history

Dodai at Jezebel recently posted an Elle cover from May 1986. Like her, I was struck by how un-retouched the photo appeared to be. Dodai says that you can see freckles and moles on her face.

Dodai also argues that the fashion spreads in the 1986 issue look like they are happy and having fun and she compares them to the spreads in the May 2010 issue in which, she says, the models appear somber. See for yourself.

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.

Thea Lim at Racialicious posted this travel advertisement for Newfoundland-Labrador, Canada:

Text:

How many times can one place be discovered?  We’ve been asking ourselves that question for over a thousand years.

Discovery is a fearless pursuit. Certainly, this was the case when the Vikings, the first Europeans to reach the new world, landed at L’Anse aux Meadows. While it may only be a three-hour flight for you, it was a considerably longer journey a thousand years ago. But it’s a place where mystery still mingles with the light and washes over the strange, captivating landscape. A place where all sorts of discoveries still happen every day. Some, as small as North America. Others, as big as a piece of yourself.

As the recent Vancouver Olympics reminded us relentlessly, Canada was home to many peoples when the Europeans arrived.  The ad sanitizes this history, turning it into “discovery.”   Lim points out that “discovery” has a certain ring to it that “genocide” or “colonization” simply does not.

She quotes Ronald Wright, author of Stolen Continents, who points out how ridiculous it is to use the term “discovery” to describe what happened when Europeans arrived in North America:

…I was told by Dehatkadons, a traditional chief of the Onondaga Iroquois, “You cannot discover an inhabited land.  Otherwise I could cross the Atlantic and ‘discover’ England.”  That such an obvious point has eluded European consciousness for five centuries reveals that the history we have been taught is really myth…  those vanquished by our civilization see that its myth of discovery has transformed historical crimes into glittering icons.

The use of the myth of discovery in advertising like this demonstrates just how deeply many of us have internalized it.

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.

A recent study by Chelsea Schafer and Greg Shaw found that, as of 2006, over a quarter of Americans would still rather not live near homosexuals.  This percentage has been decreasing, however; in 1990 and 1995, 38% and 30% of people, respectively, wanted to keep their distance:

But tolerance for Muslims and immigrants has not increased alongside tolerance for gays and lesbians.  The data show that rather high levels of tolerance in the ’90s (with about 90% of people being happy to have these groups as neighbors) disappeared and, by 2006, 22% of people did not want to live near Muslims and 19% did not want to live near immigrants.

The data on tolerance for Muslims is likely due to the way the attacks on September 11th, 2001, have been spun to stoke hatred against Muslims.  What do you think about the increased intolerance for immigrants?  Have “foreigners” been collateral damage in the smear campaign against Muslims and Arabs?  If it were simply growing conservatism, wouldn’t we see the same pattern for homosexuals?  Other explanations?

Borrowed from Contexts Discoveries.

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.

In the U.S. today we largely accept and encourage girls’ experimentation with boy-coded things, but we are still extremely ambivalent, if not downright condemnatory, of boys experimenting with girl-coded things.

This excerpt from an Ann Landers advice column from 1974 shows that Landers had the same asymmetrical concerns almost 40 years ago.

The parents ask about the sex-crossed play behavior of both their daughter and their son, but Landers fixates on the son, suggesting that if he continues such play he should get checked out.

From Ms.

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.

Why does the iconic New York City paper cup look so… Greek?

The designer of the cup, Leslie Buck, arrived in the U.S. after fleeing the Nazis during World War II.  He joined a new company called “Sherri Cup” in the ’60s.  He designed the cup, with no art training, with a Grecian theme and in the colors of the Greek flag, to appeal to… Greeks.  It turns out that a large portion of the city’s diners at that time were owned by Greeks.  It was an instant hit.

So, we have immigration, ethnic occupational segregation, and Buck’s ingenuity to thank for decades of cozy, New Yorky feelings inspired by that little cup.

Buck died this April.  You can read his obituary, and the whole story of the cup, at the New York Times.

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.

After reading my recent post on how Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt survived World War II (hint: rank-and-file Nazis loved jazz!), Dmitriy T.M. sent me a link to a fascinating account of a German jazz band, called Charlie and His Orchestra, that was put together by Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi propaganda guy.

To recap, jazz music was labeled “Neggernmusik.”  Attributed (rightly) to blacks and Jews, it was considered pollution to German sensibilities.  Jazz lovers, jazz musicians, and swing dancers were all sent to concentration camps.

Nevertheless, Undercover Black Man describes how Goebbels saw potential in the music and, so, “weaponized” it to “screw with British and American minds.”

Charlie and His Orchestra recorded jazz standards, but changed the lyrics to “anti-British, anti-American, anti-Communist or antisemitic messages.”

The songs were broadcast via medium-wave and short-wave radio to Great Britain and North America. It was all about taunting and demoralizing the Allies… and trash-talking Winston Churchill and F.D.R. by name.

In this clip, the Orchestra, covering Goody Goody, is accompanied by WWII photographs. The propaganda starts at 1:04:

For more, check out the Charlie and His Orchestra versions of You Can’t Stop Me From Dreaming, You’re Driving Me Crazy, and Makin’ Whoopee.

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.

Yael S. sent along a 10-minute educational video by FilmFixation. In it, she asks viewers to consider the conditions in which historical photographs came to be.  “Why was it created,” she asks, “by whom, and for what purpose?”  It starts off a bit slow, but picks up with voiceover.  Please be alerted that there are images of racialized violence:

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.

Tanita sent in this funny short video that addresses the sexism female authors have often faced when trying to get their work published or taken seriously in literary circles (some, such as Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot, resorted to using male pen names to combat these problems).

What better way for female authors to deal with the situation than use their action-hero superpowers to combat sexist publishers? I present to you the Brontësaurus:

Confession: I know this will make many of you scream in horror, and that the book has all kinds of feminist overtones and is greatly beloved and majorly influenced literature, and I’m showing myself to be a literary heathen with no appreciation for the arts, but I read Jane Eyre once, and I think Charlotte Brontë’s most effective weapon might be her ability to get you bogged down reading lengthy Gothic descriptions of moors and stuff.

Though if you ever need to make me cringe and run, tell me you’re going to make me read Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I tried reading it just for fun once, and I have never been so pained.