Flying Aeroplanes and Other Sociological Tales by Brian McDonough

Author:Brian McDonough [McDonough, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Law, Criminal Law, General, Social Science, Anthropology, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351372121
Google: LQwLEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-12-30T01:02:49+00:00

The colours associated with gender may have changed but many of the attributes have not: Men’s items of clothing are expected to be characterised by colours, shapes and cuttings which are strong, assertive and masculine. Whilst women’s clothing is more inclined to be pretty, dainty or unassuming. These ideas and ways of being are connected to the gendered attributes we associate with being male and female: masculinity and femininity. Whilst masculinity resonates with being strong, powerful and rational, femininity resonates with being humble, meek, reserved and timid. These gendered ideas are socially constructed ways of being which are not merely ‘natural’, but deeply social.

Walk into any department store and take a look at the large advertising posters in clothes shop windows and examine the gendered meanings which can be explicated. One shopping mall I entered had a department dedicated to denim jeans. Just like the sports shop I visited for trainers, the mall split into ‘men’ and ‘ladies’ sections. In front of me there was a large poster picturing a young woman gently poised on one leg, as if she were skipping, her hands waving up above her. Joyful and yet somewhat vulnerable, the woman smiled delightfully wearing the branded denim jeans she was promoting. The polished, attractive image of the woman gave the brand credibility, but it also reinforced the gendered expectations of young women – to be feminine, playful and attractive.

Goffman’s work (1976) Gender Advertisements is a classic example of how we can use visual data (like the one I described earlier) to make sense of gendered interaction and social action. In the commercial advertisements he alludes to, Goffman reports that retail advertisements profoundly depict women in subordinate poses. Goffman refers to this as ‘the ritualization of subordination’ in which women adopt a ‘childlike guise’ or ‘body clowning’ (1976: 33). His point is to illustrate that it is predominantly women who are depicted as ritually subordinate, and rarely ever men, though he did provide some deviant cases of men too. A gendered analysis of advertising boards is just one way of unravelling the social construction of gender. For example, look at these two images below, which were photographed on the shopping high street I walked along:

Figure 6.1 Body clowning, with hands on neck and hip.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.