feminist blogs

This Dove deodorant commercial, sent in by Emma H., is a nice, simple example of how women are taught that certain feminine performances are required.  In the commercial, the woman wants to wear a sleeveless dress. Her comment is followed by the following text:

Emphasis on “has” and “of course,” of course.

Watch it:

This is the same Dove, of course, that markets itself with the “real beauty” campaign and is owned by the same company as Axe.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Please welcome Guest Blogger, Ed, from Gin and Tacos.  Ed is a Political Scientist who claims to finds “the spatial and geographic context of political behavior – partisanship, turnout, and public opinion” — particularly thrilling.  You can learn more, vaguely inappropriate, things about Ed here.  In the meantime, we’re thrilled to feature his post questioning California’s questionable budget priorities.

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Boy, you can’t open the paper these days without seeing something about how irrevocably fucked California’s finances are. With a budget deficit approaching a staggering $40 billion dollars, it’s worth noting that not only is their deficit the biggest in the country in absolute terms but also as a proportion of state GDP. That’s pretty impressive given that California’s economy is bigger than all but a handful of countries.

In my line of work, “Raiding the UCs” is a very real phenomenon. Faculty have seen salaries slashed by 20% (with talk of more cuts to come) while students have experienced dramatic tuition hikes – although it’s fair to note that in-state tuition before the hikes was far lower than in most states. The recent cuts come on the tail end of a 15 year trend that has seen the university system’s share of the state budget halved. With too many obligations and not enough money, it would make sense that cuts to a vital sector like education would be indicative of cuts across the board.

Oh.

Lost in the budget debate is the fact that California spends nearly 10% of its annual budget on the Department of Corrections. Eight billion dollars. Let’s see that with the zeroes: $8,000,000,000. This is, of course, in addition to other money spent on law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Such figures look reasonable only in comparison to a trainwreck like Michigan, where a mind-blowing 22% of the state budget is spent on warehousing the poor in prisons.

We can re-hash all the usual, obvious, and valid culprits – “guideline” sentencing, mandatory minimums, three strikes, a vast social underclass deriving minimal benefit from the state’s aggregate wealth – but we’d say nothing new. The more important questions is how prison systems, and California’s in particular, can absorb the coming increase in crime concomitant with an extended period of double digit unemployment. At a time when every agency needs to get cheaper, the CDC must continue to get bigger (and inevitably costlier) to provide a convenient dumping ground for society’s expendables.

This problem is fascinating because like the Federal budget there is no reasonable move that doesn’t make the situation worse. California can start paroling more people. With no jobs available even for Californians with clean criminal backgrounds, we can imagine how few ex-inmates will find an “honest” living and how high the rate of recidivism will be. It can adopt different sentencing guidelines, which is politically unlikely and will provide only gradual long-term relief. They can simply stop arresting and/or charging so many people, but that too is politically infeasible and may ultimately lead to increased crime levels. They can, as publications as mainstream as Time have noted, formally surrender in the War on Drugs and legalize weed. I will believe that when I see it (although I don’t entirely discount it as the budget situation gets progressively more desperate). They could simply slash the budget, which may not be realistic given the high fixed costs of the system and the current levels of overcrowding/understaffing.

Spending twice as much on prisons as higher education should prompt some soul searching. I won’t hold my breath; in all likelihood the status quo will be maintained and the share of the budget devoted to corrections will continue to increase. Devoting one of every ten tax dollars to locking up the poor is understood as the cost of doing business in a state and society that choose to solve the problem of a persistent underclass the same way it deals with trash; that is, by collecting it in cities and shipping it out to the middle of nowhere to be buried under a mountain of other garbage, never to be seen or thought of again.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Reader Clifford McC. and his (female) partner both receive Bicycling magazine (which, he explains, is more of a free advertisement that they get whether they want to or not).  In any case, this month’s issue was the 2010 Buyer’s Guide and, though the issues each received were identical, the one addressed to his partner was stickered:

The sticker read, “BONUS! SPECIAL WOMEN’S SECTION.”

Perhaps they were trying to be inclusive, but a sticker advertising a special women’s section just goes to show that the magazine is, first-and-foremost, for men.

For the same phenomenon elsewhere, see our posts featuring websites selling dinosaur toys and Legos (see “exhibit three”), each with a special section for girls.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

db, Lindsey B., and ABC News asked us to talk about the recent scandal over Walmart pricing a darker-skinned version of the Ballerina Theresa doll less than its white counterpart.  The evidence (from FunnyJunk):

Walmart claimed that the doll was priced less because they were trying to move inventory (ABC News).  It’s possible that the doll wasn’t selling (low demand) or they had ordered more than they could sell (high supply) and so the doll went on sale.  In fact, we know that people of all colors tend to absorb a color hierarchy in which whiteness is nicer, more beautiful, and more valuable (test your unconscious preferences here), so maybe the white doll WAS outselling the non-white doll because both white and non-white people were buying it, but not the darker-skinned doll.  Walmart, in this case, would only be following the market so as to maximize profits.

Walmart, however, could have chosen, in this case, to opt out of profit maximization.  The market isn’t physics; a company doesn’t have to follow its laws.  Walmart could have said, “You know, putting the dark-skinned doll on sale symbolically values whiteness higher than blackness.  Perpetuating that stereotype isn’t worth the money.”  That is, they could have decided that anti-racism trumped profits.

But they didn’t.

It’s important to say that I know of no study showing that, as a rule, white dolls are priced higher or are less likely to go on sale than other dolls.  It may be true that, if we were paying attention, we’d see all kinds of disparate pricing and it wouldn’t pattern itself on race.  Even in this case, I still think that companies need to be cognizant of the context in which they price their products.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that I think it is perfectly fine to discount white dolls while other dolls are left undiscounted, but not vice versa.  Why?  Because we live in a world where discounting dark-skinned dolls resonates with a discourse the symbolically devalues dark-skinned human beings.  Discounting white dolls simply does not carry the same problematic message.

Costco faced this kind of problem when it’s black Lil’ Monkey doll was pulled from shelves.  It turned out that the Lil’ Monkey doll came in three different races, but the black doll carried connotations that the others did not because black people have been compared to primates for centuries in an effort to dehumanize them.  A black Lil’ Monkey is wholly inappropriate in a way that a white Lil’ Monkey is not.

Companies make and sell products in a context.  Following market demands is not opting out; often, it reproduces the status quo.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Dmitriy T.M., Christina W., Kelly V., and George asked us to comment on Vajazzling. Dmitriy, who sent in the video link, said he was too frightened to press play, but I am very brave and now I know what vajazzling really is! It’s hard to know because the term “vajayjay” is, um, who knows what that word means… and the term “vagina” (which actually refers to what is otherwise known as the birth canal) is now used to mean the vulva and, apparently, anything within 12 inches of it.

In any case, the video below, in which a woman documents the vajazzling of her “vagina,” reveals that the term refers to the placing of a field of tiny crystals where your public hair would be. So, you essentially replace your pubic hair with shiny objects.

So, brave souls who pressed play, sociologically analyze away.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

E. W. sent in a three-page internet ad for the 2010 Chevy Traverse.  The Traverse seats eight, but the ad campaign suggests that it is perfect for just four.  E.W. offers the play-by-play:

The first image of the ad shows a young boy and girl in the first row of seats in an SUV.  They are separated by at least a foot of space.  The young boy is poking the girl (presumably his sister) in the shoulder.

The following images show the two kids in various seating arrangements where they are always separated by the seating rows (one in front and one in back).

The end tag (car-two) states “Finally, you can separate them.”

“To summarize the ad in my words,” said E.W., “Buy a car that can seat 6 kids because you can’t control your 2.”

Or, in my words, in the face of an economic crisis peppered with sky-high fuel prices, we are desperate for another way to try to convince Americans that they need giant cars.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

This is the second post using material borrowed from the essay, “Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.”  Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, including this essay, now through March 15th.  See yesterday’s post here.

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While people in industrialized countries live longer and healthier lives than ever, more educated people enjoy even less morbidity than less educated people.  The figure below illustrates the decline in mental and physical function over time for people with a college degree, a high school degree, and no degree at all:

The figure shows that more educated people experience “excellent health” than less educated at every age, except perhaps 85 and above.  Why might this be?

Well, higher educated people may come from wealthier families who were able to provide their children with health care, good nutrition, and exercise.  Having degrees may also correlate with jobs that are less harmful to the body and offer both health insurance and more free time to exercise.  Lower educational attainment is likely correlated with economic insecurity; a lifetime of struggling to make ends meet could create the kind of bad stress that interferes with both mental and physical health.

Other theories?  Thoughts on these?

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Our online host, Contexts magazine, is offering some free content, a selection of essays on aging, now through March 15th.  I borrowed the material below from the essay, “Facts and Fictions About an Aging America.”

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The average American is aging… and fast.  Advances in public health — especially related to childbirth, infant mortality, and infectious disease — have led to longer lives.   “The result is that death has been permanently shifted from a phenomenon among the young to one of the old.”  This means that the age distribution in the U.S. has shifted from one shaped like a neat pyramid (in 1900), to one shaped kind of like a house (in 2000), to whatever shape that is they’re predicting in 2050:

The great news is that “active life span is increasing faster than total life span.”  That is, even though we live longer, we spend fewer of our years sick or disabled than ever before.  This is called (so you can impress your friends) the “compression of morbidity.”

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Sometimes when we put up hyperfeminine clothes and toys for girls, people argue that no one has to buy those clothes, so there is no point in critiquing their existence.  The implication is that all conformity to gendered expectations is voluntary (on the part of both mothers and their daughters).

However, the recent furor over Shiloh Jolie-Pitts haircut and boyish outfit, sent in by Tara C., Cailin H., and Lindsay F., shows us that having a gender-consistent appearance isn’t simply voluntary; when you don’t perform gender, other people will police your choices.  In this case, people are questioning whether she is harming her child by turning her “into A BOY?”

In this case, of course, it’s mass media doing the policing (or inviting readers to do the policing).  In the lives of non-celebrities, this same sort of policing is often done by family members, friends, and even strangers.  For the non-conformist (parent), then, gender non-conformity can be a real drag.

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Image borrowed from DListed.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

I say that sarcastically, of course.

But yes it’s here and, thanks to Luis J.C.R., we all know about it.

Images and discussion after the jump because not safe for work.

Andrew Christian enhancing underwear for men, for sale at Bang Lads:

The description is priceless:

(Awesome) Selected Text:

Andrew Christian Show-It Bulge Enhancing Boxer

Features Show-It Technology 2.0 with a hidden “comfy cup” that gently lifts and presents the package to the front.

The horseshoe shaped inner cup is lined by soft elastic that gently aids in the lifting and adds up to 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) to a man’s frontal measurement and provides the biggest enhancement of any underwear.

The underwear also features the custom Andrew Christian ‘Anti-Muffin Top’ elastic to slim the appearance of love handles.

Yep, this is the treatment women have been getting for decades.  Except, when men get it, they tend to get it a gay context.  That is, it’s the male gaze that results in objectification, not a female body.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)