Contexts blogs

• Reebok’s EasyTone Marketing Jumps on the Objectification Bandwagon
  Ruth R. sent in three commercials for Reebok’s EasyTone shoes. In the first one, the camera lingers on the woman’s butt, but we do see her as an entire person: In two others, however, Reebok dispensed with any pretense and just focused on body parts: Notice with that one that the point of looking hot is to both make men want you and to make other […]
• Reliance on Public Transportation
  Los Angeles is widely reviled as the city in which no one walks. But Los Angeles is not the most car dependent city according to this data: Via Matthew Yglesias. (View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)
• Wild Things: Animals, People of Color, and Naked Men (NSFW)
  Eloriane sent in a photo shoot for V Magazine (September 2009) that is both fascinating and confounding.  I noticed two things: First, while the women are more or less fully-clothed, then men are naked.  Really naked.  Well, about as naked as they could be.  But the effect is really eerie, with one model looking like some combination of distressed, surprised […]
• Race, Criminal Background, and Employment
  In their discussion of the racial impacts of the current recession (pdf here), the Applied Research Center includes data on and first-person accounts of how having a criminal record affects the ability to get a job. Research shows that having a criminal record negatively affects the likelihood of being considered for a job. Devah Pager conducted a matched-pa […]
• Mapping voter apathy by age
  What needs work These graphs are meant to illustrate voter apathy by age group. Jay Livingston, chair of the sociology department at Montclair State, points out that comparisons between age groups would be far easier if all the age groups appeared on one graph. I agree. I would also point out that I’m curious about [...]
• The Klondike Bar: Now For Dudes Only
  I hate you, Zach A., for making me play the Klondike Bar Mancave video game. Are you bored of companies targeting their products at men with tired and insulting stereotypes? Well, too bad. Because ya’ll keep sendin’ them to us and it’s our job to show them to you. In this installment of “men-are-idiots,-let’s-try-to-sell-them-sh […]
• A Newscaster, Stereotypically, Bumbles her Segway
  Before Sociological Images was widely read (when it was just us and our friends), we used to occasionally title posts “Sigh.”  But these days, what with people following us on twitter, we must offer more imaginative titles.  But really, my instinct was to title this with good ol’ resignation: Via Racialicious. (View original at http://conte […]
• India officially recognizes third sex/gender
  India is a vital location for sexuality scholars and activists, further confirmed by yesterday’s news that “India’s third gender gets own identity in voter rolls.” Partial text of this news story is quoted below: By Harmeet Shah Singh, CNN NEW DELHI, India (CNN) — Indian election authorities Thursday granted what they called an […]
• the kids (of gays) are alright
  A recent New York Times article reported on some of the data that is known about gay and lesbian parenthood and how children of same-sex parents turn out.  The Williams Institute at UCLA finds that approximately 115,772 American same-sex couples have children.   Summarizing the state of the field: Until relatively recently, we didn’t know much about the chil […]
• De-Gaying Promotional Material for “A Single Man”
  Nora R. sent us a link to an article at Band of Thebes about how promotional materials for the movie “A Single Man,” staring Colin Firth, have been altered to imply that the central relationship in the movie is heterosexual, and to eliminate references to the fact that Colin Firth’s character also has male lovers. A poster for the movie: Th […]