And while we’re at it…
Another theme re-emerged among the safer sex ads that Julie C. pointed us to: the use of insects arachnids and reptiles to symbolize sexually transmitted infectiousness (you might have already seen a preview here).
After the jump, partly because of the creepiness factor:
In the opening essay to the book Shared Visions: Native American Painters and Sculptors in the Twentieth Century, Rennard Strickland and Margaret Archuleta write,
J.J. Brody in his classic study, Indian Painters & White Patrons, identified the colonial nature of a patronage system that narrowly defined and dictated what was “Indian art”…It seems almost as if definitionally…that paintings by Indians can be considered only in a primitive, aboriginal context. (p. 9)
They discuss Oscar Howe:
…[he was] thwarted in developing new directions in painting and striving to break away from the old stereotypes limiting Indian art…one of Howe’s Cubist style paintings was rejected from the 1959 Indian Artists Annual because it was “non-Indian” and embodied a “non-traditional Indian style.” (p. 9)
Strickland and Archuleta quote a letter from Howe to a friend:
“There is much more to Indian Art, than pretty, stylized pictures…Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting…?” (p. 10)
What Strickland, Archuleta, and Howe (as well as other contributors to Shared Visions) are discussing is the pressure American Indian artists have often faced to create a certain type of art. This pressure may come from other Indians or from non-Indians. Non-Indians have often had significant power over Indian artists because of their role as benefactors (providing money for artists to attend The Studio at the Santa Fe Indian School, for instance) and because non-Indians are the majority of buyers of art created by American Indian artists. And benefactors and art collectors often have a certain idea of what “Indian art” is, which includes assumptions about both themes and styles. Specifically, they want “traditional” images that depict Native Americans in a pre-modern world, often including images of animals.
I couldn’t help but think of that book when I recently picked up a tourist-oriented guide to Taos, New Mexico. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying there is anything necessarily wrong with any of the particular art pieces (or with “traditional” type Indian art more broadly). I’m also not claiming these particular artists feel their artistic expression is limited by preconceived notions of what counts as “Indian art.”
What struck me was just the homogeneity of the images found in the guide, which seemed to more or less fit the mold of the stereotypical idea of “Indian art.” It brings up the question: what is Indian art? Is it any art made by an American Indian? Or does it only count if it fits in with non-Indians’ preferences for what Indian art should look like? What if a White person, say, masters the “traditional” style–is it Indian art then? Over the years a number of American Indian artists have created art to intentionally challenge the idea of the romanticized 19th-century Indian as well as what Indian art can be. For instance, Fritz Scholder painted “Indian Wrapped in Flag” in 1976, in an attempt to deconstruct images of Native Americans (p. 16 of Shared Visions).
Both Indians and non-Indians picketed some of Scholder’s shows in protest.
Similarly, T.C. Cannon painted “Osage with Van Gogh” (I’ve also seen it titled “Collector #5“; from around 1980), which reverses our idea of who collects or appreciates which type of art by showing a Native American collecting a European artist’s work. Another great piece is “When Coyote Leaves the Reservation (a portrait of the artist as a young Coyote)” by Harry Fonseca (1980). See images here.
So are those pieces Indian art? Does it count as “Indian art” only if it contains specific styles and themes? In which case, does it remain a sub-genre of art–part of “ethnic” art, as opposed to the neutral, non-marked mainstream art world? Are Indians who paint or sculpt or play music in ways that don’t fit the existing idea of Indian art not “authentic” Indian artists? If we accept that premise, “Indian art” is, as Howe said, “held back forever,” with themes and styles frozen in time and artists discouraged from experimenting or innovating in their work, as Howe learned so clearly. This tendency is apparent in other elements of U.S. culture, of course: movies like “Dances with Wolves,” books about “noble savages,” and conflicts over what types of technologies American Indians can use when spear fishing (with non-Indians arguing Indians should only be able to use the methods that their tribes used in the 1800s) all indicate a wider perception that “authentic” Indians should inhabit a time-warp universe in which their cultures and lifestyles have remained basically unchanged since the late 1800s or early 1900s, a requirement we don’t ask of other groups.
For more evidence that Indians are represented, and expected to represent themselves, anachronistically, see this post.
UPDATE: Commenter Camilla points out a documentary that asks similar questions about “African” art:
Christopher B. Steiner produced a fantastic anthropological documentary about the market for “African” art that addressed many of these same issues. It’s called “In and Out of Africa”…It explores the issue of how ideas such as “authenticity” and “tradition” are socially constructed phenomena. It also questions why particular types of “ethnic” art are successful in Western markets, while others are not.
Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.
Jason S. sent in this clip of a convention for (parents of) infants, toddlers, and tweens called Baby and Tweens Celebration L.A. It’s an example of the hyper-consumerist mentality that now surrounds child-raising, at least for the upper-middle classes and higher. It’s also an example of the way that young children, especially young girls, are encouraged by some forces to think of themselves as “princesses.” Many parents (literally) buy into this idea of what a (girl) child should be like. It has not been this way throughout history and is not this way across cultures.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR6DpbDoyuc[/youtube]
Related posts: baby couture magazine, babies are born 2 shop, future trophy wife and milf t-shirts, boob job piggy bank, Strawberry Shortcake in the City, bangs for baby, beauty spending over a lifetime, modernizing the fairy tale, and girl culture.
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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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 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.
We recently critiqued Facebook’s “neutral” avatar for appearing both white and male. Both Abby J. and Noah Brier pointed us to the fact that Rob Walker at Murketing has been collecting default avatars. His collection is really interesting. First, it demonstrates that the avatars don’t need to be gendered at all.
Flikr:
Hotmail:
Google:
Vimeo:
My space:
Friendfeed:
Yahoo:
Youtube:
Second, it demonstrates that the avatars don’t have to human at all:
Twitter:
Posterous:
Third, his collection also suggests that, when the avatar is human and discernibly gendered, it usually appears to be male. There’s the Facebook avatar, as well as…
EBay:
Car Domain:
Topix:
Yammer:
The avatar tends to be male, unless the company produces a default male and a default female.
Blip FM:
Goodreads:
This collection reveals that the appearance of a company’s default avatar is by no means inevitable or accidental. Companies must make choices and they are, indeed, making choices about what kind of person is the default person.
Check out his whole collection. It is growing.
Jamie R. sent in a link to a video that presents a lot of attention-grabbing statistics (which may or may not be accurate). At first it appears that the avatar could be unisex, but then at about 1:18, we see the “female” avatar:
Did You Know? from Amybeth on Vimeo.
At no other place in the video do we see the female avatar except when the “neutral” one is presented as married…indicating, from the context of the video, that it is not unisex or neutral, but male.
MORE! You may have noticed that our revamping of the site involved putting our names up. Lo and behold, these male avatars popped up next to our names.
So we went into the admin page to see if we had some other option, like maybe something non-human or a female avatar if necessary. These were our options:
First, blank is really the avatar you see in the first screenshot, it’s neutral which, in reality, is male. So there is no way to opt out of having an avatar (our tech guy, Jon, is still working on it).
Second, there is no female avatar option.
Third, though there is no female avatar, there is a Monster and a Wavatar option, whatever the hell that is. So WordPress is allowing you to represent yourself as a Wavatar, but you’re not allowed to be a chick.
Amazing.
NEW (Apr. ’10)! Keri sent a screenshot of her WordPress menu which, she noted, represents the users with two different skin colors. It’s a nice counterpoint to much of what we see above:
For more on how certain kinds of people get imagined as just people, while others get imagined as certain kinds of people, visit our posts on the Body Worlds exhibit, “flesh” colored products, Pixar films, gender and clothes, and Plan and Playmobile toys.
Cynthia Enloe draws attention to how mobilizing a nation at war requires drawing on not just the notion of the heroic masculine protector, but also the vulnerable women and children who must be protected. To draw attention to the way in which this binary (protector/protected) has functioned, she wrote “women and children” as “womenandchildren.” Speaking very generally, women and children, and perhaps especially womeandchildren, are sympathetic characters in society in a way that men simply are not. Likewise, women and children often seem more deserving of assistance and charity than men, who are expected to buck up and take care of themselves.
Stephen W. found himself confronted with this solicitation when making an internet purchase:
Stephen wondered why he would want to “wipe out heart disease in women,” as opposed to “wipe out heart disease”?
Why indeed?
Perhaps the appeal to save a group we often understand to be vulnerable and deserving of assistance makes (or is believed to make) this a more effective solicitation.
NEW (Jan ’10)! Anna K.-B. sent in another instance of this women-need-extra-care-and-protection thing. In this case, it’s a walk to end women’s cancers only:
What do we really mean when we ask someone if they’re a dog person or a cat person? Wait… think hard… what are you really asking?
I think we’re asking if a person is more masculine or feminine. After all, don’t we stereotype women as cat people and men as dog people? And don’t we think men with cats are a little femmy or, at minimum, sweeter than most… even, maybe, gay? And don’t we imagine that chicks with dogs are a little less girly than most, a little more rough and tumble? The cat person/dog person dichotomy is gendered.
This might explain why we continue to insist that dogs and cats are natural enemies. We tend to insist that dogs and cats don’t get along in the face of millions of households in which they get along just fine. These are Gwen’s pets (clockwise Shadow Cat, Rocky, and Corky):
They are clearly at each other’s throats constantly.
And, have you ever noticed that being a dog person is sort of cooler? Like, it’s cool to be a dog person, but less cool to be a cat person? I mean, no one ever fears ending up a “crazy dog lady,” and it’s not just because of the lack of alliteration. You see because gender is hierarchical, so is the dog person/cat person dichotomy. I hate being asked if I’m a dog or cat person. I have two cats, but I love dogs equally, and that doesn’t make me less cool than Gwen. (We’re obviously equally cool.)
Also!
Cats aren’t all alike. Neither are dogs. So you can’t be a dog person or a cat person. It’s nonsensical.
And another thing!
If you want to get all stereotypical about it, I’ll just say that (1) if dogs are dependent, passive, and happily subordinated to their owners, while cats are independent but offer nice companionship, and (2) women are “cat people” and men are “dog people,” then (3) men are really oppressive bastards who can’t stand a relationship with an equal and women are inherently democratic and don’t desire power (none of which I believe). So let’s not go there, okay?
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.
Aspic [noun]: A clear jelly typically made of stock and gelatin and used as a glaze or garnish or to make a mold of meat, fish, or vegetables.
Gelatin [noun]: A jelly made with gelatin, used as a dessert or salad base.
If you peruse cookbooks from the 1950s, you’ll find a ton of recipes featuring aspic and gelatin. Many of us, today, find many of these recipes, well, repulsive. For example:
My friend, Emily, had a Mrs. Beeton party and I made avocado lime gelatin with mayonnaise (left), but it lost the competition for nastiest dish to the Cucumber Au Gratin (center):
Here is the cover of a cookbook devoted to “gel cookery”:
Was it just a fad? It turns out, no. It was status. Or so says a blogger at The Good Old Days:
We’ve all wondered what the hell could motivate someone to [prepare, serve, and eat so many gel-based foods] — well, it was simply so they could brag about owning a refrigerator. You can’t solidify gelatin without refrigeration, and so you couldn’t serve Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters unless you were above a certain income level… So people started jellying vegetables, meats, salads, cream, and pretty much everything in their kitchen.
