How to Talk to Kids About Sexy Dolls Without Sex-Shaming. Originally published on Ravishly and republished here with their permission. “Is it slut shaming to dub Polly Pocket ‘Polly Prostitute?’ No, it isn’t,” Rebecca Hains wrote in response to comments on this Jezebel article by Margot Magowan. I disagree, but I know where Magowan, Hains, and the artists behind the Bratz doll make-unders are coming from. I really do. Shopping for Halloween costumes for my daughter when she was three sent me into a seething rage over the aisles full of sexy costumes for the four-to-six age group.
It’s both disturbing and distressing that companies market “sexy” to little girls who are way too young to understand what sexy means. I want parents and others to critique these companies and hold them accountable for teaching girls to focus on appearance above all else – as well as for providing them with such limited options for expressing themselves. But there are ways to do this that involve sex-shaming and ways that don’t. Why are they all thin and able-bodied?
Rolling Stone's Cover Women Rarely Wear Bras. We were stoked to see Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling and Laura Prepon grace the cover of Rolling Stone this month, seemingly an affirmation from the gods that feminism is on the rise. Framed by the magazine’s cursive logo, the two are pictured braless, windblown hair flying back in tousled waves.
The image is beautiful, but it was created according to a pretty sexist formula. With access to their pick of Hollywood’s most beautiful women, Rolling Stone typically shoots their cover girls in one of three ways, according to Fusion writer Kelsey McKinney: clothed, shirtless with a bra, or close-up headshot. There’s nothing new or bothersome about female nudity or the expression of sexuality, but statistics like these send a clear message to women within and outside the industry: In order to land a cover, you need to pose a certain “way.” A breakdown of Rolling Stone’s 244 female covers reveals even more sobering truths about the way media still pressures and portrays women. Doing Gender with the Face, Featuring Erika Linder. By Lisa Wade, PhD, Mar 25, 2014, at 09:00 am Sociologists often say that gender is partly a performance.
How we talk and laugh and what we say; how we stand, sit, and move; how we dress, wear our hair, and adorn our faces and bodies with make up and accessories — all these things are gendered. Insofar as we follow the rule that we perform in ways that match our genitalia, male-bodied and female-bodied people will seem more different, more “opposite,” than they really are. Today I stumbled across another really striking example of gender performance.
This one involves model Erika Linder doing both masculinity and femininity in a commercial for JC Jeans Company. What is striking to me is how she does gender with her face. Here are two more from her Unique Models page: H/t Ms. Quel âge a cette femme? | blogue Originel. Image:Zuza Krajewska Faisons un petit test, si vous le voulez bien. Jouons à deviner quel âge ont les mannequins sur ces photos, au moment où elles ont été prises : L’Américaine Dakota Fanning, une bouteille de parfum accotée contre son sexe pour Marc Jacobs? Photo: Jacobs La réponse : 17 ans Maintenant, la Brésilienne Thairine Garcia, les mamelons visibles sous sa petite robe jaune transparente? Photo:Bazaar La réponse : 14 ans Quel âge a Lottie Moss (oui, c’est la sœur de Kate Moss) en mini-jupe, perchée sur des talons hauts plateformes? Photo:Andrea Carter Bowman La réponse : 13 ans La Québécoise Ryan, au décolleté plongeant et au regard sensuel?
Photo:Elle Québec/Leda & St.Jacques La réponse : 16 ans Ondria Hardin, dans une publicité pour Prada, se caressant les jambes sur une musique suave? Ah oui, et celle en haut de ce billet? Des lolitas pour les femmes Il est difficile de savoir quel âge ont les mannequins dans les images que l’on voit. Sexual Objectification, Part 1: What is it? This is Part 1 of a four-part series on sexual objectification–what it is and how to respond to it.
The phrase “sexual objectification” has been around since the 1970s, but the phenomenon is more rampant than ever in popular culture–and we now know that it causes real harm. What exactly is it, though? If objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like an object, then sexual objectification is the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure. How do we know sexual objectification when we see it? Building on the work of Nussbaum and Langton, I’ve devised the Sex Object Test (SOT) to measure the presence of sexual objectification in images. In it, I propose that sexual objectification is present if the answer to any of the following seven questions is “yes”: 1) Does the image show only part(s) of a sexualized person’s body? Covering up a woman’s face works well, too:
Sexualization of childoohood is children’s rights issue of our time. Just received the brand new book by Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals: Redfining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, from birth to Tween. I am so excited to read this! I am a huge fan of Wardy’s company PIgtail Pals and Ballcap Buddies, and of her excellent blog, so I know this is going to be good. From the prologue: I believe that the sexualization of childhood will soon be seen as the children’s right issues of our time. Sexualization affects both boys and girls of all ages but is especially focused on our girls. Sexualization affects all races, economic classes, and geographical areas.
It robs children of their right to childhood and to reach psychological developmental milestones fairly, and it affects their self esteem, body image, and performance in school. I love how Wardy succinctly differentiates between sexualization– sexuality as performance– and real sexuality. TROUSSE - TCMFCQ. TROUSSE - TCMFCQ. Why Do We Sexualize Chicken? The Sexual Politics of Meat is a scathing, powerful analysis of the relationship between the oppression of women and the farming of animals for food. Written by Carol J. Adams and published in 1990, it inspired many a feminist to choose vegetarianism and made many more take pause. In the six-and-a-half minute video below, she discusses the sexualization and feminization of chicken specifically.
She shows lots of examples of the ways in which chicken carcasses are objectified as women: put in high heels, bikinis, sexual positions, etc. We feature many examples of this at our Pinterest board collecting gendered and sexualized food, some of which we’ve borrowed from Adams. Adams then argues that this is a way to distract us from the fact that we are eating the flesh of an animal that has been killed for us. By sexualizing animals, we trigger another thing, that uneasiness becomes sexual energy… and everybody knows what to do about sexual energy.
Hear it straight from Adams, via Uncooped: 2013/may/american-apparel-really-know-about-that-unisex-thing-damn-well-english-version.html. American Apparel really know about that ”unisex” thing. Damn well. (English version) Dearest Vanja helped me with a english translation for my post about the unisex-shirt from American Apparel. Thank you so much! Unisex. And there it is. Yupp. This is the link to find out what the shirt looks like on a woman. Oh. Well then... So this is a bit of the front of the shirt...Mhmm. What the hell is that in her hand? Now, come on. Hm. Mmm. Same shirt? Maybe this denim one!? View a woman in this unisex style. Yes, yes, yes! Oh. No pants. Oh my... Okay, right. Right. Hanging out on the balcony with friends, chilling out... smoking. Mhmm... No. But I have to be clear. Kommentarer Svar:"Det enda sättet att vinna spelet är att inte spela alls. " Smart dude den där Ryan Holiday.
Svar: Inte missat, helt fantastiskt! Trackback. Men Need Clothes; Women Need to Look Sexy. By Lisa Wade, PhD, Aug 7, 2013, at 12:00 pm Caoileann A. sent in a great example of the way that women, but not men, are sexualized in our society. In this case it’s a series of American Apparel ads. I know, low hanging fruit. This example is extra great, though. While normally it’s up to the critic to counterpose the portrayal of men and women in our society, in this case American Apparel does it for us. The categories are exactly the same, but the way men and women are posed is strikingly different. This is — all too much — how we look at men and women in our society today.
Women are presented too often not as consumers of the product, but part of the product – a sexy body sexily getting ready to surf, or a sexy body sexily wearing American Apparel. Sex Sells, But We're Buying More Than We Bargained For. In a world where advertising-fueled media is inescapable, where the pornography industry has infiltrated all aspects of pop culture, and sexualized female bodies sell everything from children’s toys to deodorant, it’s easy to feel like sex appeal is all women can/should offer. The truth is, this rampant sexual objectification inspires shame, anxiety, and lost potential at every turn for girls and women.
But here’s something we know for sure, and it’s a message we shout from the rooftops and have proved with our PhD research: There is more to be than eye candy. And when we figure out who we are outside the confines of just being looked at, we can do so much in this world. Media shouts what we should believe about ourselves at every turn. Pornography Redefined With sexualized female bodies dotting our media landscape, consider pretty much any movie in theaters in 2013, ads by Carls Jr., GoDaddy! Even Candyland got a sexy new makeover! Sexualized So Young: So What?
Halloween. 25 Inscrutable Stock Photos of Naked Women. Stock photo companies do their best to have a photo for any need, but that also means that some of the photos are so bizarre it's hard to imagine any real use for them. A lot of them also feature unnecessary, inexplicable nudity. Here are the 25 most inscrutable stock photos of naked women. 1. Wearing a Jack-O-Lantern Do you think this started out as a spooky shoot that was slowly turning sexy, or a sexy shoot that was slowly turning insane? 2. Here, use this fork and knife the way no one eats apples. 3. "What am I doing? 4. "I don't know something about this isn't working. 5. This is a photo of a naked, pensive looking woman driving a car, and somehow the phone is the weirdest thing about it. 6. "Well, ladies, we've had a great shoot, but whaddya say we make some ART. 7. The human latte. 8. Hey, remember that take we did with the apple girl?
9. What young boy DOESN'T fantasize about naked women bringing him corn. 10. 11. 12. There's an obvious pun here, but I'm not going to make it. 13. Sexy and the Gender Binary. A new submission is a nice addition to this old post. The newest iteration of this gender-bending game — men in pin-up poses — can be found in the middle of this collection. Dmitriy T.M. sent in this month’s cover of GQ featuring Sasha Baron Cohen, in Bruno character. Cohen adopts a pose often used to showcase women’s bodies. The contrast between the meaning of the pose (sexy and feminine) with the fact that he’s male draws attention to how powerfully gendered the pose is.
His facial expression highlights the ridiculousness of such a powerful gender binary (women look sexy when they pose like this, men look stupid when they do). Consider: Commenter MB noted that GQ has some news stands have decided to cover the cover (as if it were porn): The interesting question might be: When we pose women like men, does it look ridiculous or badass? Lots more “men-ups” at Sabean’s website. And there’s more (after the jump): Does it work? Manipulated Women And High Fashion.
By Lisa Wade, PhD, Apr 22, 2012, at 11:28 am I was inspired by the blog I Hurt I Am In Fashion to revive this 2008 post. This New York Times fashion slide show offers image after image demonstrating our society’s bizarre infatuation with posing women looking awkward, even deformed, frightened, compromised, uncomfortable, even in pain. I am unsure what to make, particularly, of the interest in images in which women are in dirty and uncomfortable, even painful, places and positions (see the “Maiden Voyage” spread with women in the shipyard in the NYT slide show linked to above).
Do we hate women that much? Or is it about something else (also)? Marie Claire Italia: W Magazine: V60 Magazine: The Ones2Watch: Fashion Gone Rogue: Fashionising: Neo2 Magazine: Examples from 2008: Sexual Objectification (Part 1): What is It? This is the first part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects. Cross-posted at Ms., BroadBlogs, and Caroline Heldman’s Blog. Around since the 1970s and associated with curmudgeonly second-wave feminists, the phrase “sexual objectification” can inspire eye-rolling.
The phenomenon, however, is more rampant than ever in popular culture. Today women’s sexual objectification is celebrated as a form of female empowerment. This has enabled a new era of sexual objectification, characterized by greater exposure to advertising in general, and increased sexual explicitness in advertising, magazines, television shows, movies, video games, music videos, television news, and “reality” television. What is sexual objectification? How do we know sexual objectification when we see it? 1) Does the image show only part(s) of a sexualized person’s body? We get the same effect when we show women from behind, with an added layer of sexual violability. Sexual Objectification (Part 2): The Harm. This is the second part in a series about how girls and women can navigate a culture that treats them like sex objects (see also, part One). Cross-posted at Ms. and Caroline Heldman’s Blog. The “sex wars” of the 1980s pitted radical feminists, who claimed that female sexual objectification is dehumanizing, against feminists concerned about legal and social efforts to control and repress female sexuality.
Over a decade of research now shows that radical feminists were right to be highly concerned. Getting back to the “sex wars” and how radical feminists were right, women who grow up in a culture with widespread sexual objectification tend to view themselves as objects of desire for others. Beyond the internal effects, sexually objectified women are dehumanized by others and seen as less competent and worthy of empathy by both men and women. Theorists have also contributed to understanding the harm of objectification culture by pointing out the difference between sexy and sexual.
Sexual Objectification (Part 3): Daily Rituals to Stop.