Everyday Sociology Blog

Text Messages and Privacy

By Janis Prince Inniss

About 15 years ago I probably only knew one person with a cell phone, but today I probably only know one person without one. I caved in several years ago, making my peace with a new bill by vowing to stick to the cheapest plan available. But that’s where I draw the line; I am not a texter. This is my logic: Why would I spend money to say something for even a few additional cents, if I could say it for less? 

This is the main reason that I rarely use the text messaging (short message service or sms) feature on my cell phone. I could pay 10 to 20 cents per text message which is not an enormous amount—unless I send lots of messages, or I could pay about $10 per month for unlimited text messaging. Again, not a lot of money, but I’m already paying for a plan to talk to people, so why would I pay an additional charge to send them a text message? Adding to my irritation at such consumption is the fact that I would have to type using the tiny keys on a phone–not very efficient or ergonomic. I can talk much faster than I can type, even on a full size keyboard so why try to text my thoughts, feelings, and opinions when I could just call folks?

Evidently, I am in the minority on this though because texting is big business. About 116 million or 52 percent of American subscribers are active texters. And as I mentioned in a previous post, teens text at a rate of about 50-70 per day. Amazingly, not only are people texting a lot, but the kinds of things they ”say” in texts is mind-boggling. For example, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff Christine Beatty denied that they were having an affair (both were married to other people), but their lie was brought to light by text messages detailing an intimate relationship. In case you’re not familiar with the case, Kilpatrick denied have the extra-marital affair with Beatty in a costly police whistle-blower case. Yet, steamy text messages were found rehashing their sexual encounters and their plans for additional romps. Here are two of the less explicit text messages that leave no doubt about the nature of their relationship:

Beatty: I still want to be in your arms, kiss you, hug you, love you. Listening to you speak and wishing you were my husband.

Kilpatrick: You were my girl for as long as I can remember. I was too young and stupid to know. I promise for the rest of my life you will be my girl.

Further, the text messages indicate that Kilpatrick and Beatty had fired a deputy police chief, which means that they both lied under oath that the intent was to remove the deputy police chief from that particular assignment and that he was not fired. However an email from Beatty to Kilpatrick states: "I'm sorry that we are going through this mess because of a decision that we made to fire Gary Brown. I will make sure that the next decision is much more thought out. Not regretting what was done at all. But thinking about how we can do things smarter." To this, Kilpatrick replied: "It had to happen though. I'm all the way with that!"

In another case of a female teacher and student engaged in a sexual relationship, Stephanie Ragusa, a Tampa middle school teacher is accused of having sex with at least four underage victims. Ragusa and a sixteen-year old she’s accused of having sex with exchanged hundreds of text messages of a steamy nature: 

Ragusa: Do u have a movie u want to watch at ur house? U know. In addition to… Wink wink.
Victim: No…
R: So no “date” … Which is what we really need. Bedroom girlfriend?! Baby. Lets try to do something romantic, different.
V: Like wat?
R: Idk. Can you think of anything. Maybe…giving each other massages.? Candle light. Music. Or pleasant/romantic movie”
V: Then come over
R: With massage oil? Candles? Towels? Movie?
V: Idk whatever u want?
R: Tell me what u want.

Another time Ragusa sent the student a note which read:

I loved today. The sex was amazing.

Ragusa even sent a text to the teen with the knowledge that the police were on the way to her home to investigate vandalism of her (adult) boyfriend’s truck, saying: “There are major problems here now. Tony and the police r on the way. They want to fingerprint the truck and take me down to the station.”

Why do people send such incriminating text messages? What are your thoughts? Here are some possibilities. With the distance that technology can provide, people may be emboldened to say things they would not in person—which can lead to even more incriminating texts being sent. And people can text while doing almost anything and from most places. I imagine that Kilpatrick was both serving as mayor and texting. Ragusa was texting as she awaited the police. And we don’t think of text messages as the written documents that they are. People are probably more careful about what they say in a personal letter, given its material existence. But a text just disappears and is gone. Where does it go? It disappears from your screen and that’s that, or so we think. Apparently that’s not the end of them as these cases indicate.

Unfortunately for Kilpatrick and Beatty, SkyTel, the provider for government and corporations stores all text messages for legal purposes. What about your carrier? Do you have any idea what their sms storage policy is? Is your carrier storing every text you ever sent? Might that cause you embarrassment or even jail time? Aspects of our lives in this technological age are being recorded without our knowledge; do you behave differently with that knowledge in mind?

Conspicuous consumption and your iPhone

By Bradley Wright

Conspicuous consumption is one of the classic concepts in sociology. It was developed by Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. I know, it’s hard to believe that people were actually alive back then, let alone creating ideas that we still find useful, but it’s true.

This concept describes how wealthy people spend large amounts of money on goods and services as a way of showing their status. It doesn’t refer to all large expenses—sometimes you get a lot more things when you spend more; instead, it refers to spending as a way of showing off who you are. In fact, sometimes what you end up with is no better, or sometimes worse, than what you can get for less money.

A classic example of conspicuous consumption is using silver utensils and fine china for meals, especially when guests are over. Bringing out the good stuff does show that you’ve attained a certain level of material comfort, but it’s also not very practical. Silver has to be polished, china breaks easily, and neither can go into the dishwasher. Their main purpose, then, is one of status display.

There’s no reason to limit the concept of conspicuous consumption to just the well-to-do. Even college students engage in it. I don’t know about where you go to school, but here at the University of Connecticut the fashion among students is to wear jackets and pullovers (preferably black) by Northface and, for women, boots made by Ugg. Now, Northface’s slogan is “never stop exploring”, and its website has pictures of people doing all sorts of brave, active things, like rock climbing and canoeing. My guess, however, is that most college students don’t need that high level of performance. Why spend the big money on name-brands when generic wear is also available? One could make the case that it’s an issue of style and cultural taste, and that makes sense. The main reason for their appeal could be that name brand clothes show statues. They show that you have the money and prestige to wear the coolest things.

I’m writing about this concept now, even though it has been around for literally a hundred years, because I read about the perfect illustration of conspicuous consumption. As everyone under 40 knows (and some of us over 40 have heard about), Apple makes a wicked-cool cell phone it calls the iPhone. You can load little software programs on it, called “apps”, that do various functions.

One of these apps is called the “I am rich” application. It costs $1,000 and serves absolutely no purpose other than to shine a red ruby on your iPhone that lets others know that you could afford to buy this app. That’s it. It shows that you’re rich and doesn’t do anything else. Apparently Apple no longer carries it at its stores because it was getting bad publicity (again, making decisions on how people perceive something).

In thinking about how this concept plays out today, I suppose there is something that we could call “inconspicuous” consumption. Here you consume goods and services, and present them to others, as a way of hiding status. Perhaps back in Veblen’s time, when I think dinosaurs still roamed the world, all status was seen as good, so if you got it, you flaunt it. Now, however, we’re sufficiently suspicious and cynical about wealth that some people may make choices to hide status. Here are some examples that might illustrate this idea.

My wife went to a fancy, well-known liberal arts college, and when people ask her where she went to school, she’ll usually answer “in the Boston area.” Now, this conflicts with other people I know who went to Ivy league schools. You can be pretty sure that within five minutes of meeting someone, these people will let drop that they went to an Ivy.

Last year a family member gave us a used car that he didn’t need anymore. It’s about seven years old, doesn’t have too much mileage, and runs reasonably well. The big downside: It’s a Mercedes. Besides paying extra for mechanic bills, I have to put up with my friends ribbing me about thinking I’m high status because I drive a Mercedes. I’ve even thought of yanking off the hood ornament to disguise the manufacturer of the car. From a straight conspicuous consumption approach, I should seek to display status with this car, but in reality, I want to avoid what I perceive as negative stereotypes associated with it. I suppose, then, that I really am looking for status with my car choices, it’s just that I see “wealthy-display” as undesirable and maybe I’m looking for a status I value more, maybe “broke intellectual”?

If nothing else, the discussion above points out that conspicuous (or inconspicuous) consumption involves more than simply what we buy and hire, for it also includes how we make it known to others. To make a status display, you need not only to have the goods, but you need for other people to know.

The Sociological Meaning of Rumors

By Karen Sternheimer

Recently my father told me about a conversation he had at a local sporting event. It was during the height of the coverage of the political conventions, and so the small talk he had with a woman seated next to him turned to politics. She told him with great authority that she had inside information that one of the candidates was in fact not an American citizen. “Where did you get your facts?” my dad asked, but the woman didn’t respond. That was the end of their conversation.

Presidential election years are ripe for rumors, and they are spread particularly easily through e-mail and the Internet. I have decided not to attach any names to the rumors I will discuss in this post for that reason; it is too easy for even discussion of rumors to seem like verification for those who want to believe them. So why do people believe them anyway?

To answer this, let’s consider some of the rumors that have been spread in recent years. One candidate was alleged to have fathered a child outside of his marriage during a prior campaign. Besides suggestions of adultery, the child has a darker complexion than the candidate, thus rumors hinted that he had an affair with an African-American woman. In reality, the child is the adopted daughter of the candidate and his wife, not the product of a secret affair.

It is not an accident that someone spread this rumor during the primary in a southern state, next door to one that elected a senator who ran by using images of African Americans in his ads to imply that less qualified blacks were taking white peoples’ jobs. Less than four decades before that election, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal in many states in the south, and racial tensions have lingered. While these tactics would certainly not appeal to all southern voters, for some older white voters who may be uncomfortable with many social changes that have taken place, they might be effective.

Hints of interracial relationships may strike a chord in a primary election in some regions but not others. But other rumors touch on national anxieties. Another rumor has persisted during this campaign that one of the candidates is Muslim, and that the candidate was sworn in using the Koran rather than the New or Old Testament.

Neither of these rumors is true, but they are also not surprising given the trauma following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Since that time, people of Middle Eastern decent and Muslim Americans have faced discrimination and suspicion. Because the plotters and attackers were Middle Eastern and claimed their actions were in the name of Islam, it is easy to see how people might fear both. Trying to attach this fear to the candidate is a way to deride him as a potential enemy.

This rumor also reflects the fear some have that Christianity is under siege in the United States, allegedly by those who support strict separation between church and state. A few years ago I saw bumper stickers that said “It’s Okay to Say Merry Christmas” in response to some stores that said “Happy Holidays” in their ads. One acquaintance of mine had trouble understanding why anyone wouldn’t like to be told “Merry Christmas” regardless of their religious affiliation. Over the past few years many stores and cities have shown greater sensitivity to non-Christians during holidays, sometimes removing overtly Christian imagery from public property and show windows. Public service announcements now wish celebrants “Happy Ramadan” in the fall, in addition to “Happy Kwanzaa” and “Happy Hanukkah” and “Merry Christmas” at the end of the year.

While these gestures may make minority groups feel more included, for others the change might feel like a strange and unwelcome distraction from traditions of the past, when Christian prayers were regularly included in public schools. 

Sociologists study rumors as a form of collective behavior. They are similar to urban legends, modern-day folklore which can persist for years even without solid evidence. In fact, several websites like snopes.com exist to debunk rumors and urban legends. Campaigns now have staff members whose job consists entirely of challenging rumors on the Internet. And yet they persist.

Simply put, rumors continue because people spread them, knowing that at least some people will believe them; there is nothing surprising about that. It is the content of the rumor that is important, as it touches on anxieties about a broader social issue that makes the listener ripe for believing that it might be true.

Communication Evolution: Mobility, Cell Phones, and PDAs

By Sally Raskoff

I heard a woman tell her friends the other day she was “playing iPhone.” Do you play with your phone technology? The ways we use new and old technologies can illustrate not only economic trends but social change as well. 

Mobile communication devices have been evolving very quickly since their first appearance. 

Pagers – if you remember them – were ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s as one of the first mobile communication devices available to the public at large. The problem with pagers was their limited capabilities beyond simple alerts. I do remember paging my teenagers to “come home ASAP” when they were out past the time we had agreed upon. Paging is still with us although it is now called Instant Messaging (IMs) and is much more interactive with two-way paging capabilities.

Clunky, huge, and limited-range cell phones and wired car phones offered more useful forms of mobile communications for those who wanted to speak to people while out of the office or away from home. We had a friend who would drive a few miles to a mountaintop so that his phone would be able to connect to their system.

Wireless cell phones with larger service areas moved more of us into carrying communication devices with us at all times. People were able to work in more places than just the office – or be paged back to the office – as they could converse and do business from anywhere.

Personal Data Assistants (PDAs, e.g., Blackberry) with phone and email capabilities were first available through one’s workplace as employers sought devices to enable more worker productivity and connection. Address books and calculators were added in to the functionality of many phones.

PDAs and phones now not only include email, address lists, and calculators but many other functions, like music, games, cameras, word processing, spreadsheets. They have so many functions that people can now play for hours with their “toy” since it has many functions previously unavailable or only found on computers or in other separate devices. 

Just a few years ago cell phones used to be luxury items for wealthy or technologically oriented people, but now they are becoming standard equipment—even for teenagers and “tweens.” How many people do you know who don’t have a cell phone? My eighty-something parents both have cell phones! 

There are also many people who no longer have land line phones at home since they rely solely upon their cell phones. Research on mobile communications suggests that seven to nine percent of the U.S. population use only a cell phone and have no land line phone. Since many of these cell-phone-only people are more likely to be younger than older, this percentage is likely to continue increasing. 

Sociologically, one can analyze this phenomenon through many different theories or perspectives. 

Capitalism relies upon us always buying the “next best thing” to keep the economy moving thus we would expect new versions to roll out to the marketplace fairly often. 

Cell phones allow us to do our work and keep in touch with family thus we can get our work done and retain our ties to family and friends. This provides the grease that lubricates the different wheels or institutions of society and supporting the functionality of our interdependence and organic solidarity. However, dysfunctions do occur, as cell phone using drivers do not have their focus on piloting their automobile as much as talking on their phone or sending IMs. Many states have passed laws, not against using cell phones, but against using one’s hands to use a cell phone.

What does it mean for our society that we have become so cozy with this type of technology? As the findings from the Pew study on the left show, these forms of mobile communication are more and more popular and it is harder to imagine life without them! I was surprised to see that, for many people, the idea of giving up television was not as hard as the idea of giving up one’s cell phone or use of the Internet.

When looking at who is using these technologies there are some interesting patterns that may surprise you. For example, as you might suspect the patterns by age highlight that more young people use these devices more often. 

Here’s one more surprising statistic from the Pew study, “[For] English-speaking Hispanics, the cell phone is an oft-used and multifaceted device – more so than is the case for white or black Americans. … Spanish-dominant Latinos are found to be less likely to own a cell phone or use the Internet.”  

I’ve mentioned a lot of the benefits of using these devices but what about the downside? Are there costs, besides a bit more danger on the road by distracted drivers? 

While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not see health hazards to cell phone users, some disagree. Dr. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, recently advised that people be aware of potential cell phone risks and that children not use these devices at all. 

The research has just begun on the possible danger of cell phones. Since the technologies have not been in use for that long this will be an ongoing debate until enough time and research have accumulated to show us long-term patterns. 

Sociologically, will such a warning have any effect upon our use of these devices considering the depth of meaning they have for us?

Sociology on Vacation

 

By Bradley Wright

Last week I took my two sons up to a big amusement park (this is New England, so unfortunately we don’t have Disneyland). Each summer we try to buy season passes to a different fun place, and this year it was an amusement park. The boys really enjoy the rides and the water park. Me? I kind of have fun being a sociologist and watching what goes on at the park because a lot of what goes on fits with sociological principles. These include:

Social Stratification is a social system that ranks people in terms of a hierarchy. Sociologists usually talk about it in terms of class, caste, and intergenerational mobility. Well, this amusement park had its own class levels. At the bottom were the regular people like my family who just buy a ticket and go on rides. Next up is what they call a “super flash pass.” This pass works like magic. When you go to one of the popular rides, and there is a long line, you show this pass and you get put into a much shorter line for the ride.

Cool, but the “super flash pass” starts at $50. At the highest level is the “very important you” experience. With this you go straight to the start of the line, you get to park your car close to the entrance, you get a private tour of the park (though, I don’t know how private it is with thousands of people around you), and you get a private autograph session with one of the park characters. Okay, as far as I can tell, the characters can’t talk, and they are really alienated teenagers dressing up like cartoon animals for minimum wage, so I’m not sure why someone would pay extra for the autograph of an irritated, silent young person. The price for this highest level of “service”? $250 per person with a minimum of four people. That’s $1,000 to be top dog of the amusement park.

The conflict theory of crime holds that laws are passed to favor the wealthy (I know, you probably find this idea shocking), and it too was in evidence at the park. Being rather cheap, I don’t like paying $15 for the regular parking at the amusement park, so I pay $10 to park at a nearby restaurant that is actually a little closer to the main gate of the park. In speaking with the owner, I found out that the city is working hard to make it illegal to park there for the amusement park. So, if you want a bite to eat at the restaurant, go ahead and park your car. But, if you want to walk 100 yards to the amusement park, forget it.

Why would the city outlaw parking outside the park? Well, it’s a small town, and the amusement park is far-and-away their biggest tax payer. The amusement park makes approximately 1-trillion-dollars-a-day (their concession stands are really expensive), but they also want the less than one-thousand-dollars-a-day that this off-site parking place pulls in. The park, having lots of money, has lots of influence with the city government. The city government, eager to please the park, tries to pass an ordinance that doesn’t make much sense and only harms the average Joe looking to save a few dollars.

Another sociological observation involves the young people we saw at the park. Studies of youth culture note how young people find their own, distinctive ways of doing things, and this culture works best when it is different than what boring-old-people are doing.

Well, walking around the park, I noticed a unique style of dress. Scattered about were clusters of high-school-aged kids who were dressed virtually identically. They all wore oversized athletic shoes and relatively new blue jeans. Around their necks, they wore white t-shirts twisted with a bandana. This bandana was folded so that, if they wanted to, they could pull it up over their mouth to hide their features. (“Hey, you guys want to go rob a train?”). The kids had similar haircuts, and they wore brand-new ball caps, turned about 90 degrees to the side.

Now, these kids carried a bit of an “I’m tough” scowl on their faces and had a tough guy swagger to their walk, but to me they looked downright silly. I honestly thought that they were park characters when I first saw them (“Hi, can I get your autograph for $1,000?”) More than anything they reminded me of little kids dressing up like cowboys, which didn’t fit with the tough persona they were trying to project. Okay, if I were younger, a lot younger, maybe I would think they are cool, so I’m not trying to impose some middle-aged standard of appropriate dress. Instead, these “outfits” they wore illustrate the powerful influence of youth culture.

So there you have it; in addition to offering roller coasters, water rides, and overpriced hot dogs, amusement parks serve up sociology as well.

Satiric Thunder: Prejudice and Masculinity

By Sally Raskoff

Is our culture changing how we define gender? Are our cultural standards about masculine and feminine easing a bit? 

There are many people who feel that gender equality has been achieved and that thus we have no need for an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), no need for affirmative action based on gender, and no need to address educational or workplace discrimination. 

Gender – and our gender norms - are embedded in our society in many different ways, and are most visible in the media. Our most popular performers conform to the gender standards of the times. Most actors who get the lead roles and can “open” a movie do have distinct physical features that align with our standards of gender. (See an earlier post of mine for examples.) The popularity of some young male celebrities who are not typically masculine has had some suggesting that our traditional definitions of gender are eroding.

Does the popularity of Johnny Depp and Zac Efron, among others, suggest change in our norms of masculinity? Both of these men can be described not only as handsome but pretty. They both have been ascribed a type of feminine attractiveness as they are perhaps more androgynous than strictly masculine. (Androgynous combines the gender characteristics ascribed to both men – andro – and women – gyn.) 

Speaking of actors, I saw Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller’s new film the other day. This film does much more than satirize Hollywood. Most of the press on this film  focuses on either the racial issues surrounding Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of “a dude, playing a dude, playing another dude” or on the treatment of people with mental challenges, who are referred to in the movie as “retards”.

My reaction to the film’s presentation of these two issues aligns with my opinion on the entire project. I think it is a brilliant satiric exploration of our society’s inability to really deal with issues of difference. While the focus on race and mental disabilities are obvious – and brilliantly written and acted – the movie also raise issues about masculinity and gender norms.

Take a look at one of the ads featuring Downey. The movie’s premise rests on a film company that is making a war film, so the actors are playing actors who are playing soldiers. War films are bastions of masculinity; in them, competition and power as primary tasks and goals. The fire and expression in this ad directly relate to the connection of masculinity with danger, aggressiveness and violence. Each of the actors plays a masculine stereotype and they are all involved in uber-masculine behaviors throughout the film.

I won’t spoil the film (too much anyway) by getting more specific about which scenes actively and directly satirize (and challenge) our culture’s masculine norms; I challenge you to watch the film and look at it with a gendered lens. 

In this film and in general, it is difficult to untangle racial issues from the gender issues since racial issues are easier for our culture to discuss. This doesn’t mean we solve problems with our public discussions, since prejudice has been covert rather than overt as it had been in the past. 

It is easier for many people, especially in sociology classes, to acknowledge how race and ethnicity are part of societal structure and much more difficult to understand gender as a socially constructed category. 

Before we start the celebrations for increasing equality, let’s ponder how people perceive Tropic Thunder. Are people getting that the film is a satire, an exploration and questioning of the complexities of race, ethnicity, and gender? The people complaining about the depiction and treatment of the mentally challenged are apparently not aware of the movie’s subtle (and not so subtle) satiric twist on how people – and Hollywood – treat that subject. 

How we perceive and interpret media depends upon our standpoint, our social position, our experiences, our backgrounds, and our interactions with other people. Would one’s perception of this film differ depending on one’s religious affiliation? Age? Sense of humor? Gender? Race/ethnicity? Social class? Sexual orientation? Drug history or experience? Critical thinking ability? Military connections? Mental capacity or connection to such issues? 

Tropic Thunder is doing very well at the box office, pushing the Dark Knight out of first place. It seems that a satire on race, gender, and many other things is more popular than a superhero film that reflects and reifies our gender norms. Is this good news?

Everyday Sociology Talk: Global Inequality and Stuff

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss where our everyday stuff comes from and what it teaches us about globalization and inequality.

Phones, Families and Parental Control

By Janis Prince Inniss

A few weeks ago, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning to find my eighteen-year-old house guest chatting on her cell phone! She was laughing and talking like it was 4:30 in the afternoon. I had to force myself to close my gaping mouth. I’ve had teenagers in my home so I know many like talking on the phone late at night, but this was 4:30! 

Even if you’re young, you probably grew up in a home with one phone line—a landline. Although at home, telephone calls were “public”: Usually the phones were in public areas such as the family room or living room. Anybody was liable to answer incoming telephone calls, so friends might have an encounter with parents calling for their children. Parents could, and some did ask, “Who is calling please?” For many years, few homes had extra extensions and if they did, if a teen was speaking from the privacy of his or her bedroom, there was always the possibility that Mom or Dad might pick up the other extension and hear what she hoped would be a private exchange. 

For privacy, kids hung around the phone to try to keep their parents from answering calls that might land them in trouble, and used the phones when their parents were not at home or were sleeping. When kids monopolized the telephone, in the pre-call waiting days, how much time 'tweens and teens spent on the phone was more than an issue of how they occupied their time; it also impacted parents’ ability to use the telephone.
Ah, but technology churns on. During the 1990s many households started installing multiple landlines to have dedicated lines for dial-up internet service, and during that time many kids got their own telephone numbers and phones in their rooms. Kids could talk to whomever, whenever, with much less parental “interference”. 

Today, many homes don’t even have landline phones. Cell phone use has skyrocketed in this century and about half of all children aged 10 to 13, and 83 percent of teenagers in the U.S. have their own. Having cell phones takes the ability to communicate wherever and whenever to new heights. Today’s kids can talk from just about anywhere-- including while driving or sitting in a classroom. Increasingly, kids are using cell phones for text messaging, even more than for voice calls. Armed with the unlimited texting plans that parents have selected (after being shell shocked by exorbitant bills), many teens text into the wee hours of the morning, averaging 50-70 texts per day. Texting allows for even more covert communication than talking on the phone as it can’t be overheard. Researchers found that one quarter of kids in relationships admitted communicating with their partner by voice or text hourly between midnight and 5 a.m. Just as I would have been without my trip to the kitchen that morning, parents are pretty clueless about this all of this; 82% were unaware that their kids were being contacted 30 times an hour by text or email. 

How do cell phones and the freedoms that come with them affect parents’ ability to supervise their kids? Tipping my hand at my belief that parents should be authoritative—mind you, not authoritarian—shouldn’t parents know who their kids are spending their time with? How do parents do this in the cell phone age? 

Hopefully, the telephone was never the main way that parents met their children’s friends, but it kept them in the loop. “Nicole and Suzy seem pretty close. They talk on the phone most days after school.” Or, “Roger and his girlfriend Marilyn must be having a fight because she hasn’t called in a week.” Sometimes younger siblings gave up the goods with announcements such as, “It’s for Mary! And it’s Derek again!” 

The flip-side of all of this is that today, parents can read a transcript of their teenagers’ thoughts! Modern technology permits parents to peer at the backstage lives of their kids in ways that used to be impossible. GPS technology for cell phones allows parents to monitor kids’ every movement. Snooping parents scroll through text messages or purchase software that gives them transcripts of instant messages. At first glance, the cell phone seems to be a tool of independence for kids. They can communicate with anybody just about anytime and parents may be clueless about it. But considering the techno-trail that parents may follow, teenagers are knowable in a way that they never were in the past. How does a parent’s ability to know about these “private” communications affect their relationships with their teenagers? And for those parents who refrain from such spying, does it matter that they may be out of the loop? Does it matter if parents know who their kids are spending time with on the phone?

Gender, Cats, Kittens, and Cougars

By Karen Sternheimer

I am a cat person, but I am not a cat. That might seem obvious to you, since to my knowledge cats don’t blog. But some people seem to confuse women with felines. What does this tell us about gender in the twenty-first century?

Cats have traditionally been seen as feminine, referred to as “she” even though as mammals there must be male cats too. Perhaps their grace, their demure nature can be seen as a form of a compliment to female humans. But many of the connections are less than flattering.

Arguments, altercations and fights between women have a special term: catfight. This summer Indy Race car driver Danica Patrick was filmed arguing with fellow racer Milka Duno. When I Googled "Danica Patrick" and "catfight" I got thousands of hits, including forty hits from mainstream news organizations. 

Technically, the camera caught Patrick and Duno having an argument, not a fight. But days later cameras caught a physical altercation during a WNBA game, giving the sport rare news coverage. Once again media organizations used the “c” word. Fistfights happen regularly in men’s sports and are covered by the news, particularly if they are really violent, but they are just called “fights”. Maybe this is because men fight much more often than women. According to the FBI, in 2006 79 percent of aggravated assaults were committed by men, and they committed 75 percent of other assaults (like fistfights). 

Women who fight challenge assumptions about female passivity, but the “c” word tends to make female fighting more of an amusement than a serious issue. Have you ever seen the “reality” show Bad Girls' Club? I’ve only seen one episode, but it seems like they choose fight-prone women to live in a house together, encourage them to drink and watch the fight that inevitably comes next.

A 2007 reality show, Age of Love, pitted “kittens” (women in their twenties) against “cougars” (women in their forties) to compete for the affection of a man in his thirties.  (I’m not sure what happened to women in their thirties, but that’s another issue). At a time when women are increasingly likely to be unmarried, this show hit a particular nerve, framing the older women as conniving, desperate vixens and the younger ones as hot “sex kittens,” perhaps less intelligent or accomplished than the older women, but, well, hot.

I’m not sure where this new term for women who date younger men came from, but it is interesting on many levels. First, men who date younger women are not usually described as predators unless the woman is under eighteen. (They might be called dirty old men, but typically that’s only if their advances are unwanted.) Demi Moore marries a man fifteen years her junior, and voila, she is a cougar. George Clooney dates a woman seventeen years younger, and he is just George Clooney. George follows a long line of Hollywood stars that date and/or marry much younger women. Cary Grant, Clooney’s predecessor in many ways, appeared as the male lead opposite Grace Kelley (25 years younger), Audrey Hepburn (25 years younger), and Eva Marie Saint (twenty years younger) to name a few. 

One of my all-time favorite movies, North by Northwest, starred Saint and Grant as romantic leads despite their twenty-year age gap. Jessie Royce Landis played Grant’s mother in the movie—and she was less than eight years older than her movie “son” Grant.

Older men might be called a "sugar daddy", but most of the pejorative terms are reserved for the women they are involved with (gold digger, husband stealer, whore, and so forth). 

The cougar moniker also implies that older women are predatory, stalking their victims before pouncing on them, rendering them helpless. Older men with younger partners are just thought of as lucky or entitled, especially if they have wealth and power. Calling women cougars also implies that at their age they need to pursue men, that they have less value and therefore will not be pursued by men.

Finally, cougars, cats, and kittens are not people. Using these terms dehumanizes women, even if it does so unintentionally. What’s fascinating is that women use these terms as much, if not more than men. As author Leora Tanenbaum recounts in her book Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation, women have historically sought to minimize the status of others in order to bolster their own within a narrow framework of female opportunity. She interviewed women of all ages who were labeled “sluts” at some point (although many actually had no sexual experience despite the label), and found that labeling is both the result of gender inequality and a means to reproduce it. Women have traditionally been valued based on their sexual appeal to men, and a multitude of words exist to keep women within these boundaries.

Yes, I know most people don’t mean any harm when they talk of catfights or cougars. But even when used in fun, these terms reaffirm that women’s worth is linked to the men they are with and how well they conform to gendered expectations.

Is Marriage Under Siege?

By Karen Sternheimer

You know it’s summer when celebrity divorces become the biggest news stories of the day…they are easy to digest, gossip about, and there is always at least one happening at any given time. You can probably name at least two couples who have been in the news lately. Are they symbolic of the declining state of marriage?

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). From the name of the legislation, it sounds like it might support marriage counseling, provide encouragement for staying together, or even make it harder for couples to divorce. Instead, this bill ensures that no state need recognize same-sex marriage, not exactly something that will “save” individual marriages. But its name, and those of many laws passed by states in recent years with similar intent, suggests that marriage needs defending.

The idea of “marriage in decline” has become a cliché. Let’s see what the data tell us about marriage in the United States, past and present.

 

As you can see from the data collected by Administration of Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), divorce rates jumped significantly between 1960 and 1980. Also notice that divorce rates spiked in the 1940s before falling after 1945. What’s likely behind these changes?

The obvious answer to the 1940s increase is World War II—separation, coupled with women’s increased participation in the labor force meant that more couples were no longer financially interdependent. Women’s earnings gave them greater ability to financially survive outside of marriage. Prior to the 1940s, it was common for couples to live separately but not divorce due to the costs going to court (there was no such thing as no-fault divorce yet) and have a judge grant the divorce. 

California became the first state to offer no-fault divorce in 1970, and other states followed suit. This meant that couples did not need to sue the other for divorce or prove any reason to a judge; if one spouse wanted out, that was enough. And clearly many did; rates tripled between 1960 and 1980, peaking in 1979 with nearly 23 divorces per thousand married women.

According to the U.S. Census, 5.3 per thousand Americans eighteen and over were divorced in 1979, roughly double the 1950 rate. But since that time, the rate has been declining: to 4.7 per thousand in 1990, 4.1 per thousand in 2000, and 3.6 per thousand in 2005, a rate similar to early 1970s levels.

Let’s also be clear on another point: the lack of divorce does not mean that a marriage was happy or even functional. My grandmother once told me a story of a friend of hers from early adulthood. The woman was married to a man who threatened to break her hands if she ever touched his money, which he kept in a box in their home. Apparently this was just one example of his cruelty and controlling personality, and she tried to obtain a divorce. But the judge ruled that this did not meet the legal definition of cruelty since she had no evidence he actually had struck her. So many marriages that ended by death instead of divorce were not necessarily success stories.

There are also several important predictors of divorce. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a comprehensive report in 2002 that examines who is more likely to get married and divorced. 

One key factor is age. Teens who marry are most likely to divorce within ten years (48 percent of those who marry before eighteen, and 40 percent of those who marry at eighteen or nineteen divorce) compared with 29 percent of those 20 to 24 and just 24 percent of those who marry after the age of 25. If couples grew up with parents who remained married, the likelihood of divorce is also lower (29 percent versus 43 percent). Also, the timing of children matters. Couples who have a child before they are married or within seven months of marriage are less likely to remain married after ten years than those who have children at least seven months after their wedding. 

One of the report’s findings is that race is also a significant factor. As the graph on the left details, African Americans are the most likely to divorce, and Asian Americans are the least likely to divorce after fifteen years. 

It’s hard to know exactly why this is the case, but it might have something to do with the fact that on average, Asian Americans have higher incomes and perhaps less money-related stress than other groups. While the graph below excludes Asian Americans, we can see that income level is related to divorce, and divorce levels are particularly high for African Americans. 

These racial disparities are very visible if we look at long-term trends, where African Americans were much more likely to experience divorce within ten years than whites.

So why the major disparity between African Americans and other groups? The authors of the report draw a very important conclusion—it is likely not race alone that matters. They note that “these differences may be related to higher rates of unemployment, incarceration, and mortality among the black population, their lower levels of educational attainment and earnings.” In other words, marriage may not bring 

economic stability to many African American women. 

This finding suggests that the federal government’s Healthy Marriage Initiative might be missing some of the key reasons marriages end. It’s not that people don’t value marriage, but the factors that contribute to stable family life are harder to come by in persistently poor communities. The biggest threat to marriage is probably unemployment or underemployment, experiences felt disproportionately by African Americans.

The prevalence of celebrity divorces may make it seem like every marriage is at risk for divorce, that marriage is just a fifty-fifty crapshoot. But as a 2005 New York Times article detailed, the percentage of marriages that end in divorce is actually lower than we have been told. The fifty percent divorce rate is based on a faulty calculation: there are about twice as many marriages in the U.S. as divorces each year, and that number was misinterpreted to mean that half of all marriages end in divorce. Most people don’t divorce in the same year as their marriage though. It’s like comparing births to deaths in any given year and presuming those that die are the same ones just born. The reality is, as usual, far more complex than we are often led to believe.

Culture and Globalization

By Janis Prince Inniss 

When people talk about globalization, they’re often referring to the reality that we live in an interdependent world in which shifts in one part of the world are felt in another because of globally-driven economic factors. Often discussions of globalization focus on the economy and other big picture issues. Have you given any thought to how globalization impacts your life in a personal way? As the following examples illustrate, globalization has very real impacts on individual, everyday experiences. 

  I never saw a television until I was ten! It’s not that I wasn’t allowed to watch television until I was ten years old, but that I never even knew what that magic box looked like until that age! This is because until age 13, I lived in Guyana where there was no TV. No one I knew had a TV and given that the country had no TV stations (this was before the days of satellite TV) I don’t know what they would watch if anyone had one anyway. I saw my first television when I left the country for a summer vacation.

Fast forward to Guyana twenty years later…. I went back to Guyana on a visit and everyone seemed to have a TV! And they all seemed to have them on all the time, and loudly. (I don’t know that TV viewing in Guyana is any more popular there than it is in the U.S., but apparently the number of per capita TV sets is far fewer than it is in the U.S. I imagine that economic factors are greatly related to this difference.)

In Guyana, windows tend to remain open so sounds escape readily making the television sounds obvious to me even as I walked past homes. This was more than a mere observation; it greatly impacted my visit. I found this change vexing because the noise of the televisions got in the way of conversation as I tried to cover years of distance in a few days. On many visits with friends and family, I found their attention divided between me and their televisions. And I was poor competition for the box, as it seemed to win most of the time! (Not kind to my ego.) And mostly they watched U.S. channels (with CNN the hands-down winner), not programs that covered the local stories and issues I might not have minded learning about on my vacation. The American shows on those TVs in Guyana are another example of globalization.

Recently, I drove across a northern border to Canada. Starving after my trip, I was looking forward to some new and different cuisine. But all I saw were American restaurants around me. For a moment, I had no sense that I was in a foreign country with the same stores and restaurants all around. As I sat down for my first meal on Canadian soil, I realized that the TV was on…CNN! More U.S. news! I’m not anti-news (well, I don’t really care for television news but that’s another story) but American news is certainly not what I expected the minute I set food across the border.

 

The CNN domination is also evident when I telephone family and friends around the world. I continue to be amazed by how much the U.S. presidential race dominates conversations with people regardless of which country they live in. People I talk with in Europe and Canada are very tuned into CNN and so are very familiar with the twists and turns taking place with the elections. They are as conversant on any election issue as anyone I know in the U.S. 

Why do you think CNN is watched around the world? There are several reasons. I think one is the dominance of the American market and of American culture. For many non-Americans, CNN symbolizes the U.S. American restaurants and politics are also popular around the world because they are part of this dominant American culture and marketplace. 

Some might argue that these are examples of the Americanization of other countries, and that this is an effect of globalization. What do you think? How do you feel about this aspect of globalization? Will a global culture—and given America’s size and might this will be a mainly American culture—replace local cultures? My comments about seeing American restaurants and CNN upon arriving in Canada do not negate the fact that the country has its own thriving culture. Nor does the popularity of CNN in the homes I visited in Guyana indicate that Guyanese culture is dead, but there’s no denying the influence of American culture on these other countries. 

The presence of TV did change the way I experienced conversations in Guyana, but maybe such experiences lead people to want to hold on even more tightly to their culture. If so, in a roundabout fashion, globalization may strengthen rather than replace local culture. Or maybe different cultures can and do peacefully exist next to each other. Based on your experiences, which seems most likely?

Sociology: It's What's For Dinner

By Karen Sternheimer

What did you have for dinner last night? Was it sociologically meaningful? 

Actually, all food is sociologically relevant in some way. It is a part of culture, tied to customs, religion, and ethnicity. What we eat, how we eat, and when we eat are intertwined with sociological issues like these.

Here are a few specific examples: what we eat may reflect our status, where we eat our income, and with whom we eat our family situation.

We have social rituals surrounding our meals too. Typically at a restaurant we use silverware when appropriate (I learned how embarrassing violating this could be when I first tried eating deep-dish pizza with my hands).

Eating off our own plates is another such ritual usually followed, and we usually avoid eating from strangers’ plates. Believe it or not, I saw this rule breached several years ago when having brunch. I was with a large group of mostly family members and of few of their friends whom I had never met. I hadn’t finished my toast because it was a little burnt and left the mostly-eaten crusts on the plate. 

The man next to me was a significantly older friend of a cousin, and I couldn’t believe it when he asked if I was finished and ate my scraps! It’s not as if this man couldn’t afford a meal himself; although we barely spoke, I knew he was a high-profile attorney, famous for multi-million dollar settlements. Perhaps his status—older, male, wealthy— made him feel like he was entitled. I don’t really know why he did it, but I still think it was sort of gross.

Eating also can stratify us; eating at a five-star restaurant is out of reach for most of us, but many people regardless of income might enjoy going to a diner now and then. The affluent thus have more dining choices and can much more easily “invade” some working class spaces than the other way around.

Material culture accompanies eating and has sociological importance as well. “Picking out China patterns” is a well-worn phrase indicating that people are planning to get married. Wedding registry lists are mostly filled with eating accoutrements: in addition to fine China, silver and everyday tableware, candle holders, crystal glasses, and serving platters are all pricey gifts to set the table for meals on special occasions.

When my grandmother passed away last year, family members sorted through her everyday items, the things too mundane to be listed in her will or given away before she died. My sisters each got a serving platter, my mother her crystal highball glasses. I wanted just one thing: her Black & Decker Handy Chopper. 

You are probably wondering why I would want this when a brand new one is less than fifteen dollars. And as a proud hostess for decades, my grandmother had lots of crystal serving bowls, silver platters, and other objects d’art, but still I wanted the chopper. 

My grandma used to make her famous tuna salad in that chopper. It was one of her many specialties that would often be our first meal at her home when we arrived from out of town. She would have it laid out perfectly on a bed of lettuce with sliced tomatoes making for a colorful garnish. On hot summer days when we would swim in her building’s pool she would wave us in from her seventh floor balcony, the signal that lunch was ready. We’d eat cold tuna sandwiches outside on the patio in our wet bathing suits, waiting until we could go back down to the pool.

I had tried on many occasions to replicate her recipe. Tuna never tasted as good when I made it myself at home. “You have to have a good chopper,” she would tell me, and ask what sort of chopper I used. I would show her my hands, since I manually chopped the ingredients. “You have to have a good chopper,” she repeated, shaking her head.

Now I do have a good chopper. It arrived in its original box, yellowed and taped together with disintegrating scotch tape. It needed a good cleaning, as my grandma’s eyesight had failed in the last of her 96 years. I knew all of the ingredients by heart: chopped sweet onion, white albacore tuna, hard boiled egg, and a spoonful of mayonnaise. When the chopper blended them all together I heard that familiar grinding sound, one I usually heard from a distance because until the end she made the tuna salad by herself without assistance. As if by magic, it tasted exactly as if my grandma was in my kitchen that day.

Sometimes a meal is more than a meal. It can evoke family traditions, reflect our ethnic heritage, or reveal our economic circumstances. Our family always had plenty to eat, but for families that don’t, food takes on different meanings.

For others, like my grandmother who emigrated from another country as a child, it can be a way to maintain a family’s traditions and culture in a new place. But the foods that I remember most--the tuna, her delicious Jell-O molds, fresh cornbread with actual pieces of corn, reflect her desire to be fully American. Above all, she loved apple pie. “It’s fruit, it’s good for you,” she would say with a wink.

Her definition of good might not match the FDA Pyramid, but food obviously does more than provide our bodies nutrients. It is, literally, who we are.

Do Sociologists all Look Alike? Homogeneity and Heterogeneity

By Sally Raskoff

I just returned from a sociology conference where I noticed, as I do every time I attend, that sociologists tend to look alike. When I go out into the city to walk and revive my body from the tedium of sitting too long in the meeting, I watch the people I pass on the street. Although I take off my conference name badge when I do this, as do most of the other sociologists, many of us can tell when we pass someone who else is a meeting escapee even if we don’t know the person. In the meeting itself or in the hotel public areas, it is also easy to identify the sociologists among the other hotel patrons. 

This is true for people in most occupational groups. We tend to look like people who do the same job even if our bodies and backgrounds are diverse. Why might this be?

Perhaps the clothing? Many occupations require certain styles or types of dress when working. Lawyers wear suits while many others wear actual uniforms like scrubs, jumpsuits, white coats, company issued pants, shirt, and jackets. When a dress code is not specified, people still may dress alike! A colleague told me years ago that he could always tell who the kindergarten through high school teachers were since they all wore clothing from J.C. Penney’s or Sears. 

Perhaps the income? Our clothes may be similar because the comparable income levels prompt people to shop at particular types of stores. Thus, teachers who make a low to moderate income would shop at stores known for price breaks and “affordable” clothing. And lawyers, whose income on average tends to be quite high, would wear more expensive custom tailored suits. 

This income homogeneity reminds me of a former acquaintance who had an interesting perspective on his home furnishings. Every time he got a promotion at work, he would get rid of his furniture and buy new items from a store “one level up” from the source of his last set of furnishings. 

I don’t remember the exact order but he wouldn’t shop at a store high on his list until he had the job that he felt entitled him to that type of product. When he went into the houses of other people, he would assess their work status by assessing the source and quality of their furniture. His top goal was to reach a position that would allow him to hire a designer to find unique furniture from wholesale-only sources. (He moved away and we lost touch so I’m not sure he ever got promoted to that point!)

But income can’t be the only factor, since in this group of sociologists as in many others, there are some entry-level students and others at the other end of their careers and our incomes are as diverse as our sociological experience.

Beyond income, perhaps social class? Social class includes income but also wealth, education, and occupation, so it ties some of the elements in this puzzle together. People who gain similar levels of education and jobs, and go on to make similar amounts of income and wealth, would also tend to purchase their clothing and personal hygiene products from similar sources. 

However, those at higher levels of social class would have more options for those purchases, thus we could predict more variability in their appearances than for those at lower social class levels since they have fewer options. There are many stories floating around about super rich people who dress like “everyone else” yet they are certainly able to dress up in the latest fashions if going out to a public event.

Perhaps the event? Since the setting for my initial observation is a professional conference, there are some norms about what to wear, which create some standards of dress. However, as with other societal norms, not everyone follows these norms. Actually, there is much diversity in dress at these conferences since it seems that many people do dress as they do at their home institutions. We sociologists may know a lot about norms but that doesn’t mean that we are more likely to conform to them – perhaps we are more likely to deviate from them! While many are wearing suits and other professional attire, many others are wearing anything from all black to jeans. 

Perhaps personality? A relative once told me that she didn’t want to go into a particular line of work because the people she knew in that industry did not represent the type of person she wanted to be. She was noticing that people who do similar work not only may look alike but they may also have similar personalities, mannerisms, and/or behavior! The question then arises as to whether similar types of people go into similar types of work or people who work in similar jobs become similar over time. Does the person make the job or does the job make the person? 

Sociologically, both are probably true. (Life is not as simple as a one-way street!) 

Emile Durkheim’s concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity can help to explain the structure of life in different types of settings. In simpler, agrarian, or small communities, life is more homogeneous -- people do similar types of work, worship at the same types of places, and have similar ancestries or cultural practices. All of this offers a mechanical solidarity that ties people together. 

However in more complex, urban, and “modern” communities, organic solidarity is what holds the society together. As heterogeneity increases in population, jobs, opportunities, technologies, cultural practices and ancestry, it is the similarities that hold the entire system together. Thus, complex divisions of labor create not only different types of people but interdependent types of people in specific occupations. Those occupational groups also bond people within the group together so that their social network includes people from work and not just people in their kinship group. Symbolic bonds are displayed through clothing and other visible signs of membership. 

As our consumer options shrink with the merging of retail outlets, we see more homogeneity across the nation in our clothing and fashion. Would Durkheim say that this is just one way that our complex division of labor and the resulting interdependencies and occupational communities allow more social bonds to be formed to strengthen the society as a whole? Perhaps. Would Marx agree? Would Weber agree? Would Martineau agree? Would DuBois agree?

If we agree that people in related occupations who have similar income and education levels dress similarly because of their consumer limitations and workplace cultures, can we assume that the bonds they have with each other are reinforced by these visible and thus symbolic similarities?

Everyday Sociology Talk: Sociology and the Environment

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss sociology's connection with the environment

Marketing Ideas and Fears Through Email: Pass Along Hoaxes and Urban Legends

By Janis Prince Inniss

I love email! I have been exchanging emails with one aunt in Toronto since 1995—long before most people I knew had email. But what drives me absolutely nuts are forwarded emails designed to scare us. You know the ones that offer safety tips and supposed health information? Very few are true or correct. So why do so many people forward those emails, propelling the crazy ideas even faster around the world?

Today, it seems that everybody uses the internet. The reality is that there are great disparities in computer use: Europe, North American and Australia/Oceania are the only areas of the world where internet usage has penetrated about half or more of the population. Within these countries who has computer access varies; for example in the U.S. those who are over age 65, have less education, or are African American are less likely to use the internet.

Email is the number one internet activity in which we engage. On a typical day in 2004, 58 million people in the U.S. alone used email. Ever think about how many people receive the same loopy emails that crowd your inbox? In 2001, MIT graduate student Jonah Peretti, sent an email to 12 friends about his attempts to personalize his Nike shoes with the word “sweatshop”. The email made its way around the world and into international media; the story was profiled in large media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and NBC’s Today Show. In less than a three-month period, Peretti received 3,655 inquiries about his email! He got responses from every continent, and his email was translated into several languages. As Peretti writes: “You send an email to 10 friends, and each friend forwards the email to 10 of their friends. If this process continues just 6 steps the message will reach a million people. After 10 steps, the message would hypothetically reach more people than the total population of the earth.”

Emails help us maintain social networks and build social capital. They allow us to stay in contact with ever growing networks. As people’s networks grow it becomes increasingly difficult for them to stay in contact, except with the use of emails. With email, people are able to stay in contact with more people, more easily. Forwards are one way that people do this. We can forward one note to many people, therefore staying in touch with that many people all at once.

I really like the terms that researchers have come up with to describe some of this: “viral marketing” and “viral consumers”. Business researchers examine the ways that consumers become marketers of products and services through the use of emails to spread—hence the term viral—information to friends and family. Avoiding these forwards feels a lot like I’m dodging a real virus! They are the marketing of ideas and fears through email. How does this happen? One aspect of this phenomenon is that we do not automatically delete forwarded emails from people we know, although we might do so very easily with notes from strangers. Emails from people we know are more persuasive than those from strangers. Many forwarded emails take a dash of truth and embellish the core with scary details, add names and places, along with an emotional aspect guaranteed to scare us. These urban legends and hoaxes often include details that are possible, but highly unlikely. The details make the claims appear legitimate. 

Further, email is quick, and cheap or free. Those passing them along don’t have to write or type anything. They simply hit the forward button. The fact that those forwarding emails mostly don’t write anything means that the messages are passed on unchanged, unlike the “telephone game”. Sometimes there are versions of the same forward, so there is “tampering” at some point. However, because we don’t think of our friends or relatives as note originators, they may appear more authentic. It is not Aunt Mary who said this; it’s some really knowledgeable, albeit unknown, person. We know the immediate sources of these emails—the people who send them to us—and we assume that if someone we know sends a note, it must be okay. People may not realize that they can check the veracity of emails at websites such as Snopes and figure they are doing more good than harm passing on warnings. None of this is a recipe to discontinue the practice of passing along emails. Indeed, researchers found people pass along emails to be altruistic, and to share what seems to be good information regarding warnings about health and safety. There may also be a degree of impression management in passing along forwards; it is a chance to subtly convey to others what we know, and presumably, they do not.

Global Poverty for Sale

By Karen Sternheimer

Do you ever get unsolicited catalogs in the mail? I occasionally get them from “upscale” stores featuring high-priced designer brands.  This makes me laugh because I am an outlet mall shopper at heart, and the thought of spending thousands for a dress or a pair of shoes or a handbag never crosses my mind. I suspect that since many affluent people live in my zip code I am mistaken for one of “them.” 

 

These catalogs usually go right into the recycling bin, but occasionally I give them a look for a good mock now and then. A recent catalog seemed ripe for a laugh, with its extra-thick paper attempting to lure me to shop at South Coast Plaza, the largest mall in Orange County, California, which according to Mapquest is exactly 53.15 miles from my home (for point of reference, Rodeo Drive is less than ten miles away, so if I wanted to spend ridiculous amounts of money I could do so much closer to home). 

 

But leafing through the catalog was not so funny. The high-fashion shots featured models in their over-priced designer clothes against the backdrop of global poverty. The motorcycle pictured on the left features a license plate that reveals that the shoot took place in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island where approximately thirty percent of the population lives in poverty. In 2000, their per capita income was about $2,326.

 

But poverty is apparently chic, at least when it can add some element of authenticity to the new spring fashion line. As you can see from the ad copy on the right, words like “exotic,” “primitive” and “tribal colors” provide “inspiration” for “new designs.”

 

Yes, infant mortality rates in the Dominican are 47 per 1,000 live births, more than seven times the U.S. rate of 6.3 per 1,000, and 2.5 percent of the adult population is HIV positive, but they provide us with “simple shapes” and “vivid scenery.”

 

I found this ad for the green Dolce & Gabbana dress particularly interesting. The dress is nice, but the background is what is really interesting: the crumbling shack to the left and people adding “local color” in the far right. While I could not find the price for this particular dress, D & G dresses typically range from $1,500-$2,800 each. In other words, just about the annual income of an average Dominican.

 

The Quiksilver ad on the right offers a more up-close view of the “vivid scenery.” Here we have decidedly unhappy locals leaning against a house resting on crumbling concrete. Note that only the white model smiles. While his outfit probably cost under $150, much less than the D & G dress, his casual attire contrasts with the shabbier clothes of the others in the picture, particularly the boy with holes in his rolled-up jeans.

 

In these photos, the people of the Dominican Republic are mere props. Adding to a backdrop of what the ad describes as “exotic,” is the man riding a donkey pulling a cart on the left, and the young boys staring at the model on the right as she poses. 

 

Both of the women’s poses are interesting in light of the persistence of the global sex trade in developing nations. According to a 1997 Miami Herald article, prostitution is a particularly bad problem in the Dominican, with its high poverty rate and increase in international tourism. The majority of women working as prostitutes are mothers trying to support their children; and as with other poor countries, children themselves often end up ensnared in global sex tourism.

 

Yet the images of children in the ads are highly sentimental, enabling us to overlook some of the serious challenges children in “exotic places” confront. In the Dominican Republic, school children must wear uniforms, like the kids in these pictures, although no funding is provided for them. The girls in the ad on the right in the front are dressed in the American store’s clothes, in contrast with their uniformed peers. All stand in rubble but appear happy.

 

The white model to the left, posed as “teacher,” appears pregnant herself, and it is interesting to think about the different life chances that child likely will have compared with children in developing countries. Adding to the “local color,” the book she holds “Incas, Mayas, y Aztecas,” recalls other colonized peoples in a crumbling classroom.

 

Finally, nature itself becomes commodified in these ads. This Jimmy Choo handbag, pictured with a hay-thatched hut in the background, retails for $3,050, more than the average annual income of a Dominican citizen. 

 

And this necklace pictured on the right turns being green on its head. While the ad copy shown above details the “vivid scenery” and “colors inspired by nature,” this picture seems to suggest that nature itself needs adornment.

 

Advertising may not make us more likely to buy any of this stuff, but it is loaded with interesting sociological components. Here we see issues of the environment, race, socioeconomic status, and globalization embedded into a series of ads. They (probably unintentionally) help us see some of the contrasts between the materialism of the wealthy in industrialized nations and the extreme poor of developing countries. What do you see?

Everyday Sociology Talk: Race, Religion, and Politics

Karen Sternheimer and Sally Raskoff discuss sociological approaches to understanding the varied reactions to Reverend Jeremiah Wright's comments.

Beauty Myths and Magazines

By Karen Sternheimer

I’ve recently reverted back to an old teenage habit…sort of. Last year I got a letter saying that my frequent flier miles would soon expire and that I could easily convert them to magazine subscriptions. I hadn’t subscribed to a magazine in years, so I went nuts. I ordered magazines about politics, technology, business, travel, and fashion.

In my teen years I devoured fashion magazines like Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, and the now defunct Mademoiselle, and swapped them with friends to make sure no beauty advice would pass without my knowledge. I saved old issues in my closet for years just in case I would ever want to look at them again, like the reference books that are on my shelves today. When my old house went up for sale years later, my mother told me to take them or toss them. I tossed them. 

After I graduated from high school I stopped reading the magazines cold turkey. I don’t remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with a lack of time to read them and (more to the point) the lack of disposable income to buy them. When the first fashion mag showed up in my mailbox last year it was like reuniting with an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in years. Yes, I had perused a magazine or two while waiting to have my hair cut, but it’s not the same if you can’t tear out the samples and dog-ear the particularly relevant advice about hair products to revisit later. Unlike the other magazines I ordered, the beauty ones required very little concentration or commitment to read since they are mostly filled with ads. They could be my secret escape.

As a sociologist, I am also deeply aware of the very narrow version of beauty these magazines typically promote. Yes, most of the women are impossibly thin, white or near-white in complexion, tall and blonde. Many of the articles are about getting/keeping/pleasing/marrying a man, and more than anything, they promote the idea that women’s worth is forever linked to how we look. If that’s not enough, in the world of most fashion magazines, beauty is something that comes from consumption, not