{"id":53548,"date":"2013-01-30T11:30:13","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T16:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=53548"},"modified":"2015-02-01T02:46:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T07:46:14","slug":"hands-and-the-gender-binary-gnomeo-and-juliet-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/01\/30\/hands-and-the-gender-binary-gnomeo-and-juliet-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Hands and the Gender Binary: Gnomeo & Juliet Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u00a0previously complained<\/a>\u00a0about\u00a0Tangled<\/em>\u2018s 75%-male cast and\u00a0extreme\u00a0sex dimorphism<\/a>\u00a0— the habit of\u00a0exaggerating average\u00a0differences between men and women — in the romantic leads, as seen in this hand shot:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Keeping to my policy of two-year delays in movie reviews, let me add the same complaint about\u00a0Gnomeo and Juliet<\/em>, the charming adaptation from Disney\u2019s Touchstone imprint. Here, a writing team of 8 men and 2 women (including Shakespeare) gives us a named\u00a0cast of 14 men and 7 women<\/a>, in a love story featuring these two adorable garden gnomes:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He\u2019s only a little taller, and (judging by the gray beard) a little older. And in the movie she demonstrates bravery and feats of strength, as is now the norm. But look at those hands! Take a closer look:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What is it about hands that makes it so essential for men and women to have such differences?<\/p>\n

In the \u201cman hands\u201d episode of Seinfeld<\/a> we learned how distressing it can be for a man to find out the woman to whom he was attracted has large hands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That scene required a hand double. In real life, men\u2019s and women\u2019s hands differ on average but with a lot of overlap in the distributions \u2014 lots of men have hands smaller than lots of women.\u00a0But in animation the gloves are off \u2014 and Disney is free to pair up\u00a0couples who are many standard deviations apart in hand size.<\/p>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Family Inequality. I\u00a0previously complained\u00a0about\u00a0Tangled\u2018s 75%-male cast and\u00a0extreme\u00a0sex dimorphism\u00a0— the habit of\u00a0exaggerating average\u00a0differences between men and women — in the romantic leads, as seen in this hand shot: Keeping to my policy of two-year delays in movie reviews, let me add the same complaint about\u00a0Gnomeo and Juliet, the charming adaptation from Disney\u2019s Touchstone imprint. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,55,23676,2103,129],"class_list":["post-53548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-binary","tag-gender-bodies","tag-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53548"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65764,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53548\/revisions\/65764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}