media

Samantha Moore sent in a screenshot of the front page of the website for Aerie, a brand of lingerie marketed to 15-21 year-olds.  I thought it was quite the stunning example of the impossible bodies that young people are offered as the ideal.

Adding more perspective, Samantha writes:

I shopped at American Eagle before I turned 15, and I would say that’s part of the draw — girls like to shop where the older kids do. Though aerie may be officially targeting older teenagers, this bra campaign wipes away the transition from puberty to sex; you know, that time when you bra shop out of necessity and dreadfully weird body change, not sexual enticement.

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.

Back in November, Conan O’Brien officiated at the wedding of two gay men on his show. This received a decent bit of media coverage, it being the first time a same-sex couple was married on TV. My friend John McQuiston pointed out a great video showing the intros of many stations’ coverage of the story. John says CBS Newspath released a tease with the phrase “pushing the envelope,” and the phrase stuck. The clip illustrates the way that, despite the many media outlets available to us, norms of news reporting (and, according to John, general laziness) mean that we often hear the same message or framing of issues repeated over and over, reinforcing a particular understanding of events to the exclusion of other interpretations:

Updated; originally posted July 2009.

Americans are notorious for their ignorance of global issues and international news.  This may be because Americans aren’t interested or it may be that our news outlets feed us fluff and focus us only on the U.S.  Probably it’s a vicious cycle.

This month, for example, Time magazine’s cover story is about the political strife in Egypt… everywhere except the U.S. that is.  Americans get “pop psychology” (via Global Sociology):

It turns out you can go to the Time website and compare covers from previous issues going back a long ways.  Here are some more examples from the last couple years (I cherry picked just a bit):

Dmitriy T.M. sent in these previous examples a while back.

The cover story for Newsweek magazine’s September 2006 edition was “Losing Afghanistan” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.  It was “My Life in Pictures,” a story about the photographer Annie Liebovitz in the U.S. (via):

The cover story for Newsweek magazine’s October 2006 edition was “Global Warming’s First Victim” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.  It was “Off Message,” a story about Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s sexually suggestive emails and IMs to teenage boys (via):

The cover story for Time magazine’s April 2007 edition was “Talibanistan” in Europe, Latin America, and Asia.  It was “Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public Schools” in the U.S. (via, also see Time):

As SocProf writes:

Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy: Americans are assumed to not be interested in international and global affairs… ergo, Time decides to replace a perfectly legitimate and newsworthy cover on a significant event in Egypt with some pop psychology item. As a result, Americans are less informed and knowledgeable on global affairs because they do not get intelligent coverage on that topic.

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 her August 13 column in the Washington Times Communities section, Rebekah Kuschmider declares proudly, “So here’s the thing: I am not embarrassed about my stretch marks.” It’s a great message. Women should love their aging skin and reject the impossible Photoshop beauty standards that make us hate ourselves. Kuschmider describers herself as, not a Barbie Doll, but a “Velveteen Rabbit, so worn and loved that I’ve become real.”

Two curious images, however, accompany this story about a (presumably) wealthy white woman’s stretch marks. The two women pictured with Kuschmider’s column are actually a Thai woman from a village near Burma and an Indian laborer from the city of Diu (according to the Flickr pages from which the photos were captured). The old Thai woman’s face is a shrunken apple;  tattoos cover the younger Indian woman’s neck, and the whites of her eyes are yellowed from exposure to the sun. Both women are beautiful.

But why don’t we see, not to get too invasive here, the stretch marks of which Ms. Kuschmider is justifiably proud? Why do we instead see haunting portraits that seem to come straight off the pages of National Geographic? The underlying message from whoever chose these photos (the author? an online editor?) is that wrinkles look exotic on poor women whom privileged Americans love to gawk at. We don’t expect them to be attractive by our standards – they’re so lovely in their way, so tragic. But wealthier white women?

The author of Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism, Tufts University sociology professor Sarah Sobieraj is a reigning expert on media and social movements in the U.S.  In the four minute clip below, she discusses what it is about the Occupy Movement that has led to such favorable coverage. This includes an answer to the now ubiquitous question: “Is their message too broad?”

Clip at MyFoxBoston, via Citings and Sightings.

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.

Sociologist Joel Best debunks the idea that “sex bracelets” — bracelets that indicate what type of sex you’re interested in and that oblige you to perform it — are really a thing. He and his colleague, Katherine Bogle, have been tracing the story over time on the internet and across continents in what he calls “the dynamics of rumor and legend.”

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.

My colleague and co-author, Lisa Wade (you’d know her better as one of the people behind SocImages), gave a seven-minute speech at an Occupy Teach-In at our shared institution, Occidental College.  She said I could post it for you.

In the video she says she’s optimistic about the movement because it’s deeply sociological, drawing our attention to the way we organize our society, not just the individuals in it.  She contrasts this ability to critique the system with the early years of the Great Depression, during which many of the unemployed felt like they had failed their families because of personal faults (leading to a rise in the suicide rate).  Then, using the truly inspirational story of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott (in which people walked to work and rode carpools for over a year!), she warns students that the movement is about to stop being fun and require real commitment. She ends by asking the the audience whether they can rise to the occasion and make the sacrifices needed to move Occupy forward to achieve specific demands.

Also see the three-minute bit on hook up culture that she did for MTV Canada.

Cross-posted at Racialicious and Caroline Heldman’s Blog.

Tower Heist (2011) the new movie starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, is the latest installment in blatantly racist movie-making. Stiller plays a high-end condo manager in Manhattan who bails out a local criminal (Murphy) to steal a stash of cash that one of the wealthy condo residents swindled from the condo staff. It’s been nearly thirty years since Murphy played nearly the same character in his breakout role in 48 Hours, and the fact that he is still cast as a jive-talking criminal speaks to how little has changed when it comes to the portrayal of black Americans in popular culture.

Hyperbolic racial stereotypes are still sooooo amusing for some.  As LA Times film critic Betsy Sharkey writes, “Murphy and Stiller are a good pair, with Murphy once again mainlining his ghetto-comedy crazy and Stiller suited up for another straight-man gig. These are the kinds of roles they both do best, and their face-off in the front seat of an out-of-control car is worth the price of admission.” (Now reverse the names in this quote to see how racialized and racially offensive it is.)

Perhaps more disturbing is the way in which film critics are talking about this movie as a comback for Eddie Murphy  (“Eddie Murphy’s Road to Reddemption,” “Tower Heist: Murphy is Back on Top,” “‘Tower’ Heist Features Eddie Murphy Back in ‘Classic ’80s Form“). What does it mean when playing an insultingly stereotypical black criminal is deemed “redemption” for a black actor whose movies have grossed nearly $7 billion worldwide? And where, exactly, did Eddie Murphy go? The Shrek series grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide, while his Nutty Professor and Doctor Dolittle franshises grossed $428 million and $470 million, respectively. Murphy has appeared in a steady stream of successful movies in the past decade, including Dreamgirls for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Closer examination of media critics’ analysis reveals a nostalgia for Eddie Murphy’s breakthrough role as a criminal in 48 Hours. Jon Niccum writes that inTower Heist “Murphy shows flashes of the aggressive, non-family-friendly persona that made him a superstar following 48 Hours. Aggressive?  Non-family friendly?

To summarize, Eddie Murphy grossing oodles of money as a successful director, producer, writer, and actor in films featuring him as a doctor, a veterinarian, a dedicated father, and the voice of a beloved donkey in the second highest-grossing animated film of all time is considered some sort of failure, but playing a jive talking felon is redemption. Huh?

There are many ways to interpret this — that Hollywood and movie critics (and many in society) are more comfortable with black actors playing damaging, stereotypical roles involving criminality, violence, and deviance (remember back in 2002 when Denzel Washington finally won the Oscar for playing a crooked cop?); that male actors are failures if they appear in family-friendly movies, regardless of how economically successful these movies may be; that to be considered successful, male actors have to appear in movies geared towards male audiences.

Whatever the reason(s), it is embarassing for Hollywood and its “critics” to continue to be so ignorant. Eddie Murphy called out the movie industry’s racism at the 1988 Academy Awards during his presentation of the Best Picture award: “I’m going to give this award, but black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear anymore. I want you to recognize that.” Two decades later, Murphy finds himself riding the caboose, furnished by the creators of Tower Heist.