Nadine

A new symbol to represent people with disabilities is being introduced in New York City. The symbol, designed by a team at Gordon College, looks like this:

We’ve posted previously about the politics of the symbol and its history. The notable changes here are the moving of the arms to the wheels of the chair, suggesting that the person is pushing themselves, and the forward-leaning angle, suggesting active motion.  It tells a story about independence and ability, instead of dependence and disability.  A very nice change.

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

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

The Pew Research Global Attitudes Project recently released data on attitudes about homosexuality in 39 countries. Generally, those living in the Middle East and Africa were the least accepting, while those in the Americas, Europe, and parts of Asia (the Philippines, Australia, and to a lesser extent Japan) were most accepting:

Generally, the more religious a country, the less accepting its citizens are of homosexuality:

The proportion of people who support social acceptance of gays and lesbians ranged from a high of 88% in Spain to a low of 1% in Nigeria:

Attitudes about homosexuality vary widely by age. There is a pretty consistent global pattern of more positive attitudes among younger people, with a few exceptions:

Thus far, legalization of same-sex marriage has been largely confined to the Americas and Europe; New Zealand and South Africa are the two outliers:

The Pew Center points out that of the 15 nations that have fully extended marriage rights to same-sex couples, 8 have done so just since 2010. In the U.S., we’re currently awaiting a Supreme Court’s decision, which should arrive shortly, to know if we’ll be joining the list sooner rather than later.

Thanks to Peter Nardi at Pitzer College for the link!

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

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

Earlier on SocImages, Lisa Wade drew attention to the tourism industry’s commodification of Polynesian women and their dancing. She mentioned, briefly, how the hula was made more tourist-friendly (what most tourists see when they attend one of the many hotel-based luaus throughout the islands is not traditional hula).  In this post, I want to offer more details on the history and the differences between the tourist and the traditional hula.

First, Wade states that, while female dancers take center stage for tourists, the traditional hula was “mostly” a men’s dance.  While it has not been determined for certain if women were ever proscribed from performing the hula during the time of the Ali’i (chiefs), it seems unlikely that women would have been prevented from performing the hula when the deity associated with the hula is Pele, a goddess. Furthermore, there is evidence that women were performing the dance at the time of Captain James Cook’s arrival in Hawai’i.

Second, while the traditional dances were not necessarily sexualized, they were very sensual.  The movement of hips and legs that are seen as sexual by some visitors, and showcased as such by the tourism industry, certainly existed in early practices.

In fact, the supposedly lascivious and blasphemous nature of the hula prompted missionaries to censure the public practice of hula, and in 1830 Queen Ka’ahumanu enacted a law prohibiting the public performance of the hula. This law was highly ineffective, however, and when King Kalakaua ascended the throne he actively encouraged public hula performances and other expressions of Native Hawaiian culture, earning him the moniker “Merrie Monarch.”

Eventually, a modernized dance emerged that did not incorporate much religiosity and employed modern music rather than chants. This is closer to what you would find at a hotel luau, but differs drastically in costuming and lacks the uncomfortable cloud of objectification associated with hotel-style hula (that is, the focus is on the dance rather than the dancers).  Below are some examples of the evolution:

Hula (ladies’ dance, traditional):

Hula (men’s dance, traditional):

Hula (contemporary):

These examples of hula, and other Polynesian dances, are vastly different from what one finds in a hotel’s “Polynesian Revue” luau.

Hula (hotel):

In conclusion, it is true that the hula dances, and other dances of Polynesia, have been usurped by the tourism industry and commodified.  The culturally authentic forms, however, still thrive. Native dances are impressive enough without the ridiculous costuming and disrespectful bending of the islands’ histories seen at hotel luaus; unfortunately, it is difficult to find any culturally sensitive displays of Polynesian culture due to the huge influence of tourism over these locations.

*The information in this post was gleaned from various courses I’ve taken at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. For more information on hula and the commodification of the Hawaiian culture, see Haunani-Kay Trask’s From A Native Daughter.

Sarah Neal is currently working on obtaining her M.A. in English at North Carolina State University.

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

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Featuring: Gus Garcia-Roberts (Miami New Times), Sharyn Jackson (Santa Fe Reporter), Caleb Hannan (Seattle Weekly), Alan Prendergast (Westword) and many more.

Published by Association of Alternative Newsmedia.

Download Best Alternative Longform Journalism for free:
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Send to Readmill

[Link]

Cross-posted at The Ethical Adman.

So it turns out there’s this company that makes “zombie” targets for gun enthusiasts. They have clown zombies, nazi zombies, “terrorist” zombies, dog zombies and even a green zombie named “Rocky” that has Barack Obama’s ears.

And one woman.

Here’s their explanation:

The Zombie virus does not discriminate and neither does Zombie Industries.  We take preparation for the Zombie Apocalypse seriously, which is why we strive to have all groups of undead monsters represented in our product selection.  In addition to the Ex Girlfriend Zombie, we currently sell 15 male zombies, 5 animal zombies & 2 aliens… to discriminate against Women by not having them represented in our product selection would be just plain sexist.

Each of the zombie targets has a story.  Here is the story of “The Ex”:

Be warned, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but a man scorned is nothing to mess with! A young gent from Louisiana, we’ll call him André to protect his identity, was deeply committed to his one true love and her to him, or so he thought. While partying with her friends during one particular Mardi Gras, she took several suitors over the course of the festivities. André felt something odd indeed, so he paid a visit to his great aunt, Marie, who helped him see the truth. With a few eggs, candles lit and kiss upon his forehead, her voodoo curse was set in motion. Late each night while lying in bed, a smile would appear across his face, for a slight breeze would travel through a cracked window bringing with it, a faint whiff of decay and a unnatural cry of regret.

That’s right. In this narrative, a man kills a woman for cheating on him, and has her turned into a zombie. Which you, bro, are now invited to blow to bits.

Despite the game-like zombie theme, it is notable that the single human female representation has been created specifically as a target of violent male anger towards a woman’s ownership of her own sexuality.  And ”The Ex” is portrayed in a highly sexual way, with what seems to be a bare lower torso and busting out chest.

Policymic writes, “Every day, at least three women are killed by an intimate partner in the US alone.  Let’s make sure those numbers go down, not up. Let’s make sure companies like Zombies Industries know that we’re not buying it.”

Some people, however, are buying it. And this is what’s most troubling.

From the product reviews:

This Zombie Bitch is awesome, reminds me of a girl I knew in High School, My LMT LM308MWS should put a stop to the undead bring them on !!! Later Party till you drop Corvette forever !!!!!

And:

I love that this target looks like Britney Spears and it bleeds when I shot it.

And from YouTube:

Tom Megginson is a Creative Director at Acart Communications, a Canadian Social Issues Marketing agency. He is a specialist in social marketing, cause marketing, and corporate social responsibility. You can follow Tom at workthatmatters.blogspot.com.

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

“Everything hangs on something else.”

On the heels of last year’s tiny gem The Architect Says comes The Designer Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom (public library) — a charming, similarly-spirited compendium of more than one hundred beautifully typeset remarks by some of today’s and yesteryear’s most celebrated graphic design minds, including favorites like Saul Bass, Charles Eames, Debbie Millman, Milton Glaser, Louise Fili, Paula Scher, and Maira Kalman.

Saul Bass, revered by many as the greatest graphic designer of all time and little-known children’s book artist, captures the essence of intrinsic motivation blind to extrinsic reinforcement:

I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.

Reconstructionist Ray Eames acknowledges the inextricable chain of influence in art and the combinatorial nature of creativity:

Everything hangs on something else.

Charles Eames, man of ample quotable wisdom, reminds us of the usefulness of useless knowledge:

My dream is to have people working on useless projects. These have the germ of new concepts.

Seymour Chwast shares a valuable distinction:

I read once about the concepts of the lateral idea and the vertical idea. If you dig a hole and it’s in the wrong place, digging it deeper isn’t going to help. The lateral idea is when you skip over and dig someplace else.

Legendary curmudgeon and wit Paul Rand, who worked closely with Steve Jobs and who too illustrated some delightful vintage children’s books, echoes Anaïs Nin’s case for making by hand:

It is important to use your hands. This is what distinguishes you from a cow or a computer operator.

Celebrated Italian designer Bruno Munari, oracle of Neapolitan hand-gestures, argues that in the mind of the graphic designer, like that of the inventor, creation and curation go hand in hand:

A graphic designer usually makes hundreds of small drawings and then picks one of them.

Information visualization godfather Edward Tufte reminds us of the weight of function over form, integrity over vanity:

If your words aren’t truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won’t help.

Erik Spiekermann echoes Dr. Seuss’s advice to children:

Read.
Travel.
Read.
Ask.
Read.
Learn.
Read.
Connect.
Read.

But perhaps most heartening of all are the words of Alan Fletcher, who eloquently articulates the joy of fulfilling work that comes from having found your purpose:

I’d sooner do the same on Monday or Wednesday as I do on a Saturday or Sunday. I don’t divide my life between labor and pleasure.

Pair The Designer Says with the collected wisdom of famous writers on their craft.

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Scholars suggest that studying abroad in a previously-colonized country may increase people’s cultural sensitivity and awareness of global inequality.  I investigated this hypothesis by interviewing college students: one group had studied abroad for a semester or more, the other had only traveled out of the country for vacation.

I asked both groups to view and analyze fashion photography that contrasted models with more humble images of residents of less developed countries.  I hoped people would point to how, by contrasting glamorous, thin, conventionally-attractive White models with “average” people from less-privileged countries served to heighten the high status of the West and their representatives.  I saw this as a form of Western “slumming”: a practice of spending time in places or with people who are “below” you, out of curiosity or for fun or personal development.

Here are three examples of the kinds of photography I showed students:

My findings revealed that study abroad students think they’re more culturally competent but, in fact, they were no more likely than people who had never studied abroad to express concern about the exploitation of previously colonized people in ads like these.

The majority of students from both groups – those who’d studied abroad and those who hadn’t — demonstrated a distinct lack of concern.  They unreflexively “Othered” the people in these images; that is, they affirmed the locals’ marginalized group status and labeled them as being Other, belonging outside of our normative Western structure.

The majority also expressed approval of the aesthetics of the ads without irony. For example, one student said: “I think it works because it’s this edgy, culturally stimulating, and aesthetically pleasing ad.” When asked the art director’s intentions, another student commented: “I don’t know. Just like ordinary people next to someone who’s on top of their fashion game.”

Only select few students successfully observed the use of Othering in the images. When asked the art director’s intentions of one image, a student replied: “I think it’s to contrast the model with the everyday life of these people…  (it) feels more like an image of people of color being an accessory.” Noticing this theme, interestingly, did not correlate with having studied abroad, in contrast to my hypothesis.

My findings suggest, then, that living abroad for a semester or more in a previously colonized country does not necessarily contribute to the detection of global inequality in fashion photography.

Erica Ales is a senior Sociology major at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.

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

As you know, I’m endless fascinated by slang. I even use it and don’t care that it dates me or that you think it dates me. :) Sometimes I use dated slang in the ironic sense. (Sometimes I amuse myself. Ha.)

This college English professor opens each day of class with a request for two new slang words, and learns all sorts of slang-y things. (Be sure to read down in the comments for the discussion of chubbed, which is not the subject of the article.)

I try to keep up, but that’s impossible for a middle-aged gal who lives in the middle of the country and works in, you know, the swanky second floor office in the pink house with the blue door (that is, home alone). The best I can do it read about it. In this article from Slate, writer Juliet Lapidos breaks down elements that make certain words slang, although, she says,

There’s no grand unified theory for why some slang terms live and others die. In fact, it’s even worse than that: The very definition of slang is tenuous and clunky. Writing for the journal American Speech, Bethany Dumas and Jonathan Lighter argued in 1978 that slang must meet at least two of the following criteria: It lowers “the dignity of formal or serious speech or writing,” it implies that the user is savvy (he knows what the word means, and knows people who know what it means), it sounds taboo in ordinary discourse (as in with adults or your superiors), and it replaces a conventional synonym.

It’s an interesting article. Have a look.

But I’m more interested in your favorite up-to-the-minute slang. Whatcha got?

Tweet: What makes slang stick? Good question!
Tweet: There’s no grand unified theory for why some slang terms live and others die.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

If you’ve been coming ’round here for awhile, you know I have a thing for the dictionary. There’s, like, so much information in such a small space! It’s so efficient! And it contains all the building blocks for my work in one place! Aaaah.

But the dictionary’s a relatively new development, considering humankind has been writing down words since, oh, 2500 BCE or so. (We’re not going to quibble about dates; it was a long time ago.) When Jane Austen was writing—relatively recently—in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, no one spelled “correctly” because there just weren’t standards for that—or the standards were just beginning to be hammered out.

Samuel Johnson was one of the hammerers: he published A Dictionary of the English Language in 1755, and it became a best seller. This dictionary was arranged alphabetically rather than topically and contained textual references (that is, “use it in a sentence,” as your first-grade teacher used to say), in addition to definitions. It was the gold standard for more than a hundred and fifty years.

Fifty or so years after Johnson, Noah Webster published an American dictionary in 1805. It took another eighty years for the Oxford University Press to get in on the act; scholars there began work on the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884 and published all twelve volumes of that first edition in 1928. (According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the OED is the world’s most comprehensive single-language print dictionary.)

Me, I love my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate eleventh edition, which is descended in a direct line from Noah Webster’s word book. A reader questioned me about that once. What was so special about Merriam-Webster? Was I dissing the OED? Not at all. I trust it and it’s certainly complete—but the MW11 is the preferred dictionary of many of the publishers for whom I work. Also, of course, Merriam-Webster is a dictionary of American English, which is what I use every day. And think about it: the OED may be a dictionary of the people, but it’s not really for the people: the second print edition is twenty volumes and $995. My MW11 was about twenty bucks.

Not that I use the big red book anymore. No, when you have your hands in the dictionary as much as I do, you need something online; it’s a lot faster than turning pages.

There are plenty of free online dictionaries, some better than others. Still, I would encourage you to stay with the tried-and-true; not all dictionaries are created equal. (Both Merriam-Webster and Oxford have an online presence.) Some online dictionaries have more information than others. More shocking to my lexicological sensibilities was the notion that words might be broken differently. For example, take the word experience. MW11 breaks it like this:

ex • pe • ri • ence

I was shocked to see another dictionary break it like this:

ex • per • i • ence

It may seem like a small thing, but publishing proofers hang on these sorts of issues. And of the two trusted free dictionaries I’ve linked above, only Merriam-Webster provides the word breaks.

Here’s something else that free version of MW provides: audio pronunciation. Yes! How many times have you cursed that phonetic spelling system with its accents and upside-down e’s and wished you could just hear it pronounced, definitively and correctly? You can. Click on the little blue speaker icon.

In time, you may wish to upgrade to a subscription service, if for no other reason than to avoid the ads. (Probably more importantly, neither Oxford nor MW offer every single word from their print editions in their free online versions.) I did this several years ago. And here’s yet another reason I like Merriam-Webster: the subscription service is $29.95 per annum (that works out to a little more than eight cents per day, if you’re keeping track). The OED, on the other hand—as fun as it would be to have access to—is $295 per annum and out of my budget. (To be fair, they also offer the Oxford Dictionaries Pro for $49.95; if you’re interested, check out the FAQs here.)

But I’m still fond of the recently updated online MW, from which I can access complete versions of the Unabridged, the Collegiate, the Collegiate Thesaurus, the Collegiate Encyclopedia, the medical dictionary, and both Spanish-English and French-English translation dictionaries. And they’ve just added a new feature they call “Rhymes With.” Type in upscale and you’ll get this list:

abseil, airmail, all hail, assail, avail, bake sale, bangtail, blackmail, blacktail, bobtail, broadscale, broadtail, bucktail, bud scale, canaille, cattail, chain mail, coattail, cocktail, contrail, curtail, derail, detail, doornail, dovetail, downscale, ducktail, e-mail, entail, exhale, fan mail, fantail, female, fife rail, fire sale, fishtail, folktale, foresail, foxtail, fresh gale, full-scale, gapped scale, Glendale, gray scale, greenmail, guardrail, Hallel, handrail, hangnail, headsail, hightail, hobnail, horntail, horsetail, impale, inhale, junk mail, Longueuil, lugsail, mainsail, mare’s tail, Mondale, moon snail, oxtail, pass-fail, percale, pigtail, pintail, pinwale, plate rail, pot ale, prevail, rattail, regale, resale, rescale, retail, right whale, ringtail, Sangreal, Scottsdale, sea kale, shavetail, shirttail, skysail, slop pail, small-scale, snail mail, soft hail, split rail, springtail, spritsail, square sail, staysail, strong gale, surveil, swordtail, taffrail, tag sale, telltale, third rail, thumbnail, timescale, toenail, topsail, travail, trysail, unnail, unveil, ventail, voice mail, wage scale, wagtail, wassail, whiptail, white sale, whitetail, white whale, whole gale, wholesale, yard sale.

Fantastic, no?

Tweet: Not all dictionaries are created equal! Here’s why.
Tweet: I love my dictionary! So much info! It’s so efficient! Everything I need in one place!

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Cross-posted at The Huffington Post.

This is a new one.

Some of you may know that there is a wave of colleges and universities filing complaints with the Office for Civil Rights, claiming that their institutions are failing to protect women from sexual assault. This (first) wave includes Amherst, Yale, the University of North Carolina, Swarthmore, and Occidental among others.

Well, last night many of the details of the stories of the students whose cases have been mishandled — right down to exact quotes from their lives — found themselves in an episode of Law&Order SVU.  They didn’t ask for permission, offer a “consulting” fee, or even warn them that it was coming.

This just leaves a this-is-so-wrong-I-don’t-even-know icky feeling in the pit of my gut.   I know that Law & Order has been ripping stories from the headlines for three decades, but it stuns me that it can claim to be fiction and not compensate the real women who’s lives are clearly and unequivocally depicted in this show.

Let me put this in stark terms: Law & Order is brazenly capitalizing on the pain and trauma of young women and not only failing to compensate them for stealing their stories, but actually denying that they exist by claiming that the “story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.”  Stunning.

Alexandra Brodsky, a survivor who filed the complaints against Yale, told Jezebel:

The SVU episode strikes me as an extreme example of the risk of going public as a survivor: your story is no longer your own.

I’ve not seen a more obvious example of this fact.

The teaser for the episode, plus a list of 15 ways the episode copied real life, collected by Katie J.M. Baker at Jezebel, is after the jump.

Here’s the entire list:

SVU: Lindsay is gang-raped by three frat guys who later claim she’s crying rape because she’s embarrassed about her slutty behavior.

Real Life: Four University of Montana football players allegedly gang-raped a drunk female student; charges were dropped because it was unclear whether she was “just embarrassed” about what happened.

SVU: Lindsay Snapchats her rapist the next day, leading students and administrative officials to doubt that she was actually raped.

Real Life: Woman allegedly raped by Mizzou basketball player Michael Dixon Jr. texts him the next day, leading students, officials and cops to doubt that she was actually raped.

SVU: ”I’m sorry that girl had a bad night, but why would Travis need to rape somebody?” a frat bro muses.

Real Life: Students at campuses all over the country don’t believe that Big Men on Campus can be rapists.

SVU: Students call Tau Omega the “Rape Factory.”

Real Life: A former Wesleyan student is suing the university for failing to “to supervise, discipline, warn or take other corrective action” against a frat which she says had a “reputation in the Wesleyan community as the ‘Rape Factory.’”

SVU: Renee is pressured to leave school and commit herself to a mental institution after she attempts to self-harm after the school ignores her rape report. Her rapist is set to graduate with honors.

Real Life: Former student Angie Epifano says Amherst abruptly decided to admit her into a psychiatric ward after she made suicidal comments spurred by the despair she felt when her allegations were repeatedly ignored. Her rapist graduated with honors.

SVU: Renee is penalized by her school’s Honor Court for “intimidating her rapist” by speaking out.

Real Life: UNC sophomore Landen Gambill says she was punished by the Office of Student Conduct for “intimidating” her rapist by speaking to the press about her sexual assault.

SVU: Renee is told that sex “is like a football game” by a school official.

Real Life: Former UNC student Annie Clark was told that rape “is like a football game” by an administrator.

SVU: The university’s mental health counselor says she was met with resistance when she tried to support rape survivors’ reports.

Real Life: UNC allegedly pressured former dean of students Melinda Manning to underreport sexual assault cases; Swarthmore and Occidental were recently accused of mishandling assaults.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says she couldn’t stop Tau Omega alumni from selling “We don’t take ‘no’ for an answer” rush t-shirts.

Real Life: Amherst’s administration came under fire for holding an ineffective closed-door discussion related to a similar frat t-shirt.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says students have the right to assemble, even if they want to chant, “No means yes, yes means anal.”

Real Life: Yale frat boys once gleefully ran around campus chanting exactly that.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says she can’t stop students from posting photos and rumors about rape survivors on an anonymous website because of “free speech.”

Real Life: Oberlin’s administration cites the First Amendment and does next to nothing about undergrads who are seriously harassed via its student-run anonymous message board.

SVU: Lindsay kills herself.

Real Life: Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg committed suicide nine days after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexually assaulting her in a dorm room; Notre Dame investigators failed to interview the student she accused until 15 days after Seeberg reported the attack and five days after she killed herself.

SVU: Frat boys are caught on video joking that they “raped [Lindsay] dead. (Also that they “raped her Gangnam Style,” which is one we haven’t heard before!)

Real Life: Anonymous leaked a video of former Steubenville High School baseball player Michael Nodianos cracking himself up as he calls a rape victim “deader than” JFK, OJ’s wife, Caylee Anthony, and Trayvon Martin, amongst others.

SVU: At the end of the episode, students hold up signs protesting rape culture using real quotes said to them by members of the community following their assaults.

Real Life: Amherst students put together a collection of photos of men and women who were sexually assaulted on campus, holding signs with words said to them by members of the community following their assaults.

SVU: “I was thinking about maybe starting a kind of support group on campus, so survivors know they’re not alone,” Renee says.

Real Life: A group of rape survivors including Dana Bolger (Amherst College ‘14), Alexandra Brodsky (Yale College ‘12, Yale Law School ‘16), Annie Clark (University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill ‘11), and Andrea Pino (UNC — CH ‘14), some of whom have filed complaint with the federal government against their universities, joined together to help students at colleges across the country stand up to administrations; they recently launched “Know Your IX,” a campaign that aims to educate every college student in the U.S. about his or her rights under Title IX by the start of the Fall 2013 academic term.

Here’s the teaser for the episode:

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

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

Vogue’s photo-shoot titled “Storm Troopers: Celebrating Hurricane Sandy First Responders” features various images of models with workers of different organizations who combated the damage of Hurricane Sandy. Vogue praises the attributes of these workers in the caption: “when Hurricane Sandy hit, the city’s bravest and brightest punched back.”

Although the title and caption suggest that the photos are meant celebrate the hard work of the men and women who responded to the hurricane, they also serve as a foil against which the models stand out. In other words, this photo spread is at least as concerned with celebrating a look and lifestyle associated with money and beauty, as it is with celebrating the working class.  This is obvious for at least two reasons.

First – the weaker argument — the majority of the workers are dressed in baggy, loosely fitting uniforms; they are not wearing the make-up or striking the poses so cherished by magazines like Vogue.  The models, in literal contrast, embody high fashion.  Their expressionless faces and leisurely poses are the province of the elite.

The next image is particularly striking in this regard.  The glamorous model not only contrasts with the gritty workers, she is elevated above them; the eye is drawn to her ephemeral presence, not to the men and women below.  Their presence serves to make her allure all the more impressive.So, the class contrast elevates the models, figuratively and sometimes literally in these images.  We see race contrast used to do the same thing when Black men and women are used as props in fashion shoots as well as East Indian and Asian people.

Second – the stronger argument – if Vogue wanted to celebrate the men and women in working class occupations that helped after Hurricane Sandy, they could have left the models out altogether.  As it is, the implication is that the workers aren’t valuable in themselves, they’re only valuable as a setting for high fashion.

The photo shoot, then, instead of honoring the workers, affirms the class hierarchy in which they are embedded.  The photographs fall in line with the magazine’s message – a celebration of an elite lifestyle – one that is well out of the reach of blue collar men and women.

Eliza Connors is a first year student at Occidental College.  She hopes to pursue a degree in sociology.  

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

laughingsquid:

Cat Wearing a Shark Costume Chases a Duckling While Riding a Roomba Vacuum

A few dozen flies buzzed around the tent early one afternoon in Kamchatka, Russia.  The potential annoyance of one landing on my face kept me from dozing off.   Reaching for a fleece,  I covered my head and rolled over.  The tide wouldn’t switch for another three hours and I was dead set on following my breakfast coma down the rabbit hole.  Shoving my face into my makeshift pillow, I laid still.

For a few minutes,  my technique kept the flies at bay.   Slowly however,  the constant buzz intensified until it inevitably landed  on my ear.

“Fucking flies.”  I swatted my ear, dislodging the culprit.

Sitting up, I noticed that Cyrus had, much to the chagrin of the flies, synched the hood of his knapsack tight around his face so just his nose and mouth were exposed.  Stifling my curses,  I kicked off my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent.

Crawling out through the opening,  I quickly zipped the screen shut behind me.  Standing up and stretching, I looked around our camp.  A dozen Russian 4×4′s dotted the beach.  The uncommonly warm fall day lured hundreds out from the closest city, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, to enjoy their weekend.

“Jesus Christ.  It’s like Pismo Beach out here,”  I yelled to Chris, a staff Photographer at Surfer from the central coast of California, sitting on the grass watching Keith and Dane play guitar.

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen that at Pismo,”  Keith said motioning over my shoulder.

Everyone fixed their gaze on a family of three standing around an Izuzu SUV some fifty yards away.  The man, presumably the husband, was shirtless and brandishing a handgun.  The woman, wearing a bra and sweat pants, stood a few feet away with a young girl.  Resting the gun on the hood of the SUV,  the man reached through the driver’s window and retrieved a handful of glass bottles.  Chucking the bottles one at a time into the sand he grabbed the handgun from the hood of the car, pulled the slide back and handed it to the daughter.  As if she had done this hundreds of times before,  she eagerly took the pistol from her dad’s hand and pointed it in the direction where he had thrown the bottles. For a few moments she steadied the the pistol with both hands, then a pop, and a glass bottle broke.  A small plume of CO2 floated out of the barrel.

“No fucking way…It’s a pellet gun,” I laughed.

The girl quickly followed up with another shot and continued until she emptied the clip.  Eager to take part in the violence and stimulated by the warm day,  the mother,  without warning, kicked off her flip flops and stripped off her sweat pants.

“A G-Banger!!! Yes.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.  Is that  neon?”

“Sure looks like it.”

Two fresh-caught silver salmon by Keith.

Trevor Gordon is putting together a zine on the trip.  I’ll post about it when it’s out.

An active Volcano.

A local salmon poacher enjoying a mid morning swig of vodka and a cigarette.

Dane and Trevor debating whether to head back out.

An empty coastline.

A fisherman lives in this house by himself from April until October each year.

Trevor heading out for a session.

A remote cabin accessible by helicopter in the summer and snowmobile in the winter.  That stream is filled with geothermal hot water.

Ghetto bird.

Chris Burkard and Ben Weiland have an article coming out in the December Issue of Surfer Magazine.

A salmon poacher’s vodka, waders and dog at a river mouth.

Keith in transit on the helicopter.

Hand done camo on a micro 4×4 vehicle.

Local wild life.

By this time,  everyone, including Serge, our Russian guide, had gathered around watching the spectacle unfold.   Taking the gun from the daughter,  the mother marched into position and took aim.  The husband interrupted her with an inaudible sentence and reached back into the driver’s window and grabbed a few more glass bottles.  With the new targets in place,  she opened fire.

Sensing our gaze,  the daughter turned and looked towards seven Americans and a shirtless Russian with Binoculars.  Ducking behind a tent, we laughed like middle-school boys.

Here are some more links,

#Kamshaka (Instagram),

“Do Not Frustrate…” (ART).

The other day, the father of a classmate of my son’s called to ask if he could join a group of fourth-grade boys practicing a comedy sketch for their school’s talent show. Like any parent coordinating a child’s schedule, I asked the basics: What time? Where do you live? When should I pick him up? Then I stammered out a final question, apologizing in advance for its personal nature: Do you keep guns in your home? Long pause. “No,” he replied, “but it’s a valid question.” The events of the past few days only reinforce the need to ask these questions. Last week, a 4-year-old picked up a loaded gun at a cook-out and accidentally killed the wife of a sheriff’s deputy in Tennessee. And on Monday, another 4-year-old shot and killed a 6-year-old friend as they played outside in a New Jersey neighborhood. “I’m sad for the children involved and their families, but I’m angry with whoever owns that gun and allowed a little child to get hold of it,” neighbor Debbie Coto told the Associated Press. (MORE: Kids and Guns: Why Doctors Have a Right to Know) I’m angry too. But I’m also proactive, which is why I never fail to ask the question of any parent who invites one of my kids over. I got the idea from a gun-safety rally I covered years ago, long before I even had kids. The advice sounded sage, if a bit discomfiting. It never fails to elicit a moment of stunned silence, but I’ve long since made peace with the awkwardness of asking. After all, when sending our kids over to someone else’s house, we make sure that the host parents have the appropriate car seats or boosters so that our children are safe on the road. If our kids have allergies, we let the host parents know. Recently, when my daughter invited a pal who has a peanut allergy to spend the night, her friend’s father dropped the girl off with a sleeping bag, a toothbrush and an EpiPen — just

Back in 2010 we featured a post about a segment from the “What Would You Do?” series from abc News that illustrated the way that race plays a role in who is labeled as deviant and who is given the benefit of the doubt.

The producers had teens vandalize a car in public to see what onlookers would do. To see if race played a role, they tried it with a group of White boys and then with a group of African American boys. Only one 911 call was made on the White boys, but 10 calls were made on the African American teens. Moreover, while the White teens were vandalizing the car, 911 received a call to report the African American boys simply for being asleep in a car, which the caller took as a possible sign they were planning to engage in criminal activity.

We see this same pattern in another “What Would You Do?” segment. This time, a young White man and a young African American man try to remove a lock from a bike as the cameras capture the reactions of onlookers.

The onlooker interviewed toward the end says race played no role in his reaction. But the extremely different reactions to the two teens indicate differences in who is perceived as likely to be engaged in criminal activity, and whose criminal activity we may think deserves being reported to the police, rather than given a disapproving tsk-tsk as we walk on by.

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

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

I first posted these posters on SocImages in 2008. They are designed to scare teenagers into taking precautions against pregnancy by demonizing teenagers who get (someone) pregnant. The way in which teens are portrayed in these images — labeled cheap, dirty, rejects, pricks, and nobodys — suggests that the organization, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, doesn’t care about teenagers, only in controlling their behavior.

This is the sentence that runs along the left vertical with the word “reject” extracted in bold: “I had sex so my boyfriend wouldn’t REJECT me. Now, I have a baby. And no boyfriends.”

“Now that I’m home with a baby, NOBODY calls me anymore.”

“All it took was one PRICK to get my girlfriend pregnant. At least that’s what her friends say.”

“Condoms are CHEAP. If we’d used one, I wouldn’t have to tell my parents I’m pregnant.”

“I want to be out with my friends. Instead, I’m changing DIRTY diapers at home.”

In response to ads like these, sociologist Gretchen Sisson has started a tumblr of examples of anti-teen pregnancy PSAs that use fear, shame, and threats as motivators, sent to me by @annajobin.  Here’s the one I found most stunning; I think it goes something like don’t-drink-and-party-or-you’ll-get-raped-and-pregnant-and-your-life-will-be-horrible-and-oh-your-child-will-become-a-rapist-too:

Here are a set of ads that try to convince women not have (unprotected) sex with their male peers by suggesting that the men showing interest in them are bad guys who will inevitably abandon them:

And here are a set that use simple threats to get across their message:

About her tumblr, Sisson writes:

Public service announcements that claim to be about “preventing teen pregnancy” are more frequently about shaming and stigmatizing young parents. This is not a way to encourage young people to take control of their reproductive lives, and it’s certainly not a way to support young families.

Nor is it a way to support teenagers who are negotiating complicated interpersonal terrain and making difficult decisions.  These ads are about getting teenagers to do what we want, not helping them figure out what’s best for them.  They caricature the actual lives of teenagers and make early parenthood into a comical boogeyman.  Moreover, they send a clear message to the teenagers that do get pregnant: “you’re a slut/idiot and your life is over.”  This is not good for young parents and it sets them up to fail.

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

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

poortaste:

George Orwell

IT WOULD be a good question for the quiz game Trivial Pursuit. What has the National Rifle Association (NRA), America’s powerful pro-gun lobbying outfit, got in common with Syria, Iran and North Korea? The answer: all are opposed to the global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which was overwhelmingly approved by 154 countries on April 2nd by the General Assembly of the United Nations.The next stage is for those countries which voted for the treaty to begin formally signing up to it in early June. Each signatory country will then have to ratify it at home. The treaty will come into legal force 90 days after the 50th country has ratified it—perhaps as soon as the end of this year. For some, ratification will be a simple process; for others it could prove harder.The Obama administration is a strong supporter and likely to sign up soon. But getting the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed for ratification will be a struggle, even though the American Bar Association has confirmed the treaty does not infringe any constitutional right to bear arms (as the NRA claims). America’s defence industry also supports it, hoping to bring other countries’ arms exporters closer to the high standards it operates under.Whatever difficulties may lie ahead, supporters of the treaty to regulate the $70-billion-a-year trade in arms are jubilant. It is the climax of a campaign that began a decade ago. It...

“This is the worst piece of cheek of all.”

Earlier this week, a new book gave us a glimpse of the heart-warming fan mail Mark Twain received over the course of his career. But for every person who showered Twain with genuine and unconditional gratitude, there seemed to be a dozen demanding a range of outrageous things — the curse that comes with the blessing of inhabiting the public eye as a national celebrity. And while the art of asking without shame remains essential and commendable, some of the audacious requests Twain received, collected in R. Kent Rasmussen’s excellent Dear Mark Twain: Letters from His Readers (public library), merit a scowl or at least a scoff for their sheer impudence. Here is a small sampling.

Letters requesting endorsement were not uncommon, but on April 12, 1875, Twain received one of particular absurdity from a Goorgia “journeyman printer” by the name of B. W. Smith:

Mr. Clemens —
Dear Sir —
As this letterhead will tell you, I am on the ragged edge of sending a book of nonsense to the nonsense reading public. Being my first, with only a few years reputation as a humorous writer to back it, it needs all the stimulus possible. I want the people to see that I am known to the literary world, and my object in writing to you is simply to give me a few words — no matter how indefinite or irrevelent to the matter in hand — with your name (Mark Twain) attached. Thus, a few scratches of your pen will cost you nothing and will help me a great deal. For instance, you might say “It ought to sell” or something similar — You see my object –

First page of letter from B. W. Smith. Courtesy of the Mark Twain Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

A number of the letters were preserved with Twain’s comments. On this one, he scribbled:

From some unknown person who probably has brains & modesty in about equal proportions.

Solicitations for feedback were equally bountiful. In a lengthy letter from November of 1875, an Alabama woman by the name of Louise Rutherford asked:

Sir:

I have written a book and can’t get it published. What, do you suppose, is the cause of my failure? It is a novel — the book I mean — and is sensationally perfect. In fact, it is so far ahead of most of the “roughing it” species of publications, that I am amazed beyond mea sure, at the refusal of the publishers to issue it. How did you manage to get your first work before the public? It is a “dark and bloody mystery” to me; and I would like you to explain. Perhaps if you let me into the secret I may succeed with mine.

[…]

I plead guilty to being romantic; but I believe I am more ambitious than romantic; and I wish you would help me with a little advice about my book. I am not able to pay beforehand, for its publication, and I don’t know whether I could do anything with it, unless I had money. Can I, do you think? Please be so obliging as to tell me. I have no friend who is informed in such matters.

Twain’s comment:

From a muggins in Alabama.

Though clearly self-aware of his audacity, this 18-year-old boy writing Twain in May of 1876 was anything but self-conscious about it:

Mr. Clemens,
Dear Sir,

I am going to make bold to ask of you a great favor. I wish to publish a small sheet, say, about 16×22 inches — divided into four pages of three columns each.

And I wish your permission to use the title (Mark Twain) as editor. I want you to furnish such matter as would in your own opinion, be suitable, for such a paper, as I wish to have this filled with your fun and sentiment. I, shall, if you oblige me, sell them at Philadelphia, this summer, and I assure you that everything shall be conducted in such a manner as you would agree to. There shall be no advertisements in the paper — but all space shall be filled with reading matter. Paragraphs can be selected from other Authors, which will lessen your labors, somewhat. The matter need not of necessity, all be fresh, but of course you will use your own judgment in that matter.

I am aware that in presuming to ask such a favor of you, since your time must be so completely occupied that I am rather audacious, and perhaps, impertinent. . . .

I will allow you what remuneration you consider just and right, either paying you a certain sum at the start or allowing you a percentage on the sales —

If you think it best and necessary I will come to Hartford and see you, about the plan. I hope and trust that you will grant me this favor, and greatly oblige,

Your Obedient Servant
Charles. S. Babcock.

Twain’s comment:

From a muggings

In November of 1879, Twain — born Samuel Clemens — received one of many frequent requests to explain his pseudonym:

My dear Sir

Will you have the goodness to send me as fully as you may be able the history of y’r pseudonym –“ Mark Twain.” How it was originated when you first used it, & in what connection on all these points I sh. be exceedingly glad to be informed.

I am preparing a handy book on pseudonyms — to include the history of the more important ones — wh. the Harpers are to publish — and it is extremely desirable th. I have the information for wh. I ask. With the hope th. I am putting you to no great inconvenience

Believe me Dear Sir
to be faithfully:
Rev. J. Dewitt Miller

Though he tended to generally ignore such inquiries, Twain was particularly annoyed by this one, due in part to its tone of especial entitlement and in part, no doubt, to its vexing abbreviations. His irritated comment:

From an ass — Not answered

In August of 1870, a moderately successful Canadian humorist asked:

Mr Clemens
Dear Sir, —
What will you charge to write me a lecture. One that will take about 1 ¼ hours to deliver it. Humorous and stirring, but not too pathetic. An early answer will very much oblige

Yours Respectfully
R. T. Lowery
Petrolea Ont Can.

Twain wrote in the margin:

Ass.

Autograph solicitations were among the most common requests, which Twain found invariably annoying — but hardly so much so as this laconic yet entitled one from an Iowa man named Clarence E. Ash:

Samuel Clemmens
Dear Sir,

The favor of your Autograph is respectfully solicited.

Twain couldn’t curtail his irritation, scribbling in outrage:

Good God!

In March of 1875, he received the following behest:

Mr. Sam Clemens
Dear Sir:

A few young people in town are about forming a literary club, and as we cannot decide upon a name, it was proposed that I should write to you and ask your advice.

The object of the club is improvement combined with pleasure.

At our meetings we have an entertainment about an hour long, consisting of declamations, readings, music &c., and then the rest of the evening is spent in social amusements.

Several names have been proposed, but we cannot find an appropriate one.

If you will help us out, provided it does not inconvenience you too much, we shall feel greatly indebted to you

Very truly yours,
S. P. Moor house
Sec.

Twain, suspecting the letter was an autograph grub masquerading as an already audacious request, jotted a comment:

This is the worst piece of cheek of all.

Such autograph ploys were, in fact, quite common. In November of 1901, Twain received the following short letter:

Dear Mr. Mark Twain: —

I am a little girl six years old. I have read your stories ever since they first came out.

I have a cat named Kitty, and a dog named Pup.
I like to guess puzzles. Did you write a story for the Herald Com-pe-ti-tion?
I hope you will answer my letter.

Yours truly,
Augusta Kortrecht.

Observing the mature handwriting, Twain commented unforgivingly:

Lame attempt of a middle-aged liar to pull an autograph.

Some of the most common requests Train received were for loans, ranging from the naive to the auspiciously audacious. In 1874, for instance, he received a letter from a woman who signed as Mrs. Mary Margaret Field. She outlined her financial problems plaguing her life of relative privilege, even noting she still owns a fair amount of valuable assets and real estate, the asked Twain for a one-hundred-dollar loan:

I write to you, because I have read sketches of yr life, and it seems to me, that, as you have raised yourself from obscurity and poverty, by your own talents and energy, you may feel some interest in the struggles of a Woman, who has supported herself, entirely, creditably, and honorably, by her pen.

[…]

I cannot tell you how earnestly I pray that your heart may be moved to assist me. — In your happy home, — wealthy, fortunate, famous and beloved, as you now are, you may have forgotten the old days of struggle. — Yet call them up once more, for a moment, to your mind, & for their sake, & because of the knowledge of suffering they gave you, have compassion on me, — for indeed, my distress is very deep, & genuine, and I know not which way to turn for relief.

Twain rarely responded to these letters, but when pushed beyond the limits of his irritation-tolerance, he did — and he did with fierce comedic bile:

Madam: Your distress would move the heart of a statue. Indeed it would move the entire statue if it were on rollers. I have seen looked upon poverty & its attendant misery in many lands, & in my own person I have suffered in this sort: but I never have heard of a case so bitter as yours. Nothing in the world between you & starvation but a lucrative literary situation, a few diamonds & things, & three thousand seven hundred dollars worth of town property. How you must suffer. I do not know that there is any relief for misery like this. Suicide has been recommended by some authors.

Letter from Ola A. Smith. Courtesy of the Mark Twain Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

In April of 1880, a Massachusetts spinster named Ola A. Smith made a similar request, far more modest in both sum and word count, yet doubly entertaining in its blend of “logical” reasoning and witty audacity:

Mr. Clemens,
Gracious Sir; —

You are rich. To lose $10.00 would not make you miserable.
I am poor. To gain $10.00 would not make me miserable.

Please send me $10.00 (ten dollars).

Twain’s comment:

O my!

Dear Mark Twain is just as delightful in its entirety. To fully appreciate the era’s epistolary charisma, complement it with this vintage guide to the etiquette of letter-writing from the same period.

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theperplexedobserver:

thespacegoat:

Courses:
Coursera
EDX
Udacity
University of Reddit

Books:
Bartleby
Gutenberg
Librivox
Poem Hunter

Videos:
Academic Earth
C. G. P. Grey
Crash Course
Khan Academy
Minute Physics
The New Boston Tutorials
TED
Unplug the TV

Documentaries:
Documentary Heaven
Top Documentary Films

Languages:
BBC Languages
Busuu
Dou Lingo
Live Mocha
MemRise
Verbling

Music:
How to Play Piano
Justin Guitar
Music Theory
Play Bass Now
Teoria

Programming:
Code Academy
Coding Bat
HTML Dog
Learn Code the Hard Way
Ruby Monk
Trypython

DIY/How-To:
Howcast
How Stuff Works
Instructables
The Daily Miscellany
Wiki How
Wonder How-To

Math:
Math Run
Project Euler
Wolfram Alpha

Cooking:
Cooking for Engineers
Cooklet
How2Heroes
Reluctant Gormet

I haven’t vetted all of these but can vouch for the value of many of them.

Chilling video taken at a high school party in Steubenville, Ohio in which attendees laugh and joke about an unconscious 16-year-old allegedly raped and sodomized by members of the football team, propelled the case into the national spotlight earlier this winter.

The deeply disturbing video focuses on Steubenville High School alum Michael Nodianos as he holds court with a grim comedy show, cracking up to quips such as, “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!” and “They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team!” Those with the stomach to endure the entire 12-minute video hear the victim repeatedly referred to as “dead,” offering ugly details including, “They peed on her! That’s how you know she’s dead because someone pissed on her.” The death motif is so amusing to those involved that it leads to a litany of references to her being “deader than” everyone from Caylee Anthony to Trayvon Martin.

Trigger warning:

The video combined with other digital remains of the attack mined from Twitter and Instagram stirred public outrage at the accused perpetrators, at the bystanders who failed to intervene, and at adults — coaches, police, prosecutor, and parents — perceived as having been complicit in covering up the assault, preferring to sweep the violence under the rug to protect the football team and the young men on it. Protests sprouted around the courthouse and are expected to resume on Wednesday as the trial begins.

This video and other digital souvenirs of violence, such as the photos taken and circulated of Savannah Deitrich while she was sexually assaulted, may or may not have significant legal consequences. Yet their cultural legacy — the opportunity they have to undermine our most resilient rape myths — has the potential to be even weightier.

Read the rest of this article at WBUR’s Cognoscenti.

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

The Harlem Shake is a syncopated dance form that first appeared on the New York hip-hop scene in the early 1980s.  Here is what it looks like:

In 2012 music producer Baueer created an electronic dance tune, unfortunately calling it The Harlem Shake. Baueer’s song inspired an Internet meme in which people rhythmlessly shake their upper bodies and grind their hips in a tasteless perversion of the original dance.  For example:

This fake Harlem Shake meme has become so ubiquitous that it has been “performed” by the English National Ballet, and gone further globally with a video from the Norwegian army, and in Tunisia and Egypt, where the song and imitation dance has become a protest anthem.

The irony of an African-American cultural relic being white-washed to the point where other people of color perform its bastardized version is not lost, and this takes on a whole new level as teams with majority African-American members such as the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets add to the fake Shake canon. Personally, I’ve been “video bombing” anyone I see incorrectly referring to the new version as the Harlem Shake with this:

A major problematic of this meme is that it takes an already marginalized group in America, one whose history and culture has often been appropriated and co-opted in fetishistic ways by the white majority, and makes a mockery of not just them, but an entire dance tradition.  This is not lost on residents of Harlem, many of whom recognize cultural appropriation and malrepresentation when they see it:

In spite of a number of calls online from African-American writers, artists, scholars and supporters like myself to bring attention to the real Harlem Shake, every day there is instead a new group adding to the misappropriated dance. When you Google “The Harlem Shake” you must scroll through pages before you reach any posts about the actual hip-hop tradition.

This literal erasure of black culture and its replacement with an absurdist movement and meme needs to be considered in light of African-American oppression and institutionalized racism in the United States. Supplanting the sinuous artistry of the Harlem Shake with frenetic styleless arm flailing and hip thrusting is yet another brick in a grand wall of symbolic and structural violence that further relegates an entire culture to the margins, both on and offline.

As the Harlem residents said in response to the meme: “Stop that shit.”

P.S. Here’s how to actually do the Harlem Shake. 

Sezin Koehler is a half-American half-Sri Lankan informal ethnographer and novelist living in Lighthouse Point, Florida.

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

To mark the end of Women’s History Month, we offer this compilation of our posts on women and history.

Sports:

• The Manly Origins of Cheerleading (1800s-2000s)
• The Origins of Boys and Girls Bikes (1890s)
• Women and Exclusion from Long Distance Running (1896-1984; pictured)
• Vintage Women’s Basketball Teams (1900s)
• Opportunity and Athletic Performance (1900s-2000s)

Health:

• Changing Biology: Age at First Menstruation (1840-2000)
• Prohibition and Medicinal Alcohol (1919-1933; pictured)
• Social Hygiene and the Gender of Health (1922)
• Hysteria, the Wandering Uterus, and the “Vaginal Massage” (1930s)
• VD and the Virgin/Whore Dichotomy in WWII Propaganda (1940s)
• Personifying Danger: Women as Vectors of STDS (1940s)
• The Pill and the Invention of the Monthly Cycle (1960s-2000s)
• Male and Female Victims of “Intimate” Homicide (1976-2004)

Fashion and Norms of Attractiveness:

• From Manly to Sexy: The History of the High Heel (1600s, 2000s)
• Ankle Porn and Knee-Gasms: Making Sewing Sexy (1900s-1920s)
• A Historical Look at Bodies as Fashion (1900s-2000s)
• Women Wears Men’s Clothes to a Prize Fight; World Gasps (1910)
• Two Facts about Figure Skating Fashion (1920s-1930s, 1980s)
• The Feminine Ideal (1928; pictured)
• Plastic Surgery Ad (1936)
• Vintage Posters of African American Hair Products (1939)
• Putting Glamour in its Proper Wartime Place (1940s)
• “Are You Popular?”: An Educational Film (1947)
• 1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines (1959)
• Dressing Ourselves: Gendered vs. Unisex Pants (1960s-’70s)
• Regulating Black Women’s Hair (1969)
• Changing Fashion Standards: Sexy Shoes (1969)
• Gender Neutral Ruffles (1970s)
• Nipples and the Presentation of Femininity (1970s-2000s)
• Model on Cover of Elle has a Real Face (1986)

Work:

• A Historical Look at Changes in Work Type (1850-2000)
• Men Need Women’s Jobs to Avoid Being Bums (1934)
• Modern Appliance Girls (1936)
• World War II Era Chest Protector (1939)
• High-Tech Rosies in World War II (1940s; pictured)
• Myth Making and the “We Can Do It” Poster (1940s)
• The Changing Workplace: Caring for Female Workers (1940s)
• Women Soldiers During World War II (1940s)
• Guide to Hiring Women (1943)
• Vintage PSA for the Equal Pay Act… featuring BatGirl (1963)
• A List of Reasons Not to Hire Women (1963)
• Gender, the U.S. Workforce, and the Recession (1965-2005)
• Futurists Imagine the 21st Century (1967)
• “Don’t Call Me a Cowgirl!” (1969)
• Sexism in Aviation: Then and Now (1970s, 2000s)
• Job Segregation by Sex (1972-2008)
• Gender and Changes in the U.S. Occupational Profile (1972-2012)
• Kitchen and Maid Spanish (1976, 1978)
• Was “Cathy” a Feminist Heroine? (1976-2010)
• More Men and Fewer Women Earning Poverty Wages (1979, 2007)
• Women Cook, Men are Chefs (1980s)

Education:

• Women Now Graduating at Higher Rates than Men (1880s-1970s)

Marriage and Motherhood:

• Replacing Women: Slaves, Servants, and Technologies (1800s, 1940s)
• Miscegenation Ball Anti-Lincoln Cartoon (1864)
• The Two Paths: Good Mothers and Outcast Sluts (early 1900s; pictured)
• Why Did Married Mothers Go to Work? (1900-2002)
• Medicalizing Gendered Marriage (1939)
• Visions of the Future of Housework (1950s)
• Are More Women Marrying Younger Men? (1960-2007)
• Marriage Trends and Why I’m Not Married (1960-2010)
• Class Privilege and Parental Leave (1961-2008)
• “When You Marry”: A Textbook (1962)
• Of Housework and Husbands (1965-1995)
• Ritalin for Moms (1967)
• The Invention of the Playboy (1969)
• Women, Education, and Trends in Childlessness (1976-2008)

Suffrage:

• Vintage Anti-Suffragist Postcards (1900s)
• Facets of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement (1900s)
• How Suffragist Postcards Got Out the Vote (1910s)
• Delay Thanksgiving Dinners to See Suffragettes (1909)
• Against Giving Women the Right to Vote in Massachussetts (1915)
• Celebrating Women’s Suffrage (1919)

Marketing:

• Early Appropriation of the Women’s Movement in Advertising (1910)
• Anxiety about “Objectionable Hair”: Introducing Armpit Shaving (1915, 1934)
• Framing Tampon Use (1940s)
• Marketing Pre-Made, Non-Perishable Food (1940s; pictured)
• “For Men Only”: Vintage Campbell’s Soup Ad (1940s)
• Ad Shows Husband as Primary Caretaker (1947)
• Jell-O to the Rescue (1950s)
• More Leisure through Technology (1950s, 1970s, 2000s)
• Honda Fits She’s and the Dodge LaFemme: History Repeating Itself (1950s, 2000s)
• “The Orchid of Beer”: Beer for Women (1953)
• Changing Midol Ads (1960s, 1990s, 2000s)
• “Treat Your Rifle Like a Lady” (1968)
• “You’ve Got Your Own Cigarette Now, Baby” (1969)
• Mocking Feminism in a Smirnoff Ad (1970s)
• Appropriation of the Women’s Movement (1971)
• Contrasting Stereotypes of Mexican Men and Women (1975)
• Virginia Slims Ads (1978)
• Awesome Vintage LEGO Ad (1981)
• More Gender-Neutral LEGO Ads (1982)
• Marketing the Tampon: “Will I Still Be a Virgin?” (1990s)

Children and Toys:

• Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap: Part I (1932-1988; pictured)
• Encouraging Girls to Identify with Barbie (1959)
• Bob Barker Harasses Little Girls on The Price is Right (1970s)
• “Particularly with the Boy”: Worries about Feminization of Boys (1974)
• Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap: Part II (1989-2003)
• Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap: Part III (2004-2011)
• Historical Perspective on the LEGO Gender Gap: Part IV (2012)

War and Military:

• War as Sexual Domination (1957)
• Recruiting Women Marines (1970s-2000s)

Activism:

• Wimbledon Cartoon Imagines Progress for Women (1927)
• Appropriating Social Movements in Playboy (1960s-1970s)
• Gender Politics in Life and Time (1971, 1977)

Color, Sound,and Language:

• Men in Pink: Two Velasquez Paintings (1650s)
• Gender and the Social Construction of Sound (1906-2006)
• Changes in Gendered Language Over Time (1930-2005)
• The History of Pink and Blue (1960s)

Just for Fun:

• The Story of the Shopping Cart (1937-2000s)
• Urinals for Women: An Alternative Reality (1953)
• Constructing a Shocking (Falsely) Sexist Past (1955, but not really)
• Disney Futurists Imagine 2010 (1958)

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

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

To be or not to be certain — an exercise in the art and science of doubt.

It’s been argued that Shakespeare changed everything. Yet even if this is true, it’s true of the literature we consider Shakespeare’s legacy — which, it turns out, might not be Shakespeare’s after all. So holds the Authorship Question — the age-old debate about whether or not a single man we refer to as Shakespeare authored the legendary sonnets and plays. Currently, there are three contenders for the authorship throne: “Startford” (the man from the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, or Traditional Shakespeare), “Oxford” (Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford), or “Ignatus” (an unnamed and unidentified third person).

In AKA Shakespeare: A Scientific Approach to the Authorship Question (public library), Stanford astrophysicist Peter Surrock, who lists as his credentials “a love of literature and a fondness for attempting to solve problems … coupled with a conviction that scientific thinking need not be restricted to scientific problems,” presents a DIY kit for assessing the Authorship Question, applying scientific principles to the four-centuries-old dispute. Surrock writes:

Why another book about the Shakespeare Authorship Question? Because the identity of the author we know as “Shakespeare” remains an open question. Most scholars of English literature maintain that he was a gentleman of that or similar name who was born and died in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon in the County of Warwickshire in England. However, there are a growing number of independent scholars who dispute that contention. The scholastic community has not persuaded the independent scholars to see the error of their ways. But neither have the independent scholars persuaded the orthodox scholars to see the error of their ways. The Authorship Problem therefore remains unresolved.

Unusual in both form and format, the book is written as a dialogue between four characters of various skills and perspectives — a Shakespeare-Is-Shakespeare believer, a fierce skeptic, and two participants of neutral disposition who are there to shepherd the scientific process. What emerges is part choose-your-own-adventure novel, part Baloney Detection Kit, tickling your critical thinking and guiding you through various pieces of information as you make up your own mind about The Bard’s identity.

The the toolkit — being a product of science — does involve some number-crunching, a tool on the book’s companion site affectionately named Prospero will analyze your judgments of the evidence and produce a result in favor of Stratford or Oxford or Ignotus.

But perhaps best of all is the checklist of credos that underpin the analytical tool. Dubbed Prospero’s Precepts, these eleven rules culled from some of history’s greatest minds can serve as a general-purpose guideline for critical thinking in all matters of doubt:

1. All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level. (Stephen Schneider)
2. Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. (Dandemis)
3. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. (Francis Bacon)
4. Never fall in love with your hypothesis. (Peter Medawar)
5. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
6. A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong. (Francis Crick)
7. The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that is most interesting. (Richard Feynman)
8. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. (Charles Darwin)
9. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
10. Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. (Thomas Jefferson)
11. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

Itching to solve the age-old mystery for yourself? Grab a copy of AKA Shakespeare and head over to Prospero to calculate your final degrees of belief, which Surrock and his research team will add to those of others before publishing a summary of the crowd-sourced results.

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