Sexual Messages in Black and White: A discourse analysis of Essence and Cosmo

The research presented employed critical discourse analysis to examine advice columns on sex and women's sexual freedom as expressed in two popular women's magazines, Essence and Cosmopolitan, over a three-year period. Essence has a Black female audience, Cosmo a predominantly White female audience. Critical discourse analysis is concerned with language as a primary force for the production and reproduction of ideology and belief systems that come to be accepted as common sense. The study asked whether and to what extent sex talk in these two magazines mirrored tenets of sexual liberation as set forth by “second-wave feminism.” Findings showed that while both magazines reinforced women's right to sexual pleasure and to ask for what they wanted, Essence came closest to mirroring the tenets of women's liberation by advocating women's right to say no to men's bad behavior and to be their own persons. By contrast, Cosmo advised women to be innovative in exciting and keeping their men and to be more flexible in managing men's less than desirable behavior.     

Pleasurable critiques: feminist viewership and criticism in Feminist Frequency,Jezebel, and Rosie Recaps

In an introduction to her webseries Tropes vs Women in Video Games, critic Anita Sarkeesian makes a disclaimer: “This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters,” she says “but remember that it’s both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.” Sarkeesian’s statement pre-empts a common complaint made of feminist criticism: namely, that it inhibits the consumer’s pleasure in her or his favourite texts. In this paper, I argue that feminist criticism is in fact intrinsic to many viewers’ enjoyment in popular culture. Surveying texts such as Feminist Frequency, Jezebel, and the television recap series Rosie Recaps, I develop the concept of pleasurable criticism as a way of describing the increasingly visible modes of feminist enjoyment discernible in the broader culture. By identifying pleasurable criticism as a viewing practice, this paper demonstrates how feminist criticism can be constitutive of rather than extrinsic to pleasure.     

“Infertile Motherhood”

This study explores the socio-cultural arena following legalization of surrogate motherhood in Israel by analyzing Israel's most popular television series: A Touch of Happiness. The qualitative analysis presented here reveals a constant tension between women's reproductive and sexual bodies. This analysis demonstrates how social institutions of marriage, divorce, and motherhood are serving as instruments that reward fertile and punish infertile women. Advances in medical technology and modern surrogacy enable the infertile female to achieve motherhood even though her body remains infertile. Thus, paradoxically, if a woman selects to avail herself of these medical advances, she becomes an “infertile mother.” Viewed more broadly, the implications of such hybrid conceptions pose a threat to the patriarchal order, and therefore it was negated in this television series by a rich array of narrative and rhetorical devices. Derived by deeply rooted cultural–religious beliefs, the ideological stance applied in the series de-legitimizes female infertility and non-biological motherhood achieved through surrogacy. In doing so, it perpetuates notions of the inferiority of both types of women in the social order and cultivates the perception of biological determinism as a primary measure in determining all women's destinies, solely by the state of their wombs.     

A double-take on reality television: Laverne Cox’s political and pedagogical gestural humor

Although Laverne Cox has become best known as a serious actress, advocate, and activist, her career was propelled forward by an appearance on reality television. While her participation in the reality television show I Want to Work for Diddy is usually only addressed within the context of representational politics, this article contends that her performance on the show demands additional attention, specifically her use of politically charged gestural humor. Through close-analysis of Cox’s double-take, I argue that Cox uses gestural humor to resist reality television’s demand for emotional authenticity and stereotyped performances, particularly the stereotype of the angry black woman. Moreover, I demonstrate that Cox uses the double-take to position herself as an audience surrogate, using humor pedagogically to teach the audience how to respond to transphobia critically.     

Selfish,Vengeful, and Full of Spite: The representations of women who have abortions on Turkish television

This article analyses the portrayal of women who have abortions in four recent Turkish television series, Gümü?, A?k-? Memnu, Han?m?n Çiftli?i, and Öyle Bir Geçer Zaman ki, all of which appeared between 2005 and 2011. It is clear from the varying storylines of these melodramas that the depiction of women who have abortions on Turkish television is decidedly negative. The women who have abortions are seen as defying cultural expectations to place motherhood before all else. They are portrayed as cheating on their husbands, having sex outside of marriage, and prioritizing career over marriage and family. The negative portrayal of women who have abortions in Turkish soap operas perpetuates the discourse on Republican womanhood, which prescribes motherhood as women's national duty and as being at the core of their identity.     

Olivia Pope: a black post-feminist subject? Analyzing Scandal’s intersecting post-feminist and colorblind discourses

Previous analyses of Scandal have focused on how colorblind discourse in the series influences the representation of lead character Olivia Pope’s Blackness. Less has been written about how dominant discourses of race and gender intersect in the series. Correspondingly, post-feminist scholarship has overwhelmingly concentrated on discourses of gender in depictions of white women. This article seeks to bridge the gaps between scholarship on representations of race and gender on television. Situating Scandal within the context of post-feminist and colorblind discourses of gender and race that have been prominent on mainstream television since the early 2000s, this article takes an intersectional approach to interrogate how Olivia Pope, a Black woman, is incorporated into post-feminist discourse. Rhetorical analyses of episodes of Scandal’s seasons 1 through 5 uncover how colorblind and post-feminist discourses provide at their junction a restricted space for a Black post-feminist subject. Olivia Pope’s post-feminist characterization comes at the expense of obfuscating how her Blackness affects her identity as a woman, and effectively “posts” her Black womanhood. The visibility of the Black post-feminist subject in colorblind post-feminism is thus paradoxically contingent on the concurrent invisibility of Black women’s experiences and Black feminist concerns.     

Sex composition of children as a determinant of marriage disruption and marriage formation: Evidence from Swedish register data

This paper investigates the effect of sex composition of children on the propensity of Swedish mothers to enter and leave marriage. Swedish population-register data are used to estimate relative risks of marriage formation and marriage dissolution for mothers with different numbers and sexes of children. The large number of observations allows us to get a very accurate picture of such relationships even if they are relatively weak. Morganet al. (1988) used survey data for the US and claimed to have found that one- and two-child parents in that country had lower divorce risks if they had sons than if they had daughters. For Sweden, we find only a minor effect in the same direction for three-child mothers. For two-child mothers, we instead find that the divorce risk is slightly reduced if a woman has one child of each sex. The divorce risk of one-child mothers is not at all affected by the sex of the child. Finally, the sex composition of children has no effect on the propensity of Swedish mothers to enter the married state.     

Curbing population growth: lessons from India

India was 1 of the 1st countries to establish a national population policy program to reduce the heavy social and economic burden of rampant population growth. The 1985 US Agency for International Development survey highlights 3 measures that could contribute significantly to the success of population policy and family planning goals: 1) increase the age at marriage for women, 2) lengthen the interval between births, and 3) improve communications. The younger a girl's age at marriage 1) the younger she is likely to get pregnant, 2) the more babies she can have over her lifetime, and 3) the higher the country's population growth rate. The answer to short birth intervals is childspacing through contraceptive methods. The Indian government has already begun to retrain its health workers and other functionaries to enhance their role as communicators. This should do much to counter the attitudes, practices, and lack of knowledge that contribute to India's population growth.     

Schooling,marriage, and age at first birth in Madagascar

The low school attainment, early marriage, and low age at first birth of females are major policy concerns in less developed countries. This study jointly estimated the determinants of educational attainment, marriage age, and age at first birth among females aged 12–25 in Madagascar, explicitly accounting for the endogeneities that arose from modelling these related outcomes simultaneously. An additional year of schooling results in a delay to marriage of 1.5?years and marrying 1?year later delays age at first birth by 0.5?years. Parents’ education and wealth also have important effects on schooling, marriage, and age at first birth, with a woman's first birth being delayed by 0.75?years if her mother had 4 additional years of schooling. Overall, our results provide rigorous evidence for the critical role of education—both individual women's own and that of their parents—in delaying the marriage and fertility of young women.     

Marriage and the value of waiting

Using a simple model where singles try to maximize their pizazz, we examine the value of the option to give up single life in favor of marriage when singles pizazz levels follow correlated geometric Brownian motions. We derive the critical level of relative pizazz levels that triggers the move to marriage and find that for relatively small (large) potential economies of scale in marriage, a single will generally be willing to get married if his/her prospective partners pizazz is strictly higher (lower) than his/her own.Comment by two anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

A study of cohort life cycles: Cohorts of native born Massachusetts women, 1830-1920

Abstract This paper expands the conceptual apparatus offamily life cycle analysis and illustrates its usefulness by applying it to a population. There is a normatively sanctioned life cycle that a female born into American society is expected to follow as she moves from birth to death: she is expected to survive through childhood, marry, bear and rear children, and survive jointly with her husband until her children leave the home. Paul Glick, in several articles, has calculated mean ages at which these various events are experienced. The life cycle analysis proposed here, however, focuses on the distribution of women according to type of life cycle experienced. Starting with a cohort of 100,000 females, six alternative life cycle possibilities are differentiated and the number who follow each of the types is calculated. The six types are: (1) abbreviated, the female dies before she is exposed to the risk of marriage; (2) spinster, the woman is exposed to the risk of marriage but does not marry; (3) barren, the woman marries but remains childless; (4) dying mother, the woman has children but dies before the last one leaves home; (5) widowed mother, the woman has children and survives until they leave home, but her husband dies before that event; and (6) typical, the woman marries, has children, and survives jointly with her husband until the last one leaves home. Applying this approach to several cohorts of native-born Massachusetts women born at different times some striking changes appear. For example, the number of women from a birth cohort of 100,000 who follow the typical life cycle increases from 21,000 for the cohort born in 1830 to 57,000 for the cohort born in 1920. The demographic, social and economic implications of a change of this magnitude are of considerable consequence.     

Windsor and Perry: Reactions of Siblings in Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples

The U.S. Supreme Court decisions in U.S. v. Windsor (570 U.S. 307) and Hollingsworth v. Perry (570 U.S. 399) created a focal point for public discussion of marriage equality for same-sex couples. This article reports the results of an exploratory study of the reactions of individuals currently or previously in same-sex couple relationships and a heterosexual sibling who is currently or previously married (N = 371) to the Supreme Court decisions. Thematic content analysis was used to explore participants’ responses to an open-ended question on a survey. Reactions of individuals from same-sex couples revealed the following themes: (1) longitudinal perspectives on the advancement of rights for same-sex couples; (2) emotional responses celebrating the decisions or expressing relief; (3) affirmation of their relationship or rights; (4) practical consequences of the extension of rights; and (5) minority stress related to anticipation of future prejudice or discrimination. Themes in the heterosexual siblings’ responses were (1) ally support; (2) flat support without emotion or elaboration; (3) indifference to or ignorance about the decisions; and (4) disapproval of the decisions. These themes are compared and discussed in light of prior research on reactions to marriage restriction debates and marriage (in)equality and family relationships.     

The Grandmother Role as Experienced by Lesbian Women

ABSTRACT

This study explores the grandmother role as experienced by a nonrandom sample of nine lesbian women. It examines how they define the grandmother role, and the behaviors and actions through which they enact the role. During individual interviews each woman was asked to talk about what makes a woman a good grandmother, memories of her own grandmothers, and the relationship she has with one or more of her grandchildren. The effect of her sexual orientation on the relationship was not explored. These women define the grandmother role as providing emotional support to their grandchildren, providing varied experiences for their grandchildren, and providing support for the parents of their grandchildren.     

Identifying With a Stereotype: The Divergent Effects of Exposure to Homosexual Television Characters

Scholars examining homosexual television characters have typically come to one of two conclusions: either exposure to homosexual characters can lead to increased acceptance, or homosexual characters serve to reaffirm negative stereotypes. We seek to bridge these two bodies of research by introducing the concept of stereotyped identification—the idea that cognitively and emotionally identifying with fictional characters can increase acceptance of minorities, while reinforcing implicit stereotypes about how they look, act, and talk. Results from our national survey (N = 972) offer support for this hypothesis.     

Rape,storytelling and social media: how Twitter interrupted the news media’s ability to construct collective memory

Abstract

This study, using the Mary Kay LeTourneau interview on ABC’s 20/20 television program, investigates how social media coupled with citizens’ voices interact with mainstream media in the telling of a story and the construction of collective memory. Grounded in discourse analysis, this research examines the 20/20 story and accompanying Twitter conversations to understand how dominant and feminist ideologies about gender, rape, sexual violence, sexuality, and love are presented and (re)articulated in these texts. In doing so, this study considers how a newly opened public sphere via social media may have the capabilities to influence our collective memories and remove some of this long-held power away from traditional mainstream media.     

From Beatles Fans to Beat Groups

While much is written about the cultural influence of the vocalist-driven girl groups and female singers of the early-to-mid-1960s, an air of mystery continues to shroud this era's all-girl rock bands—in the UK, US, and worldwide—that performed, recorded, and often wrote their own material. Influenced by the Beatles and the British beat boom that followed, these bands are an important missing link in rock music history, as they epitomize a less overtly gendered, if short-lived, period of the genre. In an era between Betty Friedan's 1963 Feminine Mystique and the changes to come with 1970s second-wave feminism, a handful of musically minded young women were determined to transform their Beatles fandom in order to become co-creators of what was not yet a resolutely masculinist music scene.     

Premarital information efforts under way

Premarital couples are among priority targets of family planning information in the Philippines national population program as they can serve a pivotal role in slowing population growth. Applicants for marriage licenses are required to attend a family planning session as a prerequisite. Following recommendations of a training effort and seminar on Premarital Family Planning Counseling, on July 20, 1976, premarital information was institutionalized in the country by Presidential DEcree 965 which made family planning counseling obligatory to the marriage license applicants. Shortly after that, a multiagency effort gathered information on the status of the Premarital information program in the Philippines, which showed that there is no full-time specialist for the work. Medical officers; social workers; community welfare supervisors; and program and training officers do this work of information in addition to their usual duties. Distribution of the applicants varied greatly in age groups, educational levels, and professional category. The size of the group, length of session and topics of discussion varied greatly. Necessary efforts should be made to solve the major problems by selecting better sites for group sessions and training more personnel for the purpose. There is a great need fordeveloping more effective and research oriented information, education and communication materials, according to the needs and cultural traits of the target audience.     

The Golden Girls Live: residual television texts,participatory culture,and queering TV heritage through drag

The SF Golden Girls have been producing live performances of The Golden Girls episodes in drag since 2005, creating an iterative form of fan productivity that consistently resonates with San Francisco audiences. This essay considers the cultural significance of the SF Golden Girls’ live performances as a case study in how queer participatory culture can change the meanings of a residual media object. I argue that the participatory engagement between the audience members and the drag queen performers make The Golden Girls a collective and visible site of queer television heritage, and that producing The Golden Girls Live in drag also offers different logics of representation and engagement than television. These live performances are significant because The Golden Girls has become a symbol of television heritage, and performing episodes in drag explicitly queers a television program that has become a site of cultural memory and historical meaning. Additionally, these performances are staged in December as The Golden Girls: The Christmas Episodes, which restructures television heritage to create a new continuity between the past and present and construct a queered Christmas ritual that is familiar and imbued with historical consciousness.     

Age at marriage as a variable in socio-economic differentials in fertility

Earlier studies have pointed out that socio-economic differentials in fertility depend upon both religion and farm background. These studies report a negative relation between fertility and socio-economic status for non-Catholic American couples in contrast to a positive relation for Catholics. Likewise, a negative differential for American couples with farm background has been observed in contrast to no differential for twogeneration urbanites. Age at marriage is a third such interaction variable: the strong negative socio-economic differential observed when wife’s age at marriage is under 19 diminishes with advancing age at marriage and becomes positive for wives who married at age 23 or older. Moreover, for both non-Catholics and Catholics, couples with and without farm background, the differential by wife’s education is negative when wife’s age at marriage is young, positive when her age at marriage is old. Both sociological factors (the incidence of non-familial adult roles) and differential fecundity appear to underlie the interaction. The analysis is based on reports of once-married, white, nonfarm wives aged 30 to 39 included in the 1955 or 1960 Growth of American Families Studies or the 1965 National Fertility Study (approximately 1,000 in each survey).