sex

I found this list of rules posted by the Lansing, Michigan, Chief of Police in dance halls during the 1920s in Allan Brandt’s book No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880:

I don’t know what a “gratusque” dance, from point 3, is–maybe “grotesque” spelled incorrectly?

Notice the association of jazz with sexual impropriety. And although I think most readers, like me, will read the list and laugh at the fact that people thought dancing was so problematic, keep in mind that there are still many people who do. In college a friend told me he had never been allowed to go to a dance of any sort because his parents were from an evangelical Christian group that thought dancing was evil and led to sexual promiscuity. He’d also never eaten a single piece of Halloween candy, which horrified me way more than never going to a dance. I apparently am a tool of evil because I insisted that he enjoy the pleasures of Halloween candy for the first time. Next thing you know, he was drinking and smoking pot, proving that candy is a gateway drug.

True story.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Nadya L. sent in a video, embedded below, produced by a Christian anti-pornography initiative. It uses the logic that all women involved in sex work are “somebody’s daughter” and, thus, men should not consume pornography.

Ross Rosenberg at Coilhouse points out that the video erases the possibility that participating in the production of porn does not, inherently, ruin women foreverandever (and, thus, dads and moms should not necessarily be disappointed when their daughter participates in sex work). More provocatively, he asks:

[Why is] the idea of that the object of ones lustful desires is ‘somebody’s daughter’… a functional deterrent…[?]… Really, what is this video talking about here? Is it a serenade to the sanctity of our children’s innocence; the preciousness of their safety or merely the thinking that, if someone masturbates to images of my daughter, she has embarrassed me. If this was your daughter, what shame would it bring down upon you, her father? [Why would it] …be terrible for you and your family if it was discovered that your daughter was a pornstar or a stripper?

In my Power and Sexuality course, I discuss sex work and empowerment. Instead of essentializing both femininity and sex work and arguing that all sex work is inherently oppressive to women, I suggest that social conditions (such as patriarchy) and institutional features (such as pro- versus anti-unionization measures) shape the work environment of sex workers in positive and negative ways. Instead of asking: “Is sex work oppressive to women?” I ask: “What makes sex work more and less oppressive to women?” I think the latter leads to a much more interesting conversation.

For more posts trying to think through the topic of sex work, see here, here, here, here, and here.

—————————

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

The following is a print ad from those one-trick ponies over at Axe Body Spray in an ongoing effort to market shower products to men.

The text pointing to the black part of the “Axe Detailer Shower Tool” (the name of which is worth a post all by itself) says:

“Washes Jessica’s perfume off your ear.”

The text pointing to the red part of the “Tool” says:

“Scrubs Jessica’s Mom’s perfume off your knees.”

I guess the take-home message is that you can exfoliate, but still be masculine enough to have a creepy three-way sexual relationship with women who are related to each other by blood.

By the way, what’s up with that?  The heterosexual male fantasy of being sexually serviced by two women is so common as to have become a cliché, but what about the less-frequently endorsed but still prevalent fantasy about those women being sisters (or better yet, identical twins!) or a mother-daughter pair?  Is it simple attraction (i.e., if you’re attracted to one woman in a family, it’s likely you’ll be attracted to other women who look/act like her)?  Is it the taboo element?  Or does the power to coerce women into an incestuous situation serve as its own reward?

Still, Axe got one thing right with this product.  When I think about a guy who would buy this sponge in the hopes of securing sexual relations with a woman and her mother, I can’t help but think of him as a, well…tool.

In the documentary Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video, Sut Jhally investigates how images of sex and violence, and sexualized violence against women, are used in music videos, and how music videos help shape ideas of what is sexy. Here’s a clip:

The entire, unabridged version of the film is available here.

Elle sent in a link to the video for Lady Gaga’s song “Paparazzi,” which features one extended scene of sexualized violence (starting at about 1:45) and several other glimpses of women throughout the video who appear to be dead (it’s really worth watching the entire video–it’s something else):

Of course, Lady Gaga would probably argue that this video is in fact opposing violence against women, since in the end the evil paparazzi boyfriend gets killed. But there’s the same imagery Sut Jhally discusses: the mixture of sexuality with violence and hints of brutality, and of injured or dead women in glamorous, sexy clothing. Notice that in the opening sequence, the “normal” sex doesn’t look too much different than the violence that follows.

Other examples of sexualized or glamorized violence: strangling a woman with your necktie, suffering women as a turn-on, murder in a Wrangler’s ad, photo shoot with Rene Russo, t-shirts trivialize violence against women, is it a passionate embrace or an attack?, condom ads, ad for “The Tudors,” women’s discomfort is fashionable, Hunting for Bambi, the infamous Dolce & Gabbana ad, and “American’s Next Top Model.”

In response to Gwen’s post on butts, I offer you crotches.  We’re being super highbrow today.

The following not-safe-for-work ads place a product (or copy) at a woman’s crotch.  Are they promising sexual access?  Just trying to draw attention?  Using shock tactics?  I don’t know.

more...

I have been fascinated over the past week by news coverage of the newly discovered “Venus” figurine that is believed to be the oldest human carving ever found. In this post, I’m trying to work out my thoughts.

News coverage has described the figurine with terms like “sexy,” “erotic,” “sexually-suggestive,” “sexually-charged,” “busty,” “pornographic,” and “pin up.” I’m not sure what to make of this.  There is no possible way that we could understand the meaning–or, let’s face it, multitude of contested meanings–that such a figure could have carried for those who made it.  All interpretations are projections of our own contemporary sensibilities.

Perhaps especially because of this, I am dumbfounded as to the ease with which news coverage describes the figurine as sexy.

From a contemporary U.S. perspective, the figure would not be considered sexy. Bodies such as that portrayed in this “Venus” are considered grotesque today and people who are sexually attracted to such bodies are considered deviant. It’s amazing to me that this is so completely unnoticed in news coverage. Instead, the figure is seen as obviously sexual exactly because the body is fat.

I think this could be explained with our contemporary social construction of fatness. Fat symbolizes excess. Fat people are presumed to have appetites in excess, for sex as well as for food. Fat women in the media are often portrayed as highly, even aggressively, sexual (think Mimi from The Drew Carey Show, the way that Star Jones’ role developed on The View, even Karen Walker on Will & Grace who, by modern standards and compared to Grace, was “curvy”).  The figurine is described as somehow obviously in excess.  The coverage includes terms like “protruding,” “exaggerated,” “grossly exaggerated,” “enormous,” “aggressive,” “enlarged,” “bloated,” “huge,” “bulbous,” “oversized,”  “outsized,” “distorted,” “swollen,” and “with breasts that make Dolly Parton look flat-chested.”  Granted, the figure may be somewhat disproportionate (and I emphasize may be), but our interest in its disproportionality seems somewhat disproportionate as well.

Maybe this is intersecting with our own assumptions as to the primitiveness of the people who carved the figure. The primitive is also a socially constructed idea and we often think that primitive people have closer ties to their baser instincts.  From that perspective, maybe being sexually attracted to excessive sexuality makes sense.

So maybe the combination of our social construction of fat and our social construction of the primitive explains why the contradiction–the figurine is obviously sexy, but women who have that body today are considered the antithesis of sexy–is going unmarked. I’m not sure. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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.

Several readers sent in this charming Nikon ad (found, among other places, at What a Crazy Happenstance), where we learn that women with bigger boobs are the equivalent of a higher-quality camera:

Sigh. It’s apparently quite highly rated on diggit–it’s the Best Camera Ad Ever!

Thanks to Taylor, Connie J., Jeff G., and Emma B.!

I guess sociologists are off the charts!

Here, via The American Virgin.