hijab. Among those who wear hijab, some cover every bit of their hair, others do not; some head scarves are lace and fairly transparent, while others are dark and solid. The women talk about how they feel about mixing religion and sports and being female athletes, and again, they differ in their perspectives.

While the sports element is interesting, seeing the diversity among Arab women, as well as Arab women actively discussing religion and resisting gender roles, may be very useful for students who usually encounter portrayals of Arab women as completely oppressed victims of a sexist culture/religion, so I can imagine using it in classes that aren’t about sports.

Thanks, Brook M.!

In a 1987 article titled “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Carol Cohn discussed the way in which “defense intellectuals” (the scientists and strategists behind war) used language that was rife with sexual metaphors, sexual imagery, and the promise of sexual domination. Here are some of the words and phrases she heard these men (mostly) use to refer to military weapons:

“penetration aids”

“vertical erector launchers”

“thrust-to-weight ratios”

“soft lay downs”

“deep penetration”

“protracted versus spasm attacks”

“releasing… megatonnage in one orgasmic whump”

India’s first explosion of a nuclear bomb described as “losing her virginity” and then the United States asked whether they should “throw her away.”

An explanation of why the MX missile is to be placed in new silos: “because they’re in the nicest hole—you’re not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole”

One journalist described a nuclear blast like this:

“Then, just when it appeared as though the thing had settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the size of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upward and then descending earthward, a thousand geysers rolled into one. It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down.”

With this in mind, consider the costume worn by Miss Atomic Bomb (1957). Yes that is a mushroom cloud or, dare I say, an “orgasmic whump” spreading out all over her. A full-size cardboard cut-out Miss Atomic Bomb, that is Lee Merlin, welcomed Gwen and I to the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. Here she is in all her glory:

I want to give a shout-out to Vivek who mentioned Merlin in response to our previous post on the Atomic Testing Museum.

Reference: Cohn, Carol. 1987. Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals. Signs 12, 4: 687-718.

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.

Alongside an article in the New York Times today was this graph comparing the percentage of positive statements made about Obama versus Clinton by the media over the course of the primary race.  The article discusses whether players in the U.S. media think their coverage was sexist.  Lots of people do not think so.  It has some really interesting quotes from people in front of and behind the camera.

Click here to see a montage of sexist statements about Hillary Clinton by media pundits.

Miguel pointed out that AskMen.com collected a list of “worst male-bashing ads,” all of which represent men as morons or useless oafs. Here are some of them:

1st for Women, a South African auto insurance company that only insures women:

A Domino’s ad in which the wife laughs at her husband’s sexual overtures:

A Sony Cyber-shot ad that depicts men as a horse’s ass (it’s the first clip; for some reason there are some FedEx clips afterward):

Men as easily manipulated by flirty women:

These might be useful for a discussion of masculinity and portrayals of men as idiots and morons, especially regarding family life, which serves to reinforce the idea that men can’t be trusted to cook or clean or care for children because they’ll just mess it up. Although it doesn’t come up in these ads, it’s also good to bring in the class element we see in shows like “King of Queens,” “The Simpsons,” “According to Jim,” and “Married with Children,” which all have working-class, generally pot-bellied idiot husbands married to smart, gorgeous women who sigh and put up with their childish behavior.

Also see the earlier post of a Roomba ad that portrays the husband as a literal ass (this ad also made it into the AskMen list).

Thanks, Miguel!

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

A while ago I posted a set of ads for engagement rings, asking what those ads had to sell you in order to also sell you a diamond ring (see the post here).  Then Miguel sent us the ad below, writing: “This ad is almost too honest.”  Indeed.  Notice that it also supposes that it is the quality of the ring, and not the quality of the groom, that makes a woman happy on the day she says “yes” to marriage.

The relationship between clear skin and sexuality has an interesting history.  In an effort to establish dermatology as a medical subspeciality, aspiring dermatologists strategically linked, in the popular imagination, young women’s acne and lasciviousness.  Doctors argued that acne was a sign of sexual desire or God forbid, masturbation or worse.  Parents worried, then, that this would make their daughters unacceptable marriage partners (at a time when that was disasterous for women) and so would pay a great deal of money to doctors who would promise to cure their daughters of this scarlet dot.  Thus, dermatology was born.

Later, of course, acne became seen as a boy’s issue… But since we had different expectations for boys (in terms of both beauty and sexuality), acne was seen as a “stage” to be endured instead of a “problem” to be cured.  This is more or less like it was when I was a kid in the 1980s.

But today, of course, clear skin is linked to sexual attractiveness, especially for women (thanks, in part, to our friend evolutionary psychology).  And, with dermatologists at their beck and call, upper class teenagers (and adults) no longer have to endure bad skin. Thus, science, sex and skin care seem like natural bed fellows.  Consider this ad:

It’s a subtle threat: “Why not wake up in great skin.” Why would we care?  Who is laying next to you?  Does he know what you look like without make-up?  Without beer goggles?  Without make-up and beer goggles!? And what happens if he finds you disgusting in the bright light of morning?  (This, of course, is a very effective marketing tool because sexual attractiveness is linked to happiness. There is a price to pay for not finding a mate and, we are told over and over and over, that price is very high.)

I also see in the ad a perpetuation of the medicalization of sexual desirability (whether that be “purity” or “beauty”). The “3-step skin care” and “consultation” is a subtle medicalizing and scientizing of the make-up industry.  Lots of make-up companies use the notion of “science” to market their product (i.e., “Prescriptives”) and many of them link this with what is “natural” as well (i.e., Aveda).

Thanks to Jason for sending along the image!