bodies: objectification

At first I thought that this vintage Honda ad was aimed at women who wanted to do lots of “things.” And then I realized, no, despite the fact that all the women look alike, the ad is actually aimed at men who get to have “things,” like “Michelle and Tammy and Alison.”

Selected text:

But what would you rather have? Automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a 400-horse-power engine?

Or Michelle and Tammy and Alison?

More examples of women being conflated with things here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Found at Vintage Ads.

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

I recently posted about the de-gaying of the movie A Single Man in promotional posters and trailers for different audiences. James H. (of Town Creek Poetry) sent us an example of how the cover of the book Spice & Wolf was changed for the U.S. market (the original is the Japanese version; image found at siliconera):

So we move from a fully-clothed manga character to a cover with a photo of a naked woman with her head cut out of the image, removing all subjectivity. The publisher says they did so in order to try to draw in a wider audience than people who are already interested in manga, and apparently they decided that a naked woman is the way to draw the interest of U.S. readers.

I wish I could say they’re totally wrong and it would never work. But clearly Evony also thought it would be effective. I wish I knew how their sales have changed as their advertising became more boob-centric.

Kay, a student at a University in Munich, sent along an invitation for a Corps Isaria fraternity, or or “Burschenschafts,” party. The cover for the invitation reads “Isarias Gute Kinderstube” which, she explains, “translates literally to good nursery and means something like being well raised, knowing how to behave.”

When you open the invitation you see a naked woman, covered only by a teddy bear, alongside baby-related items (a Snuffalufagus, a rocking Zebra, and a crib) and party-related items (a disco ball, a stag’s head, and high heeled shoes):

Kay explains that the copy, “Das Corps Isaria gibt sich die Ehre und laedt zur eskaloesesten Pyjamaparty der Stadt” translates into something like “The Corps Isaria is honored to host the most risque sleepover in town.”

The invitation is another example of the infantilization of women. Or, as Kay put it, a “mixture of the male gaze and child porn fetishism.”

For more infantilization of women, see here, here, here, here, and here, and here.

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

As far as I can figure it, Halloween costumes come in three categories: scary, funny, or fantastical.  This is why dressing up like another “race” or “culture” for Halloween is racist.  A “Mexican Man,” for example (see below), should not be presented as scary, funny, or fantastical.

Brooke, at Whebr’s Hotub’s Blog, expresses her frustration for people who dress us like an “Indian”:

Why is it socially acceptable to dress like the stereotypical Indian: “Brave”,”Chief”, “Princess”, “Squaw”, “Maiden”? Pardon Moi, but when did the Native American enter the realm of Wizards, Fairies, Super-heroes, Goblins, or Ghouls? When did it become ok to reduce the diversity, language, and culture of nearly 500 different Indigenous tribes into a tacky “costume” of cheap suede, colored feathers, plastic beads, and fringe? Who decided that the history, identity, and lineage of Native Americans could be easily put on and taken off like greasy Halloween face paint?

Brooke features a whole host of “Indian” costumes at her site, including this one:

Illustrating the way in which these costumes tend to collapse culturally distinct groups into a cheap stereotype, Costume Craze has a whole section of the website devoted to “History and World Culture Costumes.”

Here’s a sample of the “Asian costumes” (don’t miss the fantastic font):

“Indian costumes”:

“Mexican costumes”:

Fatemeh Fakhraie, at Racialicious, points out how “Middle Eastern” costumes reinforce both ignorance and negative stereotypes.  Regarding the “Sheik of Persia Arabian Costume” costume shown below, she says:

History lesson: Persia didn’t have sheikhs, they had shahs. And Persia and Arabia were two different places! AKH!

…of course he has a knife! All Middle Eastern men are dangerous, didn’t you know? You can even tell by his face: he’s pissed, and he’s going to take it out on some infidels!

For good measure, Cindy at Lotería Chicana has collected a set of racist Halloween costumes that she photographed at a store called Spirit in San Francisco.  A selection:

UPDATE!  Awesome tidbit from Rosemary in the comments thread:

The geisha one in particular makes me wince, partly because the “kimono” is tied the wrong way (the only time you ever tie it that way is when a person is dead)…

Of course, that’s actually perfect for Halloween!  But somehow I don’t think that’s what SPIRIT is going for.

More…

And my favorite, the “Dream Catcher”:

Does making fun of white people (“tighty whiteys”) make it all equal?

The thing that amazes me most about these costumes is that they’re everywhere.  You can’t escape them.  And no one seems to notice or care.  For example, this “Hey Amigo” costume can be purchased at the Linens N Things website:

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

In the early 1980s the Reagan Administration engaged in an active campaign to demonize welfare and welfare recipients. Those who received public assistance were depicted as lazy free-loaders who burdened good, hard-working taxpayers. Race and gender played major parts in this framing of public assistance: the image of the “welfare queen” depicted those on welfare as lazy, promiscuous women who used their reproductive ability to have more children and thus get more welfare. This woman was implicitly African American, such as the woman in an anecdote Reagan told during his 1976 campaign (and repeated frequently) of a “welfare queen” on the South Side of Chicago who supposedly drove to the welfare office to get her check in an expensive Cadillac (whether he had actually encountered any such woman, as he claimed, was of course irrelevant).

The campaign was incredibly successful: once welfare recipients were depicted as lazy, promiscuous Black women sponging off of (White) taxpayers, public support for welfare programs declined. The negative attitude toward both welfare and its recipients lasted after Reagan left office; the debate about welfare reform in the mid-1990s echoed much of the discourse from the 1980s. Receiving public assistance was shameful; being a recipient was stigmatized.

Abby K. recently found an old Sesame Street segment called “I Am Somebody.” Jesse Jackson leads a group of children in an affirmation that they are “somebody,” and specifically includes the lines “I may be poor” and “I may be on welfare”:

(Originally found at the Sesame Street website.)

I realized just how effective the demonization of welfare has been when I was actually shocked to hear kids, in a show targeted at other kids, being led in a chant that said being poor or on welfare shouldn’t be shameful and did not reduce their worth as human beings. Can you imagine a TV show, even on PBS, putting something like this on the air today? Our public discourse at this point says that being on welfare is shameful, and that those receiving it in fact aren’t “somebody.” They are dependents, lazy loafers, and their kids are just additional burdens on the state; they don’t have the same rights to dignity and respect as other citizens, and they certainly shouldn’t expect to get it.

Of course, the totally confused looks on some of the kids’ faces are hysterical.

One of my former students, Janel B., sent me to this post called “Don’t Sleep on Africa” on the fashionable Livejournal community called black cigarette, and thereby introducing me to the South African photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko and her amazing portraits of Johannesburg stylish street denizens.

The entire post at black cigarette begins with this brief intervention into the problematically differential distribution of “style:”

Stockholm. Paris. London. New York. Helsinki. Milan. Tokyo.

These seem to be to go-to places when it comes to “street-style” and what’s hot in general on most fashion blogs, but I just wanted to share some of the street-style you’ll find on the African continent…. South African street style is rarely sleek and chic – it’s irreverent, vibrant and daring. It mixes patterns and textures, with echoes of mid 70s style (and just a splash of “geek chic”).

(Consider too the fact that Feedshion, which collects “the best street fashion photos from all the greatest street style blogs for your viewing pleasure,” happens to feature only street style blogs from the usual suspects and none from South America or Africa.)

The photo-heavy post is a wonderful contrast to those editorials in American and European fashion magazines whose visual vocabularies for “Africa” are unbelievably narrow and alienating (Galliano, I’m looking at you and your “tribal” fetish figure shoes). The continued refusal to see the African other as coeval (that is, contemporaneous) with the so-called modern observer, most obviously manifested in the classification of “tribal chic,” betrays the still-haunting presence of colonial aesthetics in Western art and design.

I wish I could repost all the photographs, but I will settle for a handful from Veleko.

Edited to add additional links supplied by Sociological Images and Racialicious, by way of the LJ community Debunking White.

Gorgeous photos from South African photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko.

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Based outside of Chicago, Mimi Thi Nguyen scours thrift and vintage stores with reckless abandon. She writes about neoliberalism and humanitarianism from a transnational feminist analytic, which includes the “management” of refugee crises but also beauty as a civilizing project.  She blogs at Threadbared.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

Tracy H. and a friend were shopping in some expensive kitchen/housewares stores in Kits, an upscale  neighborhood on the west side of Vancouver. In one store they came upon a display of kitchen utensils (salt and pepper shakers, timers, and so on) designed to look like Asians, complete with slanted eyes and what Tracy calls “rice-paddy hats”:

Here’s another set in the display case:

So we have a display case in an expensive store full of utensils meant to be cutesy and funny, and where items shaped like monkeys, rabbits, faceless blobs, and Asians are all presented as equivalent adorable, humorous, hip options.

UPDATE: Commenter London Mabel gave us a link to the National Palace Museum in Taiwan’s website; the Asian kitchen utensils are part of the “Chin Family Series’:

Drawing his inspiration from a picture of the young Chin seen on a visit to the NPM, one of ALESSI’s main designers Stefano Giovannoni created The Chin Family series– “Mr. Chin” and other items in the series including the salt & peppershaker set “Mr. and Mrs. Chin”, the eggcup and timer…Customers around the globe will have the opportunity to take home a piece of ancient Chinese history brought tastefully into fashion!

So what do you think? Cute? Neutral? Problematic? Does it make a difference that the majority of people who see them probably don’t know about the context and just seem them as Asian-themed utensils? Would people of Asian descent living in the U.S., Canada, and other countries possibly feel differently about seeing things like this on display or sale than the directors of the museum?

Other examples of modern racial caricatures on sale: golliwogs, mammie souvenirs in Georgia, and an Icelandic reproduction of 10 Little Negro Boys.

Sometimes you see an image or video that is pretty subtle and complicated, and it takes some mental wrangling to figure out what it’s conveying and what cultural ideas it’s drawing on or contradicting.

And then there are things like this, sent in by Joshua B.:

1. Normalization of heterosexual male gaze (until the very end)

2. Girls getting naked

3. While washing a car ‘n stuff

4. And they come in various ethnic flavors

That’s pretty much it.

About the man at the end, reader Victoria says,

I think it’s still the male gaze – just adding gay men to the mix at the end. The “Or, if you prefer” (or whatever they say) seems to clearly speak to the men in the audience.

I agree.