Traditional Gender Roles & "Funny Pictures"

Is it just me or does every semester seem to go by faster and faster? I cannot believe this is my last post and I have to admit, I'm kind of going to miss blogging. However, it is pretty time consuming to think of an idea, do some research, and then (thoughtfully) write.

For my last entry, *sniffle* I'm going to talk about traditional gender roles. It will be somewhat difficult to keep this post around the correct length because these issues are what sparked my interest in taking a gender course in the first place. In other words, I feel like I could babble on and on forever. This idea of men working to be the breadwinner of the family and women belonging only in the kitchen has long since died. Since the economic downturn and a priority for a higher standard of living, more and more couples are now equally employed in order to support a family.

My main argument is: “Funny pictures” tend to reinforce very traditional gender stereotypes, and are not healthy in the time of nearing gender equality. I went to the facebook page “No Hope for the Human Race” and found some material to support my claim. Behold:

The above photo highlights two negative things about male and female gender:

1. Women are absurdly detail-oriented and slow in making decisions.
   Since women have absolutely nothing else to do but shop, cook, and take care of the kids, they have all the time in the world to think about the 12 characteristics of each beauty product they're buying. I'm pretty sure if a woman went through this many steps in order to buy one single product, it would take her days to go through a store and get to the checkout counter (I have a sarcastic attitude today, just in case you couldn't tell.) Though it is true women still currently have about 86% of the buying power in the United States, we are getting closer to an era of equality among women and men dividing the shopping, household chores, and childcare (gendered division of labor.)
2. Men make fast decisions [because they don't care about hygiene.]
   Men do not value the way they look enough to care about which brand of shampoo they purchase. The photo also reinforces the stereotype of men as bread-winners who thus have better things to do than to be wasting time picking out shampoo.
   On a side note, though some men may not have a preference, I care about which shampoo I buy. I've been using this shampoo for a couple years now and I like it a lot. It's a great brand, love the way it smells. You can get it for around $6-7 at Target.

I just wanted to mention a couple things about the following pictures, since this is already starting to get lengthy...

The above photo almost killed me. The picture is two-fold. The general theme is: a woman's only role in life is to take care of a man. It provides two implications. EITHER women use a flat-iron to cook bacon instead of a stove or a microwave because they're THAT incompetent. OR women are so infatuated with the way they look, they can't even get out of the bathroom long enough to make their husband/significant other bacon in the morning.

Again, the same theme:

Moral of the story is...

Ladies: If you're still scrubbing the kitchen floors on your hands and knees while your other half drinks beer and works on petty projects in the garage with his buddies all weekend, you're only contributing to gender inequality.

Men: Start caring more. Start cooking dinner sometimes. Step up. It won't be long before women just swear us off altogether and we become only needed for reproduction. I'm half kidding – half not.

I figured I might as well go out with a bang and incorporate a little bit of my humor into my final post; hope I didn't make it too sassy. At any rate, thank you for visiting throughout the semester! I hope you've enjoyed my blog and have at least learned something from it. Happy Gendering! :)

"Bar-B-Que Babes"

Hardees. Home of the Monster Thickburger (which, by the way, I've never had in my entire life.) The chain is also well-known for its more provocative advertising campaigns, featuring several models including: Kate Upton, Sara Underwood, and Emily Ratajkowsk. My old roommate loves the commercials – so much that he had this picture as the desktop background on his computer:

The commercial I would like to share has never been aired on television. Hardees calls it The Director's Cut, which is apparently “Just too hot for TV.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsqUshEERvE&feature=related

This media is going to become a representations analysis paper for my Gender and Discourse class, which will examine the entire one minute and eights seconds. But for now, there are two themes I would like to briefly talk about from the commercial.

1. It sexualizes the two models. 

I don't think I need to explain that the women are a focus throughout the media, but to some degree it normalizes their behavior. At about 57 seconds, they are posed on bails of hay and the blonde is seductively wiping the Bar-B-Que sauce off the brunette's mouth. The commercial dialogue calls it “Bar-B-Que's best pair,” [between the beef and pork] which is ironically used as an innuendo to also implicate the two women. In fact, what is most interesting to me is that we don't know what is being advertised until a minute and two seconds into the commercial.

2. It portrays the male as a loser. 

It's unclear if the two men are supposed to be working as a team or independently – they're both wearing the same yellow shirts, so I would assume as a team... At any rate, they're both so distracted by the two women that nothing is cooking on their grill, let alone is it even lit? They can only view [the women] from afar and simultaneously take pictures with their cell phones.

There was also another commercial Hardees produced which actually WAS aired. It features a women at a drive-in movie who, while consuming a Southwest Patty Melt, becomes sexually aroused. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlLtnjSiTUE I think this commercial is just as a bad as the first one, and even worse in some details. Regardless, there is definitely a certain following to these commercials – and it will be interesting to further investigate the themes in more detail.

Election and Michelle Obama

Happy Election Day! I've never been so happy for the first Tuesday of November in my entire life. Republican and Democratic parties have been doing whatever it takes to sway the voters right up until the last minute. The internet, radio ads, billboards, door handle fliers, junk-mail, and social networking websites to name a few, have been blasting information regarding the election. I mean, despite the fact I have no land-line phone hooked up, both parties frequently try to call the house unsuccessfully (the number shows up on the TV screen.) It's a little disgusting.

Last week as I was going through my news feed on Facebook, I came across a picture and it got me thinking about a blog post idea...

Considering it is the year 2012, it's about time we had a female president. So what about Michelle Obama? She is a “heavy hitter” when it comes to supporting her husband's campaign, as well as taking matters of civil duty into her own hands. She frequently speaks across the nation about her project of childhood obesity awareness. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/us/14michelle.html?_r=0 She is a very effective speaker, well educated, passionate, and in touch with the real issues of Americans. Prior to Barack's presidency, Michelle was earning a significantly higher income than he was (almost twice as much.)

In short, I think she is just as capable of running the United States as Barack. In actuality, Michelle Obama's ratings are more favorable than her husband's. http://www.gallup.com/poll/117232/Michelle-Obama-Favorable-Rating-Eclipses-Husband.aspx Whether it be Michelle or another candidate, in the days of increasing gender equality, I'm confidently sure I will see a female president in my lifetime.

Michelle is clearly an influential leader across the nation, a feminist icon, and definitely a positive role model for women. I think she has an uncanny ability to standout and create an awareness of the issues most important to her. Since she is the first African American first lady of the United States – it is this position which allows her to propagate and evoke change in race and women’s oppression.

Revealing Halloween Costumes

Over the weekend, I went to a couple Halloween parties – and I attended with the mindset that I was going to write a blog post about some of the different costumes people were wearing. For this post, I wanted to point out some of the costume differences between young girls and women (I bet some of you already know where I am going with this.) Usually little girls want to either be a witch, a cat, or a princess. I think it's pretty easy to come up with a cat costume – black pants and shirt, a headband with ears, painted on whiskers, a tail, and voila! Seems relatively simple, right? Well, not so much anymore. The focus for a lot of adult female costumes is, “what is the least amount of clothing I can get away with wearing?” It's the one time of the year women can go out to the bars dressed in whatever and not be called a slut. A holiday that was made for kids has increasingly turned into an excuse for women to get away with wearing virtually nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple years from now people are just wearing tape over their extremities and calling it a costume. Halloween stores now have an entire section devoted to “sexy costumes.” http://www.halloweenexpress.com/sexy-costumes-c-500.html

So how do women go from this:

To this:

Do you think her cat ears are the focal point of this costume? I don't think so.

Wisconsin can get pretty cold for Trick-or-Treating on Halloween night. When I was little, every year I always heard the adults say the same, “You can dress up and be whatever you want but you have to wear long underwear under your costume!” I'm not sure what happened to the dress warm mentality but I heard the phrase, “I'm freezing” more than a dozen times over this past weekend. I spoke to a few of the males at work about the issue of women seemingly showing more and more every year. All of them thought the same about Halloween: “women know and fully understand the consequences of wearing a revealing costume – it draws attention to themselves.”

Even an important character such as a police officer can be turned into something promiscuous and unrealistic.

From this:

To this:

I don't think her costume looks very authoritative. In fact, the costume is clearly marketed to provide a highly-sexual female image. In other words, I'm sure some Halloween costumes could double as a fantasy role-playing scenario in the bedroom.

So what can we do to change society's way of performing gender around Halloween to something more appropriate? How are we influencing little girls (and even boys) by scantly dressing ourselves?

On a somewhat unrelated note, for those of you who are unaware: I love pugs. Their smashed-in faces, bulging eyes, and curly tails get me every time. In the middle of searching for “slutty Halloween costumes,” this picture popped up right in the midst of Google images. I think it would be so much easier if we would all dress like these two!

Male Beauty, Norms, and Pain

I got some flack from some people for not blogging last Tuesday. Sorry folks, I was busy studying for my Geography mid-term. :)

I want to discuss a couple current observations in regards to Men's hygiene. The first thing I thought of when I came up with this topic idea was, “How am I going to talk about this without disclosing too much personal information?” But here goes nothing...

I think men have gotten a LOT better with keeping up their appearance now more than in previous years, such as the 1970's, 80's, and even the 90's. When I was 16 years old I never thought I would be tanning my skin, getting my eyebrows waxed, whitening my teeth, using a facial mask every week, or occasionally sporting some light make-up.

Observation #1:

Likewise to women, men also have certain beauty and appearance standards that are set by the media – most of which are unattainable and unrealistic for the average male. I know I definitely find myself going through magazines, pictures on Instagram, etc., and thinking, "Wow, he's got good muscle tone or great skin... How can I look more like that?" However, I always have to keep an awareness that they don't really look like that. Male celebrities wear make-up and get photo-shopped just as much as their female counterparts. For example: Harry Styles from One Direction. I'm sure some teenage girls would kill to meet him. Yet, from unedited pictures I've seen, he isn't that much different (appearance-wise) from the normal, average, 18 year-old male.

Unedited:

 Edited:

There absolutely no way his skin looks this good without make-up and photo editing.

Observation #2: Men that spend any extra time on themselves is portrayed as painful by the media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRKbez1LpWU

There is another clip I wanted to share from the movie What Women Want but I could not find a good enough version on YouTube that was worth posting – but it was essentially the same “painful waxing” concept. Okay... let's be honest, it does not hurt THAT bad. It hurts more to get a sports injury than it does to get anything waxed. There still seems to be this negative stigma on men spending too much time on themselves; they don't want to appear feminized. I think people in general are afraid of stepping out of their comfort zone and becoming a non-conformist, but it only takes one person to make a statement which ultimately constructs something into a social norm.

So why does the media depict the waxing as extraordinarily painful? Women get bikini waxes without cursing and screaming out in pain...

Pink & Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I figured I would talk about some of the more current media coverage surrounding breast cancer and what it means for women. Primarily, I wanted to focus on the color pink and how it is socially constructed to mean words such as “hope, strength, and courage.”

My Grandma passed from breast cancer in 2005, but I remember her bringing home a pin-able pink ribbon from the hospital when she was undergoing chemotherapy. Even though it was only eight years ago, I don't recall the pink ribbons as being a such prevalent indicator of breast cancer. I remember seeing them only on the corner of cereal boxes, bottled water, etc. Now they're everywhere; I bet if I walked through a grocery store, I would find hundreds of products sporting the little pink ribbon. Not only would products have a pink ribbon to signal their participation in raising money to find a cure, I would see entire products wrapped in bright pink packaging. Companies have gone overboard with the pink color to now signal a “LOOK AT ME” mentality, which I think has taken some of the honorific discourse out of the original ribbon.

There was a film released earlier in 2012 called Pink Ribbons, Inc., which highlighted some of the corporatism of using the pink ribbons to “raise money, regardless of the consequences.” I personally have not seen this film, but I would would like to... maybe I will try to rent it over the weekend. Just watching the trailer sparks my interest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QPZfcYTUaA

Instead of using pink as a symbol for awareness of breast cancer, companies are using the color to gain media attention and thus increase revenue. Currently, the NFL has adopted pink as an accent color during various “breast cancer awareness” games in the month of October. I do not follow sports at all, but I caught a couple minutes of the Packer game last Sunday and it didn't take me long to notice the bright pink towels, shoes, etc.

“Games throughout October to feature pink cleats, gloves, chin straps, footballs with pink ribbon decals,” stated NFL's website. Read the full article here: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d822a6217/article/nfl-supports-breast-cancer-awareness-month

I think researching this stuff is really interesting and is definitely a paradigm change for me. So what do you think about this issue? Is it an issue?

Leave me a comment below, I'm curious to see what other people think.

Children's Books and Gender

Before reading this post, please take a second to examine the picture above.

This past Sunday, I attended a baptism for my friend's daughter. It was kind of a last minute decision, so as a result I ended up making a special trip to my local Woodman's. I picked up a card and then found myself looking around the magazine/book aisle. School was the last thing on my mind at 8PM on a Saturday night, but as I looked through the children's section I couldn't help but notice how the books were arranged and coordinated according to gender. Dora the Explorer books were next to Cars puzzles. Barbie Magic Plays were among SpongeBob SquarePants, which were all next to Toy Story and Elmo Music Players. I took a minute to further analyze not only the placement of the books, but also the color choice, text style, and the focal point of each cover. The books for girls were printed with smaller cursive/fancy writing, while the books for boys had larger bold words. The books for girls also included more words to describe the contents – “Barbie,” was lengthened to “Barbie: Fun with Barbie and Friends,” whereas the books for boys had very short titles, such as simply “Cars,” or even none at all. ALL of the books for girls had one to several animated human characters on the cover, whereas the boy books had ZERO human characters displayed. I could write an entire dissertation about the differences I noticed, but I just wanted to highlight a few for this blog. I thought of a couple questions as I was thinking about this example of gender.

1. How did certain colors become socially constructed to mean a specific gender?
2. Do you think publishers should include a more ambiguous type of book design or content? What would that book look like and what would it include?

Equality in Clothing Stores

Happy Tuesday (again!) I am going to try to make a blog post every Tuesday for ten weeks in a row. It is the only day I do not have class so keeping up with it should be pretty easy.

During the first couple of Women's Studies classes, we got on the topic of gender equality; my Gender and Discourse class also had a focus discussion about how much more privilege men have versus women. Our discussions included the wage gap, political figures in office, the negative stigmas of men and sex, etc. There is definitely one area where women have an extreme advantage over men: clothes shopping and variety of stores.

Let me give you an example to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. The Fox River Mall, located in Appleton, WI has an extensive variety of clothing stores - http://www.foxrivermall.com/directory. Without counting the department stores, (Target, Younkers, etc...) I counted 38 stores that sell women's clothing. An overwhelming number of stores are exclusive for women too, such as Discovery Clothing, Aerie, Ann Taylor, Catherine's, Victoria's Secret, Christopher & Banks, the Deb, J. Jill, Maurices, White House Black Market... do I need to go on? Only 12 stores sell men's clothing and four of them are exclusive to men – which are all formal-wear .

I went to Panama City Beach in late August 2012 with family (and obviously did some shopping, too.) We went to an outdoor mall where the clothing store ratio was the same as I was used to anywhere else. As I was walking by Forever 21, I noticed an advertisement for men's clothing. I walked in to check it out and had a pretty good laugh at the selection. I was trying to think outside the box in terms of my fashion palate and almost bought a shirt, but realized I would probably never wear it - http://www.forever21.com/Product/Category.aspx?br=21men&category=m_whatsnew. It is at least a good attempt to expand their consumer prospects even though the “men's section” took up about 10% of the entire store.

So for the men:

1) What do you think about the tiny selection of clothing we have to choose from in comparison to the ladies?

2) Would you like to see more clothing stores exclusive to men, or just more equality among stores? Why?

For the women:

1) Do you think I should just stop complaining already? 

2) What do you think about my observation?

Roommates and Gender Performance

Happy Tuesday! For my second blog post, I would like to focus on one personal experience of gender performance in the media. It would be helpful to view the media before reading on, so I have enclosed the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N5_i4cC6ls I believe the commercial was originally aired sometime in the fall of last year.

To preface this post, I would like to explain the reason this commercial has gained my attention in the first place. I live with two roommates, one male (Jason) and one female (Kim,) who both have a bachelors degree from UW-LaCrosse and Marquette University, respectfully. When we saw the commercial for the first time, we all happened to be watching TV and Jason and Kim started a small discussion about the boy's selection of toys. During the first couple scenes, Kim mentioned, “apparently this boy is playing 'house' by himself.” After the boy realizes his father came home, Jason remarked, ”Oh now he's got to explain why he was playing with Barbies.” I sat quietly and listened to the dialogue but ultimately never gave my opinion on the commercial at the time; I tend to remain relatively unbiased towards petty debates. I would assume the boy has a sister for the female gendered toys to be present in the first place so if I was his father, I wouldn't think twice about him playing with a pink horse trailer, purple-haired dolls, or Barbie houses.

One of the comments posted on YouTube was, “I never understood why the kid is playing with girl's toys... maybe he has a sister? But at the end of the commercial it's just him, his mom and dad outside... no sister... I guess he's confused about his sexuality.” Another post commented, “I think it's great that they show a little boy defying gender stereotypes and playing with both trucks and dolls in the innocent way all kids can. Good job Chevy!”

So what do you think? If you were a parent of a young boy about his age, do you think you would notice his gender performance, or would you dismiss the concept as young innocence? If he was playing with the toys and a girl about the same age was in the room with him, would the context of the boy's gender performance change?

Introduction and Observation

Welcome to my blog for the Introduction to Women's Studies 201 class I am taking during the Fall, 2012 semester! Since this is my first blog post, I will quickly introduce myself. My name is Christopher Noack and I am a senior at the Univeristy of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, majoring in speech communication with a minor in organizational communication https://twitter.com/cjnoack12. I am taking this women's studies course not only as elective credits, but also because I enjoy gender studies. I am enrolled in the Gender and Discourse (Communication/Women's Studies 316) this semester and I have already taken Gender in Communication Contexts (Communication 436) last winter interim. I am graduating in May, 2013 and I hope to use this blog as a possible professional reference – I will still speak very openly about what I think and believe with some examples from my own experience, while maintaining a professional composure.

For this specific blog post, I would like to highlight a personal observation example of gender in the workplace. I currently work at the Bergstrom Buick-GMC Truck dealership located in Appleton www.bergstromappletonbuick.com. We are currently undergoing a $2,000,000 renovation – almost a complete overhaul of the store's showroom and service departments. The dealership employs a ratio of approximately 90% male vs. 10% female workers, with 100% of the female employees enrolled in administrative and sales roles. About five years ago there were a few female employees working in the detail departments, but we have generally lost our female population in that service industry for our store. During the renovation, the wall between the men and women's bathroom/locker room in the service department was demolished, resulting in the creation of one large changing room for the male gender only. As soon as I noticed this, I immediately had come up with my first blog post idea. Since the workplace is more about gender equality in the year 2012 than ever before, it surprised me this change was made.

I asked myself three questions,

1) What if in the future we end up employing female detail or service technicians?

2) Would this be a form of discrimination?
3) Have any other employees in the company noticed this change? Or has anyone else thought as critically about the removal of a woman's bathroom as I have?

I spoke to the few female co-workers of mine about the renovation; most of them didn't even know the change had taken place, but ultimately expressed and questioned the same concerns as I have. I had to somewhat play devil's advocate to get some of the rational behind the change – some of the male co-workers had commented, “Of the .05% of women in the service field who would ever be employed at this dealership, they can use the women's bathroom in the showroom.” What do you think? Comment on your thoughts! Thanks again for checking out my blog... more posts to come.