Toban Black

    
Automobile branding

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Little drivers

[Read more →]

“These streets are mine too!”

Those words are part of a Take Back the Night march sign
(which Anna Overseas posted on Flickr)

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April Streeter (in this blog post) -
“Even in bike-crazy Portland, the stats have showed an approximate split of 70% male riders versus 30% female riders. In Paris, there’s a similar split, says mobility consultant Eric Britton. The numbers are even more skewed in other places.”

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Anna Letitia Mumford on her fifty car pile-up blog -
“A rant from the second wave (but seriously folks, we have a gender problem)”

(I agree that we should find ways to make bicycling attractive, but I also think that we should challenge mainstream standards of sexiness and beauty (like waifish models of femininity); I’ll elaborate on that point below.)

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Dominick Tao (in this journalistic blog post) -
“As a whole, men in the U.S. make three times as many trips by bicycle than women, according to research [pdf] by John Pucher, a professor of urban planning.”

“The numbers are actually worse in New York, where only 21 percent of trips by bicycle are made by women. According to a voluntary survey by members of the New York Cycle Club, the largest organization of its kind in the city, only about a third of the club’s members said they are female.”

“With the exception of areas [of New York] like Central Park and designated bike trails — which female cyclists populate almost as zealously as their male counterparts) — bike riding in most parts of the city is hardly leisurely. ‘It’s like going into battle,’ Mr. Pucher said. ‘You need a helmet and gloves.’”

“Indeed, a ride through Midtown during the rush often means dodging trucks and speeding taxis, weaving through flocks of ear-budded pedestrians, swerving around gouged asphalt, and rocketing across intersections when the traffic signal does not say go.’

Mr. Pucher said to make cycling more appealing to women, and children and the elderly, for that matter, cycling in the city needs to be safer.”

In other words, our streets needn’t be macho battlegrounds.

(Mr. Tao also stresses fashion issues in his post.)

[Read more →]

“You can’t be sexy without consuming.”
- Julie (in this Feministe blog post)

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In London, England

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Three posts from Lisa on the Sociological Images blog -
- “The Economics of Beauty”
- “Sexualization and Adultification of Young Children of Color”
- “The Beauty Industry: Spending And Routines”

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(Photo by Orin Optiglot)

In Melbourne, Australia

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At the 2009 Indie Media Fair.

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Rebecca Armstrong in The Brooklyn Rail -
“Wearing Me: A Tale of T-Shirts“    [via The Anti-Advertising Agency]

Selected exerpts -

“I stopped buying sweatshop clothes, and eventually decided to wear only clothes I make myself.

This decision has taught me a number odd and interesting things about clothes and how we think about them.” “The most surprising thing I’ve learned has to do with t-shirts. Of all the garments I have made and worn, from winter coats to blue jeans, bathing suits to party dresses, people remain most impressed with my ability to make a t-shirt.”

“T-shirts are not difficult to make, even for a beginner. They are made of four pieces and trim, usually out of knit cotton or cotton blended with synthetic. Knit cotton is perhaps the most forgiving fabric on the planet. If you have a basic sense of form and a healthy sense of adventure, you can cut freehand. Otherwise, you can use a standard pattern or an old shirt cut apart at the seams, and create variations. One advantage to t-shirt structure is that you can easily guess what effect any change in the pattern will have on the finished garment. If you want a boxier look, you cut the body wider. If you want the sleeves shorter—you get the idea. At this point I can make two-three t-shirts an hour, if I cut them simultaneously and don’t have to change my sewing machine’s thread color. You can make a t-shirt with very little knowledge of the body, of patternmaking, of sewing. It is a forgiving form made of forgiving materials. Many of the people who make t-shirts are doing so in degraded conditions for very little, if any, pay.”

“Here is something particular about t-shirts that makes making them seem impossible, whereas jeans and dresses do not have this special quality.

[Read more →]

Marketing macho labour identities
(in a Canadian clothing chain)

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Lisa at Sociological Images -
[Androcentrism]

Lisa at Sociological Images -
“The New Risk”–”For Men Only”

“SocProf” at The Global Sociology Blog -
“Sexism Pays!”

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Macho goon models
in a mall storefront

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A related post at this blog -
“Prevailing forms of masculinity“