history

Considering what obvious justice suffrage for women was, it’s surprising that it took 62 years from the birth of the U.S. suffrage movement to come up with an equally simple way of making the case. But in 1910, the National American Woman Suffrage Association distilled their best arguments into one-paragraph gems printed on postcards. Their “Think It Over” series proved to be not only an excellent consciousness-raiser but fundraiser as well, since NAWSA received a commission on each card sold. Here’s a particularly insightful one:

Some other sample sayings on these postcards:

The Declaration of Independence was the direct result of taxation without representation. Either exempt WOMAN from taxation or grant her the right of Equal Suffrage. What is sauce for the GANDER is sauce for the Goose.

Woman, if granted the right of Equal Suffrage, would not endeavor to pass new laws for the benefit of WOMAN only. She would work and vote with MAN on all legislation. …

WOMAN should not condemn MAN because she has not the right of franchise–rather condemn parents for having trained their sons since the beginning of time, in the belief that MAN only is competent to vote.

Of course, suffragists didn’t rely entirely on gentle logic. At the bottom of each card was the phrase, “An ounce of persuasion precedes a pound of coercion.” Symbolism was employed as well. In the upper left corner was a shield of stars and stripes shown as having a dark spot in the center, labeled “The ballot is denied to woman” with “The blot on the escutcheon” inscribed underneath.

Though people today generally associate black and white images and grim determination with the suffragists, here’s proof from 1916 that they could be colorful and whimsical:

The disarming image of a child was common and popular, as above and below. The following image from 1913 was created by  Bernhardt C. Wall (1872-1956), an exception to the rule that most postcard artists labored anonymously:

No doubt the suffragists were well ahead of their time, but the card that follows from about 1916 is unusually far-sighted. (Of course, Victoria Woodhull had already run for president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket.)

Lots of adults were expressing similar sentiments in 1914, when the card below was in circulation. On May 2, 1914, there were more than 1,000 coordinated demonstrations, parades and rallies nationwide, and that same year the all-male Senate took its first vote on a suffrage amendment since 1887. (It gained a majority, 35-34, but was still well short of the 2/3 required). Of course, the term most suffrage workers in the U.S. preferred for themselves was “suffragist,” because “suffragette” was originally used by opponents in Britain and then the U.S. as a derisive term implying “little voter,” or to give the false impression that all supporters of woman suffrage were female. But in this case it seems uniquely appropriate, since it’s a cute little girl with a ballot in her hand.  The postcard was sent as a Valentine on February 12, 1914 from “Marjorie” to “George”.

Finally, this still-appropriate postcard, issued in Great Britain in 1909 by the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, shows a woman being pulled away from “Justice” by “Prejudice.” The WWSL was founded in June, 1908, by playwright Cicely Hamilton and novelist Bessie Hatton “to obtain the vote for women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods are those proper to writers–the use of the pen.”

Today we might say “the use of the blog,” but the message still rings true !

All postcards are from David Dismore’s personal collection.

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David Dismore is a television news archivist and feminist history researcher for the Feminist Majority Foundation.  As a teenager he was inspired by a photo and a few paragraphs about the suffragists in his high school history textbook in Greenville, Ohio.  The post below, originally published at Ms. magazine, looks at some of the propaganda that helped earn U.S. women the vote. You can read more from David at Feminism 101.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Kevin I. sent in a great short clip instructing women workers newly employed in industrial factories during World War II on how to do their hair to maximize safety. It assumes both ignorance and vanity on the part of women and speaks to the lack of efficiency caused by efforts to remain attractive on the line. Pretty great:

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.

Crossposted at Jezebel.

All my life my Grandfather has used the phrase “cotton pickin'” as a slur, as in “wait a cotton pickin’ minute!” and, if he was mad at you (or the dog), “You cotton pickin’…!”

It is debated as to whether the phrase refers to the act of cotton picking, which is tedious and painful work (because the edges of cotton bolls are prickly and sharp), or the people who picked cotton (highly disadvantaged groups, especially black slaves in the American south).

In light of this, it is fascinating that the cotton industry has decided to try and revamp its image by focusing on the act of cotton picking (as opposed to trying to make it invisible).  In this recent Cotton USA ad campaign, sent in by Katrin, cotton picking is full-on romanticized: beautiful people in beautiful clothes decorated in cotton pick cotton in cottony cotton fields:

The image suggests that cotton is beautiful, natural, relaxing, comforting, and comfortable. Indeed, the new tagline for the campaign was: “Soft, sensual, and sustainable.  It’s Cotton USA!” (source).

Interestingly, the U.K. has banned the language of this campaign, arguing that cotton is a highly destructive crop because it is both insecticide- and pesticide-intensive (i.e., not sustainable at all).

In any case, it’s interesting for me, as an American, to see a company try to romanticize an activity so closely linked with slavery.  The Great Grandmother of my co-blogger, Gwen, picked cotton and she said that it was an absolutely miserable job.  The cotton boll itself was prickly and sharp and she had to put her hand inside of the boll and pull the cotton out, such that it would leave both her hands ripped up.  The harvested cotton was carried on her back under a beating sun.  Agricultural labor is punishing, not pastoral.

Today, of course, most cotton in the U.S. is picked by machine, not beautiful 20-somethings (or Great Grandmas).  Most of us would have no knowledge with which to challenge this images so, I suppose, that’s how Cotton USA gets away with such a ludicrous campaign.

See also romanticizing colonialism and our post on how mommies and daddies are baking Goldfish crackers in their comfy kitchens just for you!

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.

Though it’s certainly here now, pink didn’t stabilize as a girls-only color until sometime in the 1950s.  During that decade, pink was the in-style color for bathrooms in residential homes.  Notice that this ad, sent in by Penny R., features a boy in a pink bathroom with no threat of emasculation:

Pam Kueber, at Retro Renovation, estimates that:

…some 5 million pink bathrooms went into the 20 million+ homes built in the United States from 1946-1966… 1 in 4 — at minimum — mid-century homes had a pink bathroom.

She quotes a 1958 Electrical Merchandising that said: “If forced to pick one color as leading this year, most industry men say pink is tops.”

Pink is so strongly associated with women now that it hardly seems appropriate for a family bathroom.  Kueber bemoans that home owners are taking sledge hammers to pink tiles and encourages us to preserve the bathrooms because we all look excellent in pink-tinted light.

See men in pink (then, now, and now).

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.

It turns out that reports of white ethnic identification on the U.S. Census shift so dramatically over time, that simple demographic change cannot account for them.  Instead, (especially) white people, who can largely pick which of their ethnic ancestries to emphasize at any given time, are inconsistent.  Accordingly, ethnicities fall in and out of favor.  For example, German became quite unpopular during World War II.  Similarly, American Indian rose in popularity in the 1960s.  Today, many people proudly report their Irish ancestry, but there was a time in American history when one might keep it a secret if one could.

In Blue Collar Bayou, Jaques Henry and Carl Bankston III describe the recent resurgence of Cajun identification in Southern Louisiana.  They explain that, between 1975 and 2000, there was a 300% increase in the number of people who identify as Cajun.

Cajuns are a people who settled in Southern Louisiana after being exiled from Acadia (now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) in the mid 1700s.  Mostly poor, for a very long time “Cajun” was a bad thing to be and negative stereotypes abounded.

Henry and Bankston explain that for most of their time in Louisiana, the portrayal of Cajuns was “solidly pejorative” (p. 65). They write:

Their Canadian origin, the dire circumstances of their settlement, and their early status as destitute refugees also set the Acadians apart from other white groups in Louisiana… [who] generally held higher socioeconomic positions… These groups… viewed the Acadian, and later Cajun, community as distinct and of little worth.

At the time, their food was described as “adequate.”

It wasn’t until the 1960s that these negative stereotypes started to change and now Cajun ethnicity, country, music and, especially, food is wildly popular:

Today Louisiana’s biggest problem isn’t getting people interested in Cajun food, it’s policing all the imitators.  Products labeled “Cajun” are so profitable today that the Louisiana legislature is trying to combat the “fake Cajun [product] problem” by using a logo on all Louisiana products that says “Product of Louisiana Certified Cajun“:

The new popularity of Cajun food can be attributed in part to efforts by the Louisiana tourism board and a handful of celebrity chefs, like Paul Prudhomme, who had the resources, skills, and business acumen to transform the food into a cuisine.

A nice example, I thought, of the social construction of both food and ethnicity.

Images here, here, and here.

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.

If you’re interested, I wrote a piece for The Daily Mirror about my recent trip to the LAPD’s “Behind the Scenes” exhibit here in Vegas (which got a lot of media attention when the Kennedy family protested the inclusion of bloody clothing from Robert Kennedy’s shooting). My friend Larry was interested in the politics involved–whose personal tragedy gets put on public display? Were the displays as sensationalistic as he suspected they would be? He was particularly interested in how the case of the Black Dahlia (aka Elizabeth Short) would be presented, and what the LAPD would think was appropriate to display for public consumption.

So I agreed to go take a look. And I was horrified in so many ways. Absolutely stunned. You can find the piece here.

Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, a selection of essays on aging, now through March 15th.  I borrowed the material below from the essay, “Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.”

The average American is aging… and fast.  Advances in public health — especially related to childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease — have led to longer lives.   “The result is that death has been permanently shifted from a phenomenon among the young to one of the old.”  This means that the age distribution in the U.S. has shifted from one shaped like a neat pyramid (in 1900), to one shaped kind of like a house (in 2000), to whatever shape that is they’re predicting in 2050:

The great news is that “active life span is increasing faster than total life span.”  That is, even though we live longer, we spend fewer of our years sick or disabled than ever before.  This is called (so you can impress your friends) the “compression of morbidity.”

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.

Mihai L. sent in a Romanian commercial for wafers that suggests that women have been slowing down progress and re-writing history since the cavewoman days!

With subtitles:

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.