Chinks in the Merged Attachment: Generational Bequests to Contemporary Teenage Girls

This essay reviews Picturing the Modern Amazon, an exhibit of the representations of hypermuscular women presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City from March 30 to June 25, 2000. Taking a sociohistorical approach, the essay situates the museum exhibit in the context of the development of American bodybuilding. The images of the Modern Amazons are linked to the intensification of capitalism and the subsequent growth of the bodybuilding, health, and fitness industries. From this perspective, we see that the Modern Amazons face a cultural paradox, for they are both gender-bending figures of muscular excess and a mainstream form of mass production; thus, they simultaneously overturn and recuperate gender norms. This essay explores the ways in which the exhibit itself embodies contradictions. In its attempt to celebrate the subversive aspects of hyper muscular females, the show decontexualizes the Modern Amazons, removing them from their muscle-building spaces and processes and rendering them into visual commodities.     

Racial Disparity Under Sentencing Guidelines: A Survey of Recent Research and Emerging Perspectives

Recent concerns over racial disparities in sentencing have led to dramatic reform in criminal sentencing, including the widespread promulgation of sentencing guidelines that are designed to constrain judicial discretion and create greater fairness, transparency, and equality in punishment. Although there is broad consensus that guidelines have increased uniformity in sentencing, contemporary research continues to identify important racial and ethnic disparities in criminal punishment. This essay reviews recent empirical research on racial and ethnic disparities under guidelines, highlighting recent advancements in the field and identifying important directions for future research.     

The disability–poverty nexus and the case for a capabilities approach: evidence from Johannesburg,South Africa

Debates about the relationship between poverty and disability continue and are important in that they contribute to policies regarding how best to address the needs of disabled people living in conditions of poverty. Increasingly, researchers have begun to use Sen's capabilities approach in understanding disability. However, the approach has not been adequately applied to understand the nature of the poverty and disability nexus, particularly in developing contexts. This article seeks to address this gap by reporting on evidence from a study conducted in eight of the poorest wards in Johannesburg. Using the capabilities lens we demonstrate the ways in which both poverty and disability compound one another to limit the capabilities of people. The findings point to the need for broad-scale as well as targeted social development policies and programmes to address the consequences of poverty and disability.     

Estimation Under Purposive Sampling

Purposive sampling is described as a random selection of sampling units within the segment of the population with the most information on the characteristic of interest. Nonparametric bootstrap is proposed in estimating location parameters and the corresponding variances. An estimate of bias and a measure of variance of the point estimate are computed using the Monte Carlo method. The bootstrap estimator of the population mean is efficient and consistent in the homogeneous, heterogeneous, and two-segment populations simulated. The design-unbiased approximation of the standard error estimate differs substantially from the bootstrap estimate in severely heterogeneous and positively skewed populations.     

High and low levels of adolescent peer status are associated longitudinally with socioevaluative concern

This study examined linear and curvilinear longitudinal associations between peer status (i.e., likeability and popularity) and socioevaluative concern, a socio-cognitive feature characterized by attunement to judgment from peers. A sample of 716 adolescents (M_age = 16.01, SD = 1.25; 54% female; 46.5% White; 69.5% reduced-price lunch) was assessed twice annually. Likeability and popularity were assessed with peer nominations at Time 1. Measures of general (rejection sensitivity, peer importance) and online (digital status seeking, online status importance) socioevaluative concern were obtained at Times 1 and 2. High and low levels of likeability were longitudinally associated with increased peer importance, while high and low levels of popularity were associated with increased digital status seeking, and decreased online status importance for girls.     

Buying and selling breasts: cosmetic surgery,beauty treatments and risk

This paper is concerned with the ways in which women are sold cosmetic surgery, and how they ‘make sense of’ their own participation in this market. It draws on ongoing ethnographic research to explore how a group of young women who have paid for breast augmentation surgery narrate their decision to undergo surgery, the choices they make as consumers of cosmetic surgery, and their experience of having surgery. These narratives are compared with the ways in which breast augmentation surgery is sold to them by the companies and medical professionals involved in the rapidly expanding market for breast augmentation surgery. The paper shows how this particular group of young white working‐class women shift between imagining the breast augmentation operation as a simple beauty treatment and recognizing it as medical surgery, and explores how this shapes their perceptions of the risks and benefits of buying new breasts. It also shows how those who market such procedures manage and manipulate perceptions of the process of breast augmentation surgery and the risks that attend on it in an effort to encourage this form of consumption.     

Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: The Child Psychiatrist Perspective

This study’s objectives were to gain insight into reasons for the considerable rise in pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) and what impact the new diagnosis of disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) may have on child psychiatric treatment. A purposive sample of 10 child psychiatrists was interviewed for this qualitative study. Interviews were transcribed and coded for themes. Participants believe that PBD is often misdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, though their understandings of the reasons behind this vary. The majority attribute it to providers trying to help children who need services but do not fit a diagnostic category, and undertrained professionals diagnosing children. Most see DMDD as positive, though opinions on how it might impact children and treatment vary. All see family as vital in the treatment process. Participants in this exploratory study support a team approach and social workers have a key role as part of this team.     

Afterword

In this final commentary, former Journal of Social Issues Editor Jacqueline Goodchilds discusses the role that JSI has played in giving visibility to psychological research on gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation. She encourages readers not to ignore the sexuality of older women.     

“We’re a movement”: crowdfunding,journalism, and feminism

As media organizations struggle to remain financially viable, and layoffs become more common, crowdfunding has been championed as one way for journalists to finance new ventures and create work outside of mainstream media. There is a growing body of research that is starting to critically examine the relationship between journalism and crowdfunding. This research, however, has tended to look at journalism as a whole, rather than specific genres. The purpose of this paper is to look at how crowdfunding is being used to create feminist online magazines, online spaces, and freelance journalism to tell stories about women, or aimed at a female-identified audience. It argues that beyond simply wanting to write and produce content the hope is to create change and often the crowdfunding campaigns are positioned as trying to create a “community” and/or a “movement.” This article uses a political economic framework, drawing on the concept of structuration, to analyze how these crowdfunding campaigns are being used to push back against, and open up, mainstream dialogues of what it means to be a woman or female-identified, as well as create safe and open spaces for these conversations.     

The State,Unauthorized Mexican Migration,and Vulnerability in the Workplace

For the last 20 years, migration scholars have generated a number of important empirical insights about the ways in which the state, through the enactment of immigration policies, creates workplace vulnerabilities such as discrimination, harassment, wage theft, workplace raids, and the threat of deportation. Recent studies of illegality also examine the role of the state but do so in a way that explores what legal status means and how it is experienced in everyday lives of migrants marked as “illegal” by the state. This article reviews recent research that shows that the state operates in a gray zone of enforcement that puts migrants in ambiguous social spaces and heightens their vulnerability at work. However, research also finds that migrants find ways to exert their agency in challenging work environments.