politics of sex: spring 2011

Extra Credit for Final Presentation

2011-05-05T02:48:02Z

Barbie and Ken
I found this presentation to be quiet interesting and surprising at the same time. I didn't realize that race played an important role as being Barbie as well. As the group mentioned, even the displayed of a young Asian female wanted to be "dressed up" to be like Barbie. To be like Barbie is every girl dream because Barbie is associated with being beautiful and every girl wants to be just like her. Being Barbie is like being a feminine which fits into the Charmed Circle and the norm of society as well. Another point that I found quiet surprising is that even though Barbie dolls used in Asia or other part of the world, it is still used the image of being Western or white!

Perfume
I like this presentation as well because the group talked about how sex is related to perfume ads. The advertisers sells sex in their commercials or ads to attract consumers from different sex to purchase the perfume. People want feel and look "sexy" by using the perfume. It is interesting to see how different smell perfume linked to different sex.

Presentation: Fitness Products

2011-05-04T17:49:24Z

Here's a link to my presentation for the final on fitness products.

http://prezi.com/2bbm-e8rlozv/gwss-pos-final-presentation/

Cool!

Extra Credit: Dr.Somerville Speech

2011-05-04T16:46:40Z

Dr.Somerville gave her speech on "Queering like a state: Naturalized Citizenship and US Empire." I think her speech relates back to our class. Throughout the presentation her main focus was on naturalization process in he United Sates. She also said that the process is often taken as granted, and has sexual and unspecialized discourses. She thinks that the term queer is anything other than heteronormative. Dr.Somerville also focused on two parts when she was speaking about naturalized citizenship. First she focused on American Indians and how they are an example of the heteronormative naturalizing of queer people and people that are non-immigrants. Then her second focus was on the history of the government attempt to sterilize the citizenship process. Overall I thought her speech was very interesting and she was well informed about the topic she was speaking about.

Whats sex got to do with....dance teams

2011-05-04T16:21:12Z

Dance teams, mostly in high schools, tend to use very girly names for the team. A lot of them add "ette" to the end which means small or feminine. This doesn't make sense to me because dance teams are usually co-ed

Final Project: Perfume Video Analysis

2011-05-04T15:10:29Z

Extra Credit: Presentation Post

2011-05-04T14:09:54Z

There were two groups that went today, that dealt with very similar topics. The first group was how men and women are portrayed in athletics. Men are portrayed very masculine, and women are feminine. Men are super muscular and the magazines are geared toward how can men get more muscles while the women are more slender and the magazines are meant to help women get toned-not build too much muscle but be healthy and as strong as they can be. I particularly liked the analysis of how when men and women are portrayed on covers together, the woman looks to be weaker, subordinated, or is on the man, being carried by him. It was very insightful to notice this and to relate it to our class.

The second group was about shoes and how advertising using heteronormativity and gender norms to sell people different shoes. The add where the shoe starts dating a penny loafer for a dsw add was very blatant in that it said that the man was the bread earner and the women was dependent because she had his penny. All of the ads only portrayed men and women, no alternatives, only heternormativity. It was presented very well.

Extra Credit Presentation

2011-05-04T13:36:56Z

Ken & Barbie

I found this presentation quite interesting, and I enjoyed their Xtranormal video at the start of their presentation. One part that I found quite interesting was when they showed the 'Asian' Barbie. It's fascinating that the only Asian features on those Barbies were their dark hair and traditional Asian clothes; otherwise they looked exactly like the traditional Barbie. It seems that our society puts Barbie and Ken on a pedestal as the best image of what a couple should be like. Another interesting topic they brought up was how when Barbie was shown as being a strong, independent woman who worked as an architect she still dressed extremely feminine and not at all like what an architect would dress like.

Perfume

This group focused their presentation on the sex in perfume advertisement. One interesting point they made was how is something like perfume, which is all about how it smells, is being sold with paper ads and television commercials. Where people have no clue what it will smell like, but still want to buy it due to the way it has been advertised as a way to feel and look sexy. Their Xtranormal video showed a man who was wearing some cologne was able to get a woman to go home with him just based on how 'sexy' he smelled. It was curious how they showed the differences in how males and females are represented in perfume ads and how both genders are both being sexualized within the ads.

What's sex got to do with... Toy ads?

2011-05-04T12:00:12Z

Found this website recently, pretty cool. It lets you chose the video of a certain commercial, and set it against the audio of another. Really highlights the differences in the marketing for female and male toys, even at a very young age.

Extra credit reflection on Final Presentation: Weddings and Perfume

2011-05-04T06:02:34Z

One of the first groups presented on e a heteronormative topic, weddings. People usually get very excited about weddings and thats why I thought it was interesting to look at it more in depth like the group presented in class. The first topic they analyzed was maiden of honor, there was a clip from a movie where a guy was the maid of honor, and people would assume that he is gay, since maid of honor is usually a female. I also found that weddings in Disney movies are interesting as well, because usually in Disney movies the characters that are getting married are normally the same race and opposite sex. Overall this presentation was laid out very well. I think Disney movies teach kids from childhood about gender and sexuality do they know difference between male and female.

I thought the perfume presentation was very interesting and the examples they showed went well with a lot of the topics we discussed in class during lecture and discussion, and it also went well with the assigned course readings.Gender and sexual desire was displayed ways in which the examples were helpful in differentiating between male and female.

What's Sex Got to do With... Color?

2011-05-04T05:13:48Z

This article examines the actual, scientific differences between genders in how they look at color. Using surveys, they found favorite and least favorite colors across gender lines. They also did a study to find what sort of colors each gender preferred. I found this interesting because it actually provides scientific basis for gender color differentiation. That isn't to say that the whole blue = boy, pink = girl thing is accurate (results found that both genders tended to prefer blue overall), but it's interesting that there are concrete, experimental differences.

PERFUME Final project

2011-05-04T05:09:07Z

Credits to Keri A, Kaitlin H, Helen K, Ross D, Meghan K

I thought this presentation was particularly interesting and found that the groups analysis of perfume ads were very insightful and related well to our readings. The ways in which gender and sexual desire were portrayed in the advertisements were extremely dichotomized and heteronormitazed. Each ad displayed males as being hyper masculine and females to be either hyper feminine or hyper sexualized. But the ads didn't stop at gender and continued on to race. Black females were portrayed in a more sexual and assertive manner than white women. White women were perceived as more pure or innocent in contrast the black females being wild temptresses. These ads are sculpting the way we view each other and create the very definitions of race, gender and desire.

Whats sex got to do with... axe.. balls cleaner?...

2011-05-04T05:01:06Z

This odd link talks about how if you use an axe scrub brush and clean your balls women will want to play with them more?... first things first this is the most odd most baffling add I have ever seen.. What company realistically puts capital into a stupid add like this... No guy is going to go out and get this and scrub his balls and then expect to have girls play with them... This to me really just blows my mind and I have to ask... What does a scrubbing contraption have to do with sex..?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPwhMoQBg_8

What's Sex Got to Do with Driving?

2011-05-04T04:54:20Z

Why does sex play such an important role in determining which cars are acceptable or unacceptable for a person to drive? Has anybody noticed that it seems as if men have a particularly difficult time driving mini-vans because they think it's a woman's vehicle? And that as a result, their driving is often more aggressive in a van than it would be in any other vehicle? During a conversation with a coworker, she said that her husband at the time refused to drive the van they owned. On the occasion he did have to drive it, his driving was often faster and involved more risk-taking to prove that he could still be a man in the vehicle. When they married, she had to get rid of the car she liked so that they could buy a van (a van that she didn't want). After they got divorced, she got stuck with the van because he refused to be a man who drove a van.

Even my fiancee doesn't like to ride in my car, a green VW Beetle. He jokes about being uncomfortable driving it and being seen in it, but I know he's serious. It's a "girl's car" he says. But it seems that even Volkswagen agrees. They're launching the redesigned Beetle this Autumn, and gave it bigger dimensions and a "sportier look" to make it appeal to more men and to make it feel like less of a woman's car.

What's Sex Got to do With... Fictional Riches

2011-05-04T04:46:32Z

I found this quite interesting. At first, it might seem pointless. Why does it matter how much money these fictional characters have? However, I found it odd that Forbes had such difficulty finding female characters known for being rich, as opposed to male ones. What does this say about how our society thinks, that while male characters may often be defined by their wealth, female ones almost never are?

What's Sex Got to Do with Great Skin?

2011-05-04T04:42:03Z

I work at a department store that sells luxury skin care. Fortunately, then, I have access to the various products that make skin look its best. My fiancee commented on how great my skin looked, and I explained what I was using. I could tell he was impressed by the effectiveness of the products and asked if he'd like to use some. He really had to think about it. He's from a small town in central Wisconsin where "men are men" and don't use "fancy stuff" to wash their faces. I finally talked him into trying the products, which consisted of only a Clarisonic (a hand-held device that vibrates gently against skin to slough off dead skin that clogs pores), a face moisturizer, and eye cream. The products worked just as well for him as they did for me. His skin looked amazing and the slightly dark circles under his eyes disappeared (oh the joys of a $200 cream!).

We were at a wedding this past weekend and I brought the products for him to use. We were staying at a buddy of his from college, and my fiancee felt the need to sneak the products in and out of the bathroom, so as not to seem "gay" in front of his friend. Since when does taking good care of yourself make you at risk for being seen as gay? Eating vegetables and exercising to keep your body healthy are acceptable. How come taking care of your skin all of a sudden makes you undesirable in the heterosexual community?