Sociological Images

T-Shirts for Babies and Children

wendy on February 3, 2008

From an article in the UK TimesOnline via an article on a bed for little girls called “Lolita.”

Yes, all these t-shirts come in children’s and baby sizes…

aa bb sent us two more images of t-shirts on sale at Target that get at the idea of little girls as spoiled future divas.

“Born to be spoiled.”

“Someday I’ll demand a pony.”

NEW! Natalie K. sent in some more examples of kids’ t-shirts with sexual messages, these from the clothing company Cotton on Kids (she believes it’s an Australian company).

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(Found at the Herald Sun.)

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(From news.com.au)

Tao Nightclub: The Sexualized Asian Body

Gwen Sharp, PhD on January 21, 2008

This is an ad for Tao Asian bistro and nightclub in Las Vegas. The tagline is “Always a happy ending.” Note the naked woman’s body with the presumably Chinese characters on her. And of course a “happy ending” is often associated with Asian massage parlors…

Knowledge About The Clitoris And Orgasm For Women

Lisa Wade, PhD on January 17, 2008

Shameless self-promotion… and some really interesting findings regarding knowledge and frequency of orgasm in a non-random population of undergraduates. This first graph shows the percent of male and female respondents who (1) correctly located the clitoris on a map of the vulva and (2) correctly answered a series of true/false questions about the clitoris.

You’ll see that there is surprising little difference between men and women (considering that women have had access to a clitoris all their lives and men have had access only recently, if at all), though you’ll see that men are more likely to think most women will have an orgasm from penile-vaginal sex (most women don’t) and women are more likely to think the g-spot is another name for the clitoris (it’s not). These two cancelled each other out such that the average knowledge score for men and women was statistically the same. The same!

It’s this next graph that’s the real kicker. This graph shows the relationship between how well a woman scored on the clitoral knowledge tests (on a 0-5 scale) and how frequently she has an orgasm during masturbation and with a partner. You’ll see a nice positive relationship between knowledge and orgasm in masturbation and no relationship at all between knowledge and orgasm with a partner. (For fun, notice that the average score on the clitoral knowledge measure for women who’d never had an orgasm with a partner and who always do is the same. Also notice that there are 124 women in that never category, it’s not just a handful of women who are somehow “dysfunctional.”)

So, for some reason (feel free to speculate), even when women know about their own bodies, they either keep it to themselves, or have partners that don’t want to hear it, or both.

You can download the paper here.

Using Women’s Bodies to Sell Houses and House-Related Items

Gwen Sharp, PhD on January 16, 2008

I came upon this series of ads in a local Las Vegas magazine (although I’ve forgotten which one; sorry). The first two images were at the front of the magazine.

I turned to page 13 to see what this super-skinny, barely-dressed woman was being used to sell.

Of course! Houses!

Note the very passive positioning of the model–she looks like she’s about to faint, or maybe is in the act of fainting. And the background on the other two images appears to be gold satin–evoking satin sheets, perhaps?

Here is an ad, from Metropolitan Home magazine, from a home decorating magazine that uses a woman’s body to sell blinds:

Scott W. sent us this website selling condominiums in northern Boston. Here are a couple screenshots of the completely gratuitous use of a sexy woman and implicit sex: