history

This might be a useful image for talking about the commodification of protest and “alternative” culture. It was being sold at the H&M store in Pasadena. It’s the latest in a progression of the co-opting of the punk aesthetic–first stores like Hot Topic started selling clothing with rips and safety pins and such in them, so you could go pay a lot of money for pre-packaged punk or goth looks. Now it’s gone a step further where they no longer even bother to put a real safety pin in–now you just get pictures of safety pins, meant to evoke that sense of non-conformity in the safest, most easily-marketed way possible, along with your Sum 41 (or whatever their name is) CD.

I’m sort of obsessed with the recent escalation in the standards for “good” teeth. I saw a film from the 80s the other day where Keifer Sutherland had yellow teeth. Yellow teeth! I am so well-adjusted to the new bleaching practices that I was genuinely disgusted. I’m not proud. Adding to all this bleaching are new technologies like veneers and invisible braces and whoknowswhat. As each becomes more and more common, it becomes more and more unusual to have less-than-perfect teeth and the pressure to undergo these cosmetic procedures becomes less about being extraordinary and more about being ordinary. Anyway, I found this in the New York Times (see source in image):

Any guesses as to who it is in society that is disproportionately cavity-stricken?

Or… anyone interested in critiquing the line graphs? That is a really rapid change between ’99-’02 and ’03-’04 and there are a lot of years strangely lumped together. Could it be an artifact of bundling?

The Dodge La Femme (1955 and 1956):

Here are some pictures of some restored La Femme’s:

Pink rosebud patterned upholstery:

It even came with matching accessories!

An umbrella and raincoat:

A compact:

A coin purse:

I think showing this car would be interesting in comparison with the contemporary marketing of feminine guns (see Gwen’s post here). The guns look surprisingly like the car.

It would also be interesting, I think, to do a discussion about whether and how they market cars to women today. They do, of course, but the ideal femininity has changed and so, therefore, have the cars. Women, though, haven’t changed very much. One of the reasons that the La Femme didn’t sell was because women were, frankly, offended.

NEW (Jan. ’09)!  I found this effort to market cars to women from 1969, the “women-winning” Barracuda with “pop prints” and “gals in mind”!

NEW! (Nov. ’09): Tim McC. sent in this trailer for a Volvo concept car specifically for women. It’s really interesting to compare the marketing of a car to women in the 1950s versus today.

Notice that while beauty is still important, today there’s also an emphasis on the car being tough–but not too tough, not brutal.

Tim adds,

YCC has some fairly significant design decisions (some arguably limitations) that seems to imply certain things about the intended market. For example, the car has no hood that can be opened by the owner. Instead, the car must be taken to the shop for engine maintenance and oil changes. The tires are also run-flat, meaning that the tires will continue to work after a flat, again so that the car can be taken to a garage for the tire change. This seems to imply that the company assumes that women are too ignorant or too afraid to fix their own mechanical problems. This also implies that DIY work on engines or really any technological product is a male pursuit. Keeping women from working on engines seems to say that women shouldn’t have to even consider working with technology. It also features automated parallel parking (a feature common on luxury cars, but prominently emphasized in the materials), which may carry sexist undertones å la the “woman driver” stereotype. The drive train is hybrid-electric, which implies that environmentalism is a feminine concept.

On Size:

On Lifespan:

From the National Center for Health Statistics; National Vital Statistics System; Dora Costa, MIT; Richard H. Steckel, Ohio State University; Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging. University of California, Berkeley.

This image was passed along by a colleague’s student.