media

Crossposted at Jezebel.

Sarah Barnes, who blogs at Uplift, expressed surprise at seeing the ad below in Grazia magazine:

She found herself surprised, she explains, because it took a minute for it to sink in that the dolls weren’t real people…

She explains:

In a time when everything is photoshopped to such disastrous levels, there really isn’t that much difference between a Ralph Lauren advert using a real model and an ASOS ad using Barbies. When fashion just has to be seen on ‘perfect’ women, we are becoming used to seeing a Barbie-like cookie cutter version of what women look like in our magazines.

So, this is why I screamed. Because, for a second there, I thought the Barbies were real women.

Do they freak you out a bit?

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.

Jay Livingston, who blogs at MontClair SocioBlog, put up a set of ads for a bank that illustrate a basic sociological insight. The message in the ads is “Different values make the world a richer place” and they each feature the same image triply labeled.

Privilege.  Sacrifice.  Role model.

Decor.  Souvenir.  Place of prayer.

Freedom.  Status symbol.  Polluter.

Style.  Soldier.  Survivor.

Glorified.  Vilified.  Gentrified.

They say that a photograph is worth a thousand words, but this exercise reminds us how much words, even one word, can shape our interpretation of an image. The world doesn’t just exist, it must always be interpreted. Those immediately around us have a great ability to influence how we see the world, but the people with power over media do also… and their power is vast.

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 this video, sent in by Martha, Lindsay Ellis asks why it is that female characters in general-audience cartoons, if present at all, are always plot points for the male characters. Her point is clearly sound, but damn does she marshal the evidence!  She appears to have really done her homework… but I have no doubt that those of you who are experts in My Little Pony, Transformers, Scooby Do, and She-Ra will have something to add.

Here’s another video on the same topic:

For more on the phenomenon in which women are women and men are people, see our analysis of the “Human” Bodies exhibit, girls as an afterthought, dinosaurs are for boys (and girls), traffic lights with female figures, stick figures and stick figures who parent, and default avatars.

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 BBC TV show Newswipe makes hilarious fun of common, trite elements of news reports in this video, which has replaced the tickle kitten as my current favorite video:

Kelly V. sent in a video by Alisa Miller of Public Radio International about the impact of news coverage on what we know about. In particular, she argues that changes in the U.S. news media, such as shutting down expensive foreign bureaus, have led to less coverage of events or issues in other countries:

For other examples of the role of media outlets in signaling what’s worth talking about, check out our posts on media outlets covering celebrity stories while chastising us for caring, presenting polls in the media, what stories get covered?, people are more interested in Tiger Woods than Afghanistan, meaningless statistics, U.S. and international versions of magazine covers, “us and them,” which missing kids get news coverage?, covering Obama and McCain, covering Obama and Clinton, and what’s worth covering in a slideshow?

Gwen mentioned recently that the real purpose of television wasn’t to entertain you, but to collect a predictable audience that networks could then sell to companies.  Commercials.  Commercials are the reason that programming exists.

In that light, it’s interesting to see what’s happening on Hulu, a website devoted to watching television programs.  Jody and Karyn G. sent in this screen shot of a prompt at the beginning of a show asking, nicely, what kind of “ad experience” she would “prefer”:

First, I think the question is hilarious.  “Ad experience” is an awesome euphemism for “effort at manipulation.”  And, of course, the real question that is being asked is “Who are you?”  Like with Facebook, they need to know.

Second, asking the question is a new tool for marketers made possible by a this new way of delivering programming to one person at a time.  Presumably, I am only one person and either a “him” or a “her.”  If the marketers can ascertain this, they can target their commercials even more effectively than when they were advertising on Spike TV and during Oprah (because they are only guessing who is watching in those cases, but I’m straight up telling them in this one).

Of course, this all depends on us being predictable and obedient consumers… and I bet some of us very much aren’t.

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.

Is “princess” being redefined?

One of the compliments aimed at the new Disney movie, The Princess and the Frog, is that the heroine isn’t just a pretty face, but in fact an entrepreneur who wants to open her own restaurant and is uninterested in catching a man.  This observation was made to me, for example, when I was interviewed for a story by CNN reporter Breenana Hare, who suggested that this new princess was making a break with the old princesses in more than one way.

I replied that this “new” kind of princess had been on the scene for a while.  Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, according to imdb, was “a bookworm who dream[t] of life outside her provincial village,” not of a prince charming.  That was 20 years ago.  Both Pocohantas and Mulan were adventurous and brave.  Most princesses, these days, are not perfect embodiments of femininity, they balance their femininity with a bit of masculinity.  It’s ‘cess + sass as a rule.

But, to be fair, these princesses aren’t radical.  They aren’t pushing the envelope of femininity.  They are only reflecting the fact that ideal femininity in the West has changed such that the perfect woman now incorporates some masculine character traits.  “Some” is the operative word here.  Today’s ideal woman is still feminine, but she works, wears pants, and plays sports.  She may even be a sports fan and drink beer.  But she also preserves her femininity, especially those aspects of femininity that mark her as “for” a (just barely and totally benevolently of course) dominant male.  She still doesn’t disagree too vigorously or laugh too loud.  She marries a man who is slightly older, more educated, larger, taller, and makes a bit more money at his job that is just slightly higher prestige.  And, no matter what, she looks, dresses, and moves in pretty, feminine ways.  Barbie and the Three Musketeers is another, non-Disney example of this phenomenon:

Not a man in sight!  But damn do they look good in those boots!

Simon O. also sent in a Barbie website that fits this theme nicely.  It asks “What Should Barbie Be Next?” and let’s us vote on her next profession: pet vet, race car driver, ballerina, baby sitter, “kid doctor,” rock star, pediatric dentist, or wedding stylist. Barbie can be anything she wants, as long as she looks great doing it.  Or maybe it’s that Barbie can be anything she wants because she looks good doing it.

The new rule is: a girl can be anything, as long as she’s hot (and deferent when push comes to shove).  Whether she likes it or not, she always gets the guy in the end because, well, she’s so damn sweet and adorable (and, yes, those words are totally coded with gendered meaning).  This fact, the fact that she always still ends up with the guy in the end, is a really important part of this story… it reminds us that getting the guy is still the happy ending… even the little girls in the bike commercial came away with a “prince.”

So, yeah, we can debate about whether these princesses are a qualitative and substantial break from previous princesses.  I’m not sure they are.  Or, if they are, I’m not sure the difference is all that fantastic, given that the ideal is still incredibly rigid and damn difficult to live up to.  And I’m not even sure I like this new (impossible) ideal any better than the old (impossible) ideal.  What we see today is a couple generations of women who are expected to be both masculine and feminine.  As if staying fit, looking lovely, smelling great, volunteering, and having a clean house, a sexually satiated husband, and behaved, brilliant, well-adjusted children wasn’t enough of a job… women now have to be go-getters at the law firm and ass-kickers on the court.   It’s called The Second Shift and women work more and relax less than men.

For more examples of the ideal balance of femininity and masculinity, see these posts on pinkifying masculine jobs, prints, and hobbies (sports and guns), the “girl” ranchhand, this ad suggesting that a girl’s razor should be “no girly man,” the social construction of female athletes (here and here), and the color blue.

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.

Michelle D. sent in this cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly featuring Sarah Murdoch, which includes the text “why she wanted an all natural covershoot”:

As Michelle pointed out, the woman has visible wrinkles, but she’s clearly wearing a significant amount of makeup (and teeth that are either bleached or covered with veneers), leading her to wonder what “all natural” means. As it turns out, it means that she wasn’t airbrushed or photoshopped. If you google “Australian Women’s Weekly Sarah Murdoch,” you’ll find a ton of stories about it.

Now, let me be clear: I’m not trying to minimize the courage it took for Sarah Murdoch to insist that her cover be un-touched-up or to speak in interviews about resisting the pressure to hide all signs of aging. Nor am I saying that wearing makeup is evil.

I’m just saying that, as I was reading the many stories in other news outlets about the cover, and looking at that “all natural” on the cover, and then looking at her face, I couldn’t help but think that it says something about the level of inhuman youthful perfection we currently expect of celebrities that this woman’s face, which as far as I can tell is flawless, would ever “require” touching up at all, and that showing herself looking like this is a major act of bravery and resistance because under normal circumstances, her face would be defined as unfit for a cover without technological “fixing”…and that all that makeup, teeth whitening, and eyebrow sculpting don’t undermine the claim to being “all natural” because we just take those things for granted now.