gender

These advertisements, the first two for a brand of jeans called Apple Bottoms, all fetishize black women’s behinds:

Underneath Beyonce’s name it says: “The body, the booty, the backstabbing.”

In this two-page spread, the body isn’t necessarily black… but it might be an interesting question as to whether the viewers assume, or might be expected to assume, it is.

Text:

MY BUTT is big
and round like the letter c
and ten thousand lunges
have made it rounder
but not smaller
and that’s just fine.
It’s a space heater
for myside of the bed
It’s my ambassador
to those who walk behind me
It’s a border collie
that herds skinny women
away from the best deals
at clothing sales.
My butt is big
and that’s just fine
and those who might scorn it
are invited to kiss it.

I think it’s interesting the way this poem pits “skinny women” against women with a big butt… so valorizing the big butt but only by taking down the skinny (white?) girl.

Divide and conquer.

You might pair these images with this post about a Pilates DVD.

This product nicely captures the fallacious ideas that (1) to be a “liberated” woman is to do what men do and (2) that “liberated” women necessarily emasculate men in a zero sum game.

Thanks to my awesome student, Molly M!

An ad for a floral shop: “He chose her. She chose us.”

Found in Zions Bank Community magazine, January/February 2008 issue.

This is an ad for Tao Asian bistro and nightclub in Las Vegas. The tagline is “Always a happy ending.” Note the naked woman’s body with the presumably Chinese characters on her. And of course a “happy ending” is often associated with Asian massage parlors…

Despite all kinds of “truces” and “promises” in the media lately about “leaving race and gender out” of the democratic primaries, gender and race are obviously a part of this presidential election cycle.

But, here’s a newsflash: even when the candidates are all white men, gender and race are STILL a part of the decisions made about who should be president.

Think back to 2004 for a moment– remember all those political cartoons criticizing Kerry for being too “French” (as opposed to American Cowboy) and generally feminizing his image (feminine = bad for politics) in political cartoons.

I’m fascinated by the anti-Hillary Clinton facebook groups. There are dozens of these groups, but four groups have the most members.

• Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich– 30,000+ members
• Anti Hillary Clinton for President ’08– 65,000+ members
• Stop Hillary Clinton: One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary– 700,000+ members
• Life’s a Bitch, Why Vote for One?– 14,000+ members

So this morning I spent some time looking at the images that dominate these groups. The images these groups use to criticize Clinton as a presidential candidate make it pretty clear that sexism is alive and well (beyond the protesters asking Clinton to iron their shirts)– and that gendered ways to talk about politics are as cogent as ever! Here’s a smattering for you– there are so many I couldn’t possibly post them all!

And the intersection of race and gender…

Shameless self-promotion… and some really interesting findings regarding knowledge and frequency of orgasm in a non-random population of undergraduates. This first graph shows the percent of male and female respondents who (1) correctly located the clitoris on a map of the vulva and (2) correctly answered a series of true/false questions about the clitoris.

You’ll see that there is surprising little difference between men and women (considering that women have had access to a clitoris all their lives and men have had access only recently, if at all), though you’ll see that men are more likely to think most women will have an orgasm from penile-vaginal sex (most women don’t) and women are more likely to think the g-spot is another name for the clitoris (it’s not). These two cancelled each other out such that the average knowledge score for men and women was statistically the same. The same!

It’s this next graph that’s the real kicker. This graph shows the relationship between how well a woman scored on the clitoral knowledge tests (on a 0-5 scale) and how frequently she has an orgasm during masturbation and with a partner. You’ll see a nice positive relationship between knowledge and orgasm in masturbation and no relationship at all between knowledge and orgasm with a partner. (For fun, notice that the average score on the clitoral knowledge measure for women who’d never had an orgasm with a partner and who always do is the same. Also notice that there are 124 women in that never category, it’s not just a handful of women who are somehow “dysfunctional.”)

So, for some reason (feel free to speculate), even when women know about their own bodies, they either keep it to themselves, or have partners that don’t want to hear it, or both.

You can download the paper here.

These images are of a beer marketed specifically to women in 1953, Storzette by Storz.

From the website:

“In 1953 Storz tried to market a new product for women, ‘Storzette.’ Designed to be a beer for the ladies it was supposedly not too bitter and was calorie controlled. it also came in a smaller can, 8 ounces, which Storz called “Queen sized” and it came in four can packs called “Princess Packs.” The brewery noted that market studies showed that many women felt that the standard 12 oz can provided too large a serving. The beer inside was also different, made to be less bitter than standard beers. The can even had a pink orchid pictured on it to help it appeal to women. It’s initial test market results in San Diego seemed positive, but in the end the effort was not successful and Storzette did not last long on the market. As a result, the little can with the orchid is very scarce. Storz also used a slogan on its regular cans for awhile in the 1950s, “the Orchid of Beer” which has to be one of the more unusual beer advertising slogans.”

I came upon this series of ads in a local Las Vegas magazine (although I’ve forgotten which one; sorry). The first two images were at the front of the magazine.

I turned to page 13 to see what this super-skinny, barely-dressed woman was being used to sell.

Of course! Houses!

Note the very passive positioning of the model–she looks like she’s about to faint, or maybe is in the act of fainting. And the background on the other two images appears to be gold satin–evoking satin sheets, perhaps?

Here is an ad, from Metropolitan Home magazine, from a home decorating magazine that uses a woman’s body to sell blinds:

Scott W. sent us this website selling condominiums in northern Boston.  Here are a couple screenshots of the completely gratuitous use of  a sexy woman and implicit sex:

NEW! Sharon G. sent us a photo of a billboard in Tel Aviv with the copy “Go all the way.”  It’s selling kitchen remodeling (see the website here):

See more posts using sex (with women) to sell homes, see here.