nation: New Zealand

walking-woman-go

walking-woman-stop

On this sign, woman = person… and in most places in the world, most of the time, that is weird!

The sign, found here (via), can be found in Haarlem, Netherlands.

UPDATE: In the comments, Tara linked to a BBC story about Fuenlabrada, Spain. They’ve replaced half of all walk/don’t walk signs with figures in skirts.

And Astrid linked to some examples from Germany.

The social construction of female as skirted aside, neat!

Spain:

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Germany:

431px-Traffic_light_-_female_(aka)

NEW! Pharmacopaeia also linked to a sign from New Zealand:

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Also in the comments, Caroline asked us to link to our post where stick figures suddenly sprout skirts when paired with children.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

More ads portraying men as stupid and trivial. Click here for more.

Miguel E. found all of these here!

NEW: In our comments, Pharmacopaeia pointed us to this commerical from New Zealand:

See also bros before hos.

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.

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).