A Landscape of Desire - The TV Edition

Reading the Cupples article "Field as a Landscape of Desire" gave me the most insight and best explanation of the positive and negative aspects of becoming sexually involved, or allowing oneself to be a sexual being within a research context.

Since the premise of this blog is to discuss the ideas of the articles in a pop culture context, I want to relate the idea of sleeping with someone in the research field to having a beloved will-they/won't-they couple become involved on a favourite television series.

One of the go-to tropes on television is to have two people together who have an incredible amount of chemistry, and the question for audiences becomes "will these two EVER get together?" A great classic sitcom moment would be Ross and Rachel in Friends and their epic first kiss.

More recently Jess and Nick on New Girl or Mindy and Danny on The Mindy Project are great examples of couples whose chemistry begs the question of whether or not they will pair off. In both of these situations, there is a professional or potentially moral conflict standing in the way of their potential romances. Jess and Nick are roommates. They live in LA, a city where young twentysomethings (a teacher and a bartender respectively) cannot afford to live on their own. If their relationship attempt were to fail, they could potentially find themselves in a difficult living situation.

In the case of Mindy and Danny on The Mindy Project, the couple in question are both doctors who are associates at a private clinic in New York. While they do not have the issues of joint housing to consider, they could potentially threaten a very lucrative, positive work environment.

These difficult scenarios are true to life. Often couples meet each other in places where they're relationships might cause more harm than good.

These are the same issues that face researchers in the field: how will it effect their work? How could it effect their living arrangements (especially when out in the field)? What are the moral implications, and how will it change them personally? With Cupples, she took a positive approach. She appreciated herself as a sexual being, and understood that allowing herself to be a sexual being in the research context. Though she may not engage in actual sex, she can appreciate that men are attracted to her, and their attraction can be a positive thing for them.

Television takes this pro-sexuality approach as well, because the "will-they/won't they" aspect always ends in "they do." There is often fall out, the relationships sometimes don't work, but this failure aspect is often milked for comedic purposes.

With Cupples, she understands that there is a potential for negative fallout when becoming sexually involved in the field, but she suggests that to ignore the sexual entirely is to deny an aspect of the research that will exist regardless of whether it is acknowledged or not. Men and women in a research community will make assumptions about a researchers sexuality. Within a relationship with chemistry, that chemistry will also exist whether or not the couple chooses to act on their feelings. Those feelings will also impact the relationship whether or not they consummate things, much like sexual assumptions in the research field do.

So whether they will or won't, whether they do or don't, and whether a research decides to engage sexually in the field, there will always be sexual side effects.

The Changing Face of Attractiveness

Something in the "Beautiful Bodies" article by Donnan and Magowan struck a chord with me on a personal level, and I'll spend this post discussing one particular point in this article and how it relates to me personally, as well as to society at large.

The section of the article entitled "Skin, Tattoos and Sex" talks about the way people use tattoos as an expression of self, and also mentions that in Western society the skin is seen as a barrier, and that sometimes the way it is displayed can be taken as an indication of the individual (ie: showing a lot of skin can imply negative things about someone's moral character.) The article goes on to discuss how tattooing is popular in other cultures, but I want to focus mainly on the changing interpretation of tattooing in our own culture.

The "Beautiful Bodies" article was published in 2010 but cites a lot of 90s era sources, placing the information in the piece firmly between two eras. In the past decade or so, there's been an increasing shift in public perception regarding tattoos, within Western society.

Perhaps it started with Miami Ink. The insanely popular TLC "reality" series focused on the life and work of several men (and later a woman) in a Miami tattoo shop. The series ran six seasons and spawned two spin-offs: "LA Ink" (featuring Kat Von D) and "New York Ink."

The show's formula was a 50/50 split between shop drama and focusing on the tattoo work of the artists. While the show was not a particularly accurate representation of life in a real shop, the show was a runaway success, and suddenly there were a half dozen different tattoo shows on line including "Inked" "Ink Masters" and the aforementioned "Ink" spinoffs. I say they're an unrealistic portrayal based on discussions I've had with two close friends: both professional tattoo artists for over a decade. The most unrealistic aspect has to do with the part of the show that features artists talking to their clients about the "meaning" or story behind their tattoos. Interesting to note: real tattoo artists don't care about the meaning, they just want to make the art.

And this feeds into both the article, and my personal perception as a heavily tattooed individual. The article discusses how the way we decorate our bodies is seen as a reflection of ourselves. Our choice of adornment speaks to how people understand us. Personally, I have tattoos of things I like (Harry Potter, Detroit Tigers baseball, an Alphonse Mucha painting, an apple, and Hawkeye from Marvel comics). There is no deeper meaning to these tattoos. They outright express things I enjoy and care about. They are not open to in depth interpretation. But other tattoos I have are not so straightforward. I have the main character from my book series on my leg, and an elaborate piece with chickadees on my arm that has quite a substantial backstory.

What's interesting to me is that people who approach me as strangers are equally interesting in all my visible tattoos, whether they're obvious or more obscure.

I've made an observation as a culturally immersed anthropologist that would likely be unavailable to me were I not personally tattooed. The reactions I get to my tattoos have changed over the ten years since I started getting them, marking the shift in our cultures perception of tattooing. Once, the first question I was asked it "Aren't you afraid you'll regret it?" or "What if you try to get a job?" There was a perception that being tattooed somehow made you "bad." As though having art on your body implied you were unreliable, or a potential delinquent or criminal. Heavily tattooed people were seen as societal "others" and given a wide berth.

After the emerging popularity of the Miami Ink oeuvre, suddenly people were asking me, "What does it mean?" The new default assumption was that all tattoos had to have a deeper meaning to them. In the case of the chickadees above I would launch into a well-honed story about Norse mythology and thought vs memory. This is a story I've now told so many times I don't even think about it, because SO many people have asked for the tale of the two birds.

Now I've noticed another shift, in the last two or three years. Tattoos are changing the public perception not only of people, but of the skin itself. The "Beautiful Bodies" article talks about skin being a barrier which we an adorn. Lately, that barrier is being stripped away. I'm staggered by how many complete strangers will come up to me in public and physically lift my shirt sleeve to get a better look at my tattoos. People will grab my arm or wrist. They'll ask me to expose myself, as if this is a perfectly normal request. In cases where someone asks to see my tattoos, I will always happily comply (except, perhaps, in the case of my rib tattoo). Where I draw the line is when people overtly lift my clothing without my consent. Somehow, tattoo art is no longer repellent in society. Now instead of pushing people away, it draws them in, and as an extension of this, people have come to believe adornment is the same as consent. The attitude has become "They've decorated their body, it is for my pleasure." and the connection moves directly from "look" to "touch."

This, too, I link to the popularization of tattooing on television and in media. Because of the assumption that all tattoos must tell a story, there is then a further assumption that story wants to be told. Therefore, by extension, the tattooed individual becomes an open book. A book whose pages the reader feels they are entitled to touch in order to absorb the story.


In the US, 14% of Americans now have a tattoo. 36% of Americans 18-25 have at least one, and 40% of those 26-40 do as well. That's a staggering number of people with ink. It has become, if not normal, then socially accepted. And with that acceptance, some problems are sure to arise. Tattooing has not yet found its cultural niche in our society. In some cultures it represents a warrior status, or is meant to be viewed only by a marriage partner. But in our society it is somewhere between a deeper personal meaning, and a fun, popular fad. Because we don't have one specific meaning for the art, it becomes difficult to establish cultural regulations about behaviour. This is why we now have situations developing where people touch or interrogate tattooed individuals without realizing it is inappropriate behaviour. I find this flux of perception to be fascinating, and while it is sometimes frustrating for me as an individual, I look forward to seeing how the culture around tattooing continues to evolve and change.

References:

Tattoo Stats

White Weddings and the Pink Aisle

In the Chrys Ingraham article "One is Not Born a Bride" the argument was made that society perpetuates the heterosexual "norm" of wanting a white wedding, specifically in little girls, based on media and toys. This article immediately reminded me of a viral video I'd once seen, in which a young girl has a minor meltdown in the toy department, questioning the fairness of the "pink aisle."



What I love about this video is that her father isn't necessarily reenforcing the gender stereotypes. He's encouraging her to express her frustration and discuss what it is about the situation that is bothering her so much. The video also does a lot to explain how much of the stereotype is created by adults. As the little girl points out: some girls want princesses AND superhereos, and some boys want superheroes AND princesses. She's absolutely correct. On a basic level, children only want to play with what they find interesting and stimulating. It's their parents, relatives, or adult strangers who enforce ideas like "Boys shouldn't wear pink."  To illustrate this point, I want to mention another article I stumbled on recently, in which a little boy named Chester (age 4) was invited to a "princess" themed birthday party.
Chester's mother, at the boy's request, let him wear a princess dress (and who can blame him, he wanted to go with the theme!)

When they arrived at the party, she was stunned by the malicious comments directed at her and her son by the adults present. Many of them tried to correct what they viewed as a social faux pas, pointing out that Chester's parents were doing him a disservice by not forcing gender stereotypes on him. 
This is a fantastic illustration of the point Ingraham makes in the "One is Not Born a Bride" article when she says that only women are meant to show a lifelong interest in planning the perfect wedding, and if men were to show the same level of interest it would mark them as different and somehow wrong. 
As the article about Chester's party costume points out, none of the children at the party saw anything wrong with a little boy dressing up as a princess.  None of the children attempted to correct the perceived "wrong" behaviour, because to the children there was no wrong. Only the adults viewed it as going against societal norms and attempted to correct the behaviour in a heteronormative way.
On a personal level, stories like this make me think a great deal of my niece and how her parents are choosing to raise her. At 4 years old, she owns as many shirts from the boys department as the girls, because she likes things like dinosaurs and construction. She is adamant she wants to either be a firefighter or an "explorer" when she grows up. She watches superhero cartoons with great enjoyment, but she often changes the gender identity of masked heroes. Iron Man became Iron Girl. She craves female representation in areas outside princess movies, something she can vocalized even at her young age. But instead of society fostering this desire by creating shows and movies about female superheroes, they try to push my niece towards the pink aisle. They suggest superheroes are for boys and princesses are for girls, end of story. 
But what if my niece would rather save the world than plan a perfect white wedding? The ongoing reenforcement of gender stereotypes is something we were all raised with. Pink clothes for girls, blue for boys. Perhaps there is something essential in this, as it allows little boys and girls to understand what society expects from gender roles. But children have such an incredible capacity to accept what they are taught. Perhaps, rather than enforcing stereotypical roles, we should let children like what they're going to like, and not tell them it's wrong. Take, as a final example, the parent on Reddit who said "To avoid perpetuating gender stereotypes, I gave my daughter a mix of dolls and toy cars to play with. This is what happened."

Maybe there's room for everyone in the pink aisle. Or better yet, maybe there should just be a toy department undivided by colour.
Sources:
Ingraham, Chrys. "“One is Not Born a Bride: How Weddings Regulate Sexuality"." The New Sexuality Studies: A Reader, 2e, edited by Seidman, Meeks, and Fisher. London: Routledge, 2011.
Adorable 4-Year-Old Boy Shamed For Wearing A Gown To A “Princess” Party Don't Try to Buy This Girl a Princess Doll Reddit Post

Nudity and Women's Representation in Comics

This post references the article "Body Talk" by Katherine Frank (full source material at end of post)

It seems to me that one of the most common complaints people have (and it's usually people who don't read a lot of comics, but it applies to those who do as well) when they talk about comic books, is the representation of women.

Though women HAVE representation in comics, and are often portrayed as physically strong or otherwise gifted, it isn't their personalities or powers that take centre stage.

What comes to mind when most of us picture a female super hero is that of Wonder Woman in little more than a red, blue and gold bikini (I will later devote an entire post to Wonder Woman and why she actually deserves to be a feminist icon). Or more recently, Power Girl's infamous breast-baring costume might spring to mind.

I could go on and on with the different examples (Black Canary's ubiquitous fishnets, Psylocke's thigh highs, and a whole lot of cleavage on everyone), but in this particular post I simply want to discuss how nudity is used. In a later post I'll also discuss ideal bodies and how they're represented on both men and women in comics, but for now we'll just focus on the ladies.


 Exposure as Concealment

In Frank's article, she brings up the idea that for some women in strip clubs, the real exposure isn't about baring their skin, because that's what customers come in to see. The real exposure—something that often titilates the customers more and makes them feel special—is revealing things of a personal nature.

For a stripper, when she gives a customer her real name (or claims to) or tells them something seemingly genuine about herself, this is far more of an exposure than taking her clothes off.

The same notion is true of superheroines.

Diana Prince, the daytime alter ego of Wonder Woman has held many jobs (aside from being an Amazonian princess sired by Zeus). She's been an Army nurse, a military intelligence officer, a civilian employee, businesswoman, astronaut, and a staff member at the UN.

Jennifer Walters, better known as She Hulk, is a lawyer and humanitarian.

Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, is typically shown as a student, either in high school or later working on her Masters degree.

In all the above cases, the women require their superhero private lives to be kept secret for a variety of reasons. Batgirl's father is the police commissioner, Jim Gordon, and on several occasions he has attempted to arrest his daughter unknowingly, considering her a vigilante menace. How these women manage to maintain their anonymity is through costumes.

In the case of Batgirl, she is fully covered, including a cowl which masks most of her face. But most other superheroines go the opposite route, opting for a "less is more" mentality and baring almost all in their barely-there costumes. Wonder Woman and She Hulk don't wear masks at all. In fact, Diana Prince, with her Clark Kent-like glasses, is more masked in her daily life than in her super hero identity as Wonder Woman.

Much like the strippers, who expose themselves by revealing facts rather than skin, a superhero is protected by their costume, rendering them unrecognizable from their day-to-day persona.

Costumes as Comfort

In many cases, a superheroine is actually being her "true" self in her costume, as opposed to in her more relaxed daily attire.

Frank, in her article, discusses the notion that two of the things stripping does for those who do it are to increase comfort with their own sexuality, and increase comfort with women's bodies.

Though some may argue that since it is predominantly male artists and writers representing women in comics, their portrayals simply establish the "idealized woman," I think we can look at it a different way.

For superheroines, their costumes are not so much a way to accentuate their natural, um, assets, but to show themselves as truly liberated individuals. They do not need to be bound by the restrictions of what society deems to be appropriate. They make their own decisions regarding their wardrobes, and when they're in their "true" hero form, they choose not to hide or be ashamed of how they look. They're proud to be who they are, and in a way that is sort of heroic on its own merits.

One Last Consideration


As I wrap up this look at why revealing costumes (much like a stripper's naked body) might not necessarily be such a negative thing, I wanted to add something for a bit of a feminist consideration on the topic.

Yes, the costumes ARE revealing. And moreso, the poses that women are shown in are usually ridiculously over-sexualized and often physically impossible.

So for a refreshing note to leave you on, I direct your attention to The Hawkeye Initiative where fans take poses (like that of Starfire from Red Hood and the Outlaws on the right) and reimagine them with Marvel's Hawkeye (the male Clint Barton iteration) in the same pose.

The resulting images show us just how ridiculous these drawings and costumes can often be when it comes to portraying women.

A little food for thought on both sides of the coin.

"Body Talk: Revelations of Self and Body in Contemporary Strip Clubs" by Katherine Frank, in Dirt, Undress, and Difference: Critical Perspectives on the Bod'ys Surface. ed by Adeline Masquelier. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 280. Web. 5 Feb. 2014.

Introduction

If you've found your way here, you're probably a member of the Anthropology/Women and Gender Studies class ANTH 3330. So welcome classmates!

What I'm going to attempt to do here is provide critical readings of our course material with a pop culture eye. I'm an avid comic book reader and see a ton of movies, so I wanted to try to interpret the things I see every day in the light of our course material. I'm hoping by using examples from pop culture I can make some of the drier readings a bit more engaging, while providing some insight into media that might otherwise be considered uneducational.

I hope you'll enjoy reading and discussing these topics along with me!