nation: China

Prompted by Gwen’s recent post on adoption announcement cards, Carmen from the excellent blog Racialicious sent us this link to a post about onesies for transnationally adopted infants by iBastard.  As iBastard says

…when people go out of their way to say something, there’s usually more to it than the literal message. There’s a metamessage (the message behind the message itself) or subtext of some kind.

These first two onesies (found at Racialicious and here respectively) are from children adopted from Guatemala:

And this one, also found at Racialicious, is for babies adopted from China:

The first and last one associate babies with goods (“special delivery” and “imported”) that can be bought.  Those with superior resources (i.e., Americans?) can buy these goods. 

The middle one de-humanizes Guatamalans.  As Resistance notes: What is a Guatling?  “Is it like an earthling? A foundling? An underling? A gosling? A yearling?” 

All advertise for others that these children are adopted transnationally.  And why might an adoptive parent want to advertise such things?  Without trivializing how much such parents love their children, we do seem to have a phenomenon in which a transnational adoption is considered a humanitarian good that proves you are not racist, into multiculturalism, and a card-carrying liberal good person (the discourse around Angelina Jolie’s adopted children is part of this).

What do you think the meta-messages are here?  iBastard offers a translation over at Racialicious

Oh and, in the spirit of resistance, check out this parody t-shirt made by iBastard:

Also in dressing your kids and meta-messages: leftish t-shirts for kids, “future M.I.L.F.” t-shirts and the like, “God Hates Fags” t-shirts, sexist t-shirts for kids, trucker girl booties, and more.

Other posts on advertising your politics on your metaphorical sleeve: “I’m Saving The Planet – What Are You Doing?”, “Tough Guys Wear Pink”, “Real Girls Eat Meat”, “True Love Waits”, “I Love My Big Tatas”, and “Use Your Period For Good”.

This Australian ad for Lipton tea suggests that it’s mind clarifying qualities are so good that it could help even George Bush achieve the feat of naming all 50 states.

 

This Brazilian ad for Rolling Stone, featuring a picture of George W. Bush, reads: “We don’t show naked women to sell more. At the most, we show some asses.”

 

This Chinese Greenpeace ad, portraying Bush’s spin on global warming, reads: “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Voice yours at forum.greenpeace.org.”

This Chinese ad for an erasable pen reads: “Everyone makes mistakes.” 

 

In Malaysia, Bush is used to sell Smart cars.  Text: “Still looking for weapons of mass destruction.  Not smart.” 

 

Also in Malaysia, Amnesty International makes fun of Bush in their effort to inspire opposition to Guantanamo Bay.  “Write to him and help stop torture at Guantanamo Bay.  Remember, use simple words.”

This is a Mexican ad for a dog kennel.  “We don’t discriminate any kind of breed.”  (The source says that, in Mexico, like in the U.S., “dog” is a name for a bad person.)

 This ad for a Mexican newspaper reads: “Such a complex world needs a good explanation.”

 

This is an ad for the movie American Psycho in New Zealand.

 

In Portugal, playing war games (paint ball) is advertised as equivalent to playing George W. Bush.

 

This Swiss ad threatens, if you fall off your bicycle without a helmet, you may end up as dumb as George W. Bush.

These and more borrowed from here, found via adfreak.

 

Update: There have been some really nice points in the comments about how, in the process of making fun of Bush, we are also seeing the further stigmatization of “people with developmental disabilities, brain injuries, and psychological diagnoses” (that from Penny in the comments). 

Apparently, if you use Viagra, your ejaculation will be so powerful that you will shoot sperm into space to aggressively penetrate Planet Egg:

Found here thanks to copyranter.

These images, via NPR, are of 86-year-old Zhou Guizhen. We were hesitant about posting them when they were first forwarded to us (without information of where they came from) because of concerns about how the pictures were taken–were they taken by a tourist, who was viewing this woman as a freak to laugh at? We were also concerned that presenting these pictures would objectify her, turning her into evidence that non-Western societies are barbaric and backward (and, therefore, that those of us in the West should pat ourselves on the back for how enlightened we are). This would be similar to how Muslim women who wear veils are used in discourses about how oppressive and barbaric Muslim societies are, with no allowance for the many meanings a veil can have and the fact that women are actors in their societies and may not all view the veil as automatically or unequivocally oppressive.

Ultimately we decided to post them when we were able to ascertain that they are publicly available. Also, the very fact that we ourselves struggled with what to make of them and how to present them, seemed to indicate that they are very powerful images that bring up complicated ideas about women, bodies, objectification, and how these are connected to judgments of the modernity or backwardness of cultures.

We post these pictures with the intention that we view this woman as a human being who embodies a complicated tradition. This means that we refrain from calling her, her body, or her culture any names that we would not want to be called ourselves (names like “grotesque,” “ignorant,” or “barbaric”). We hope that, as we view these images, we are mindful of the ways that bodies are altered across the globe and throughout history… not only in places that we do not understand, but in places that we understand only too well.

— Gwen and Lisa