In case you haven’t seen the FOX News commentary in which the host suggests that a fist bump between Obama and his wife is a secret terrorist signal, you can see it here. (And I thought this was bad.)
Here’s an image of the infamous terrorist signal:
NEW! It’s not an image, but Patrice Evans has an interesting essay on the “fist bump heard ’round the world,” arguing we should celebrate National Fist Bump Day.
The graph below, from the New York Times, challenges a stereotype about Asian-Americans and their choice of major in college. The author writes:
The report found that contrary to stereotype, most of the bachelor’s degrees that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders received in 2003 were in business, management, social sciences or humanities, not in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering or math.
The article also discusses the way in which the category “Asian-American/Pacific Islander” makes invisible the dramatic discrepancy between the educational attainments of Asians who’s families immigrated from different places. For example, they write:
…while most of the nation’s Hmong and Cambodian adults have never finished high school, most Pakistanis and Indians have at least a bachelor’s degree.
The SAT scores of Asian-Americans, it said, like those of other Americans, tend to correlate with the income and educational level of their parents.
And, to a great degree, the success of a given Asian immigrant group in this society is correlated with the wealth of the nation from which they immigrated.
The other day I came upon this fashion spread in a magazine:
I’m not sure which magazine–I want to say Lucky, but I’m not certain. I just scanned in part of it–I cut out a few things that weren’t that interesting so I could get it in a single scan.
Anyway, I noticed it’s called “Ethnic,” and I started thinking about that label, what makes these “ethnic,” and the choice of that word to describe fashion. The most common element to the collection is animal prints–zebra, leopard, snakeskin, croc, peacock feathers. There were a couple of things that I believe were supposed to be recognizable as “African” prints. I guess those brown shorts are “ethnic” because of the material they’re made from.
But why do we call these fashions “ethnic”? Why not “global”? Or “nature,” since the main themes seem to be animal prints and natural fibers? Or “international”? Why do animal prints, feathers, and grass fibers = ethnic?
It made me think about the way that the things that certain groups do or have go unmarked–so here, there is a category of fashion that is “ethnic,” while apparently all other clothing is ethnicity-less. When I carry a woven bag or wear a shirt with tropical-looking leaves on it, I’m being ethnic, but if I put that purse down and pick up a blue leather one, or change into a shirt with a maple leaf on it, I’d stop being ethnic and go back to being…well, presumably plain-old white, the non-ethnic, non-marked category.
I just thought this might be interesting for a discussion about race and which groups are marked as having a race or ethnicity and which ones (in the U.S., primarily whites) are treated as though they do not have a race/ethnicity and thus aren’t relevant to discussions about racial issues. Or maybe when talking about race/ethnicity as a marketing tool, as something you can put on and take off at will.
Yesterday, one of my favorite blogs, Sociological Images, picked apart amputee alt model Viktoria’s appearance in Bizarre Magazine.
What makes Viktoria “bizarre”? Is it her amputated leg? Is it the fact that she has an amputated leg and is still incredibly sexy? Or is it that she has an amputated leg and still considers herself a sexual person? Is this empowering? And to who? Surely the disabled are desexualized in this country, so it’s nice to see that challenged even, I suppose, in a magazine about weirdos. And yet, I suspect her sexuality is acceptable, fetishizable, only because she conforms to expectations of feminine beauty. In the big scheme of things, does she reproduce the standard of beauty, unattainable for most women, that crushes women’s self-esteem and sense of self-worth? And will disabled women, most of whom (like most non-disabled women) could never dream of being so beautiful, actually look at her and be able to identify? Or will this just draw attention to another way in which they don’t match up?
Now really, I think that SocImages went a little overboard with Viktoria (especially when they dismissed her comments about sexuality as “standard porn star talk”). Maybe it’s because I know her little better than they do, but I think that they oversimplify the genuine place that she comes from in choosing to be a model. However, they do bring up an important discussion that’s been nagging me for some time. What is an alternative model, and what is an alt model’s role in visual culture? In my life, at various points, I came up with 3 different definitions. I believe in each of them, and I have a problem with each of them as well. Here they are below. Which one resonates with you? Do you think it’s a combination of the three below, or something completely different? Opinions, please.
1. The model who challenges society’s notions of beauty.
Examples:
Kenyan-born trans model Biko Beauttah, photographed by Bode Helm.
Velvet D’Amour, photography credit unavailable.
I love these models, but the issue here is that, while they appear to push the boundaries of beauty in some direction, they usually wind up brutally reinforcing another traditional notion in the process. For example, trans models make us rethink gender/beauty, but with their self-presentation they usually reinforce the ideal of a sleek, hairless feminine figure, thus fueling the hair-removal industry. In fact, epilator-manufacturer Philips Norelco has already found a way to to capitalize on this to great effect – just watch this ad. And large models like Velvet D’Amour and skinny-by-comparison but still-considered-plus-size recent ANTM winner Whitney Thompson help to redefine weight in modeling, but what makes them “legitimately beautiful” in the eyes of the mainstream world is their “correct” bone structure, their blond hair. Without some “redeeming quality” of this sort, the world doesn’t recognize them as models, and wouldn’t even give them a shot at making a difference. Mainstream media often presents them as beautiful “in spite of,” not “because of.” While their individual messages are empowering (I love Velvet’s interviews), I don’t find our culture’s use of these models empowering at all.
2. The hottie with strange hair/tattoos/piercings/latex.
Examples:
Mosh, photographed by Vance.
Scar13, photograhed by Nadya Lev.
Like it or not, it’s a valid definition – arguably the most widely-embraced one at that. This idea is epitomized by the Suicide Girls motto: “redefining beauty, one hot, naked chick at a time.” Underneath all the hair dye and black eyeliner, the ideal remains the same: symmetrical faces, clear skin and slim figures with a slightly above-average degree of variation as compared to mainstream modeling. Alterna-porn sites and alt modeling agencies such as Nocturnal Models helped cement this concept, but the biggest reinforcement came from self-proclaimed “alt photographers” and “alt models,” in whom they chose to include and exclude as they built up their online “spheres of influence.” This definition doesn’t make me happy now, though I had no problem with it at 21, when all I did was go clubbing and take pictures that reminded me of how I felt when I was dressed-up on the dance floor. When I realized that my own photography was reinforcing the same standards of beauty that make it difficult for women to have a healthy self-image, I took a step back.
3. The self-made persona.
Examples:
Feisty Diva wearing a hairpiece she created, photographed by Nadya Lev.
Anachronaut, photographed by Nadya Lev.
Another definition of alt model is someone who completely reinvents themselves from head to toe. This could be someone you’d never otherwise notice on the street, yet through inventive styling, self-applied makeup, self-styled clothing and hair, they create a whole new persona for themselves. The ultimate example of this is Mana, who goes from being a middle-aged man to a gothic Loli. These people make up their own beauty, owning their look from head to toe for the purpose of expressing an artistic ideal, proving a political point, etc. But are are they really “models,” or artists who allow you to take their portrait? It’s the most positive concept to me, but is it a valid definition of “model”?
So there you have it. Three definitions, some of which conflict with each other. And still, even after writing all of this out, I’m not sure if I’m even satisfied with my own personal definition, which draws on all three. Something’s bothering me. Something’s missing. Anyone have any idea?
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Nadya Lev, a photographer, blogs for the Coilhouse.
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.
I don’t have an image for this post. What I have is a quote from Bill Napoli, a South Dakota state senator. He doesn’t believe that bills banning abortion should have an exception in cases of rape, because if the woman “really” deserved to get one, she could get it under the health-of-the-mother exception. Here is a direct quote:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
I came upon part of this quote in issue #40 of Bitch magazine (p. 17), but I found the full quote here (scroll down a little past halfway).
What’s interesting to me here isn’t about abortion per se, but the implication of who would and wouldn’t “really” suffer if they were impregnated from a rape. Apparently if you aren’t a virgin or religious, or ARE a virgin but weren’t necessarily planning on staying that way until marriage, then being raped and getting pregnant just wouldn’t be as traumatic as it would to “nice” girls.
It’s also creepy how we often like to think in rather fine detail about the ways good little virgins can be violated. I mean, he could have just said “she was raped,” but no, he decides to make it a bit more graphic. And how bad is “as bad as you can possibly make it”? Is there some measuring stick for how traumatizing different violations are, so you can be sure the girl has suffered enough to qualify as a deserving victim?
It reminds me of an article I read about the myth of the black rapist and the virginal white victim in the post-Reconstruction South (sorry, I don’t remember the article); the author said that detailed stories about how animalistic, savage black men had ravaged delicate white women served as a form of folk porn–people repeated the stories over and over, embellishing as they went. Telling rape stories provided a socially sanctioned outlet for people to talk about sex even in “nice” society, since you were only doing it to warn others of the danger, of course.
So even though there’s no image, I thought the quote might spark some interesting classroom discussion, either about abortion or about sexuality, victimization, and the enduring idea of the deserving and undeserving rape survivor. Or, hell, even a discussion of the social construction of porn–I mean, if you took Napoli’s exact words and put them in a different context and didn’t tell people he was a senator discussing a proposed bill, I bet a lot of people would think it was obscene but interpret it very differently since he was just talking about a hypothetical situation while discussing serious matters such as the law.
Rap is fascinating in that, in the short history of the art form, it represents both the power of resistance by marginalized and disempowered groups and the power of appropriation by mainstream culture and capitalist commodification. With this in mind, I bring your attention to the cover of Nas‘ new album cover (tentatively set to release on July 1st) (found here):
The image immediately brings to mind (I can only imagine deliberately) the famous photograph of the back of a whipped slave from 1863 (found here). I’ll go ahead and put it after the jump, as it’s a very real and troubling historical photograph:
Marc sent in this image (found here):
According to this site, the photo was taken by Margaret Bourke-White; this site, where you can buy old issues of LIFE magazine, lists the photo in the index for the February 15, 1937, issue. Apparently the people standing in line were flood victims.
This is a great image for sparking discussion about “the American Way” and what that was meant to be (clearly white and presumably middle-class, from the mural), and the ways in which non-whites (and poor whites) are often invisible in depictions of what America is. And, of course, it could be a great image for a discussion of rhetoric and propaganda (for instance, murals proclaiming how wonderful the standard of living is even though the Great Depression was by no means over).
Thanks, Marc!
One of my students last semester wrote a paper in which she looked at sexist images of Condoleezza Rice. Interestingly, much of the online discourse was very similar to the way people talk negatively about Hillary Clinton. It was fascinating to see the same themes used by people with different political viewpoints in their criticisms–both Hillary and Condoleezza were described as bitches and whores and as ugly man-hater lesbians. My student argued persuasively that the reason the online attacks on the two women were so similar was because they weren’t being viewed as politicians or through the lens of their policies, but instead the attacks used a sexist lens that focused on their femaleness–and willingness to trespass on male-dominated political terrain–as the thing to attack, rather than any specific action or policy. Unfortunately for the blog, though good for humanity, I didn’t find as many images that had been made to accompany the hateful rhetoric about Condi as about Hillary.
Here’s an image (found here) I came across (note that George Bush’s face has been super-imposed on the handler):
Both Hillary and Condi are often described as ugly. However, I noticed when searching for images of Condoleezza that both supporters and critics occasionally sexualized her (especially in reference to a pair of stiletto-heeled boots that got a lot of public attention at one point). I haven’t found similar images of Hillary from either supporters or critics (whether it would be preferable to be sexualized by a supporter or opponent, I’m not sure). I found this image of Condi in a bathtub here, though it was posted on several other websites I came across in a really brief search.
This bathing suit image came from here.
Unsurprisingly, Condoleezza’s race is also a focus in online discussions in a way that Hillary’s isn’t, such as this image (found here) that plays on the idea of the Uncle Tom (the implication being that Black Republicans or military hawks are puppets used by Whites for their own agenda–that is, that they are either duped or are trying to get power by appeasing Whites):
NEW: p.j. sent in this sexualized picture of Condi:
Thanks, p.j.!
