holidays

Here’s an interesting example of the triumph of ideology over simple fact.  Fia K. sent in a link to a costume sold at Amazon titled “Tiny Boy’s Costume.”  The costume is a green pterodactyl.  There is no equivalent Tiny Girl’s Costume.  When I search for that phrase, the search engine deletes the word “girl” and sends me back to here.

This is more than just an instance of associating boys with dinosaurs and excluding girls, although that would be problematic enough.  No, the costume is called “Tiny” because it’s associated with a cartoon character with that name from the show Dinosaur Train.

Funny thing is, Tiny is female (note the eyelashes, you can always tell by the eyelashes).

This is evidence of how powerful gender ideology can be.  Tiny’s actual fictional femaleness is less powerful than the ideological association of boys and dinosaurs.  Hence, a Tiny Boy’s Costume.

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.

Can we at least agree that it’s racist to dress your dog up like a racial caricature?

“Little Spanish Bandito Dog Costume” (link):

“The Geisha Dog Costume” (link):

“Pup Shalom Dog Costume” (link):

“Indian Dog Costume” (link):

Originally posted in 2009, but the links are still live! Via Alas A Blog.  

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.

The word “heteronormativity” refers to a persistent privileging of “opposite”-sex couples and the relative invisibility of people who partner with others of their “same” sex.  Halloween costumes are a great example of the phenomenon.  Costumes designed for couples nearly always assume that they need to outfit a man and a woman, not two men or two women.

As an example, here is the main page for couples costumes at Party City.  Notice that all couples represented are heterosexual:

Occasionally the costumes even have heterosexualized themes that metaphorically refer to penile-vaginal intercourse, like this plug and socket costume at Buy Costumes…

…and this updated usb and dock costume:

It’s a simple point, but worth observing.  For people who aren’t heterosexual, these Halloween costumes are just one more example of how they aren’t recognized or validated by our society.  We are increasingly accepting of gay people, yet they remain marginal in our collective imagination.

Originally posted in 2012.

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.

Lindy West for the win at Jezebel, asks what’s so sexualizing about calling a child’s costume “naughty.”  The costume below was widely criticized for sexualizing little girls, but West nicely observes that there is a non-sexual, child-related meaning to the word naughty.  You know, being bad.  The non-sexual version of bad.  Doing something you’re not supposed to do.  A non-sexual thing.  You know what I mean!  West writes:

Sure, naughty has had sexual connotations as far back as the mid-19th century, but it’s been used to describe disobedient kids since the goddamn 1600s. So why did we let hornay college chicks hijack the word in all its forms? Why can’t children be naughty anymore?

It’s a great question.

The instinct that “naughty” means “bad and sexy” probably stems in part from our Puritanical roots.  Today it gets tied up with the infantilization of women and the notion that women should be cute like girls.  Add the rampant sexualization at Halloween, including costumes in which women dress up like little girls dressed up like sexy adult women.  It’s hard to see how one could avoid interpreting this “naughty leopard” as an example of the sexualization of little girls.

Nevertheless, West is right.  The biggest problem with this costume’s title is that it includes the word “leopard.”  Because that’s just false advertising.  It doesn’t say sexy leopard and the dress — I’ll stop calling it a costume now — is not particularly sexualizing.

West calls for change:

Why don’t we send “naughty” back from whence it came—into the realm of wedgies and spitballs and pies cooling on the windowsill with bites taken out of them!? It’s time, people. You know it is. Take Back the Naughty. For the children.

And for the grown ups, too, who are tired of the idea that being a sexual person makes us bad, bad girls and boys.

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.

@plouie01 snapped these two pics of the suggested gifts for Mother’s and Father’s Day at Chapter’s Bookstore in Vancouver. You might notice an interesting difference:

Yep, that’s right. Men get books, interesting books even!  And women get… pink stuff.  Mostly paper products, but without words and ideas on them, and also candles and soap..  You know, pretty good-smelling things meant to please the daft. Forgive me, perhaps I’m being overly harsh towards stationary. All I’m saying is, not a single book for ladies at the book store? Alas.

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.

On this last day of Black History Month, let us return to posts past.

We have been urged to celebrate Black History Month…

• …with fried chicken and collard greens.
• No really, with fried chicken and collard greens!
• …by relaxing our hair and drinking kool-aid.
• …by conflating them with “underprivileged” people.
• …by feeling badly about how fat we are and thinking about surgery.
• …with a “Compton Cookout” complete with blackface and nooses! (pictured)
• …by buying stuff from companies that do nothing but acknowledge Black History Month.

<sarcasm> Good times. </sarcasm>

For 100 years Valentine’s Day was not only associated with sweet sentiments, but was an occasion to send a cruel and biting message to someone you didn’t like.  These cards — called “vinegar valentines” — were popular from 1840 to 1940 in both America and the U.K.

Annebella Pollen, an art and design historian who talks about the valentine’s at Collector’s Weekly, explains that there was a valentine for many types of people and occasions:

 You could send them to your neighbors, friends, or enemies. You could send them to your schoolteacher, your boss, or people whose advances you wanted to dismiss. You could send them to people you thought were too ugly or fat, who drank too much, or people acting above their station. There was a card for pretty much every social ailment.

Pollen insists that people did send them to one another, albeit anonymously, and they were not meant to be jokes. Instead, they were meant to say: “Your behavior is unacceptable.”  For much of the 1800s there was no such thing as a pre-paid stamp, so the person who got the mail paid for it, so often they were forced to buy their own insults, a twist of the knife from the sender.

Many, many more vinegar valentine’s at Collector’s Weekly, where I also stole this great title.  Via BoingBoing.

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.

Originally posted in 2010. Re-posted in honor of the holiday.

In the U.S., Valentine’s Day is pretty much for women. While women do give Valentine’s gifts to male partners, the emphasis among adults is on men giving items to women: flowers, candy, cards, taking them out to dinner, and so on. In many cases women aren’t expected to reciprocate, or can give a less expensive/significant present, and I doubt many give flowers or chocolate in heart-shaped boxes.

In Japan, however, the roles are reversed: women give chocolates to men, as well as often buying gifts and providing meals. It apparently isn’t entirely clear how this tradition emerged.

There are two types of chocolates that women give men. Giri-choco, or “obligation chocolate,” is relatively cheap and is what you give to coworkers and the like. Honmei-choco is higher-quality chocolate reserved for men a woman is close to–partners or perhaps a family member. Some women choose to make their own honmei.

Men aren’t off the hook, however. A month later, on March 14th, is White Day, a day when men give candy and other gifts to women. According to wikipedia, these gifts are supposed to be more expensive than what the men received on Valentine’s Day.

A lot of websites say that White Day was invented by a marshmallow company in the ’60s as a way to increase sales, but I can’t find any reliable source for this explanation.

It’s a good example of the social construction of holidays and food. In the U.S., chocolate is highly feminized–we think of it as a food that women particularly like, and ads about chocolate, especially fancy chocolates, are usually aimed at women (or men buying for them). Valentine’s Day and big heart-shaped boxes with large bows on them are likewise feminized. Valentine’s Day is, primarily, a day when men are expected to show their affection for women through the purchase of these things (and, as a side note, the chocolate that comes in those heart-shaped boxes is often pretty unappealing). Insofar as women reciprocate with gifts for men, they’re unlikely to come in a similar heart-shaped box. When I brought up this possibility to my students, they said that would be really unusual and the male recipient would probably feel strange about it.

In Japan, clearly chocolates for Valentine’s Day (even expensive, fancy chocolate), heart-shaped boxes, and big bows are considered appropriate gifts for men. It makes it clear how our association of chocolate with women is culturally specific.

Of course, the fact that on White Day men are supposed to give women more expensive gifts than they received indicates that, while Valentine’s Day specifically is for men, the expectation is that overall, the balance of gift-giving requires men to show more affection-via-spending, similar to U.S. expectations surrounding the holiday.

Other posts: the social construction of chocolate and marketing chocolate to men.

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