Buyers, Be glad or Beware? Sales and Surveillance

The constant way in which my shopping habits are watched wasn't really new to me, or particularly distressing...until I began to realize exactly how much companies can do with the personal data that they mine from me and other sources willing to sell it. I use my "chopper shopper" card to get discounts at the grocery store. I don't mind that Price Chopper knows what I buy; it helps them stock their shelves more efficiently, right? What really scares me, is not how a grocery store will market to me, but how other more insidious organizations or persons could use the same information for a harmful purpose. I've shopped enough to know that stores will use all sorts of discount gimmicks, mail-in rebates, and other tactics to get more of my money for less of their product. When target was able to predict a teen's pregnancy, however, it was part of a concerted effort to change a person's habits and create a loyal customer. Target was specifically timing their efforts to change customer buying habits during a formative time in a family's/woman's life when buying habits are in flux and open to being redirected: the period around which a child is born (Duhigg, NYC). Charles Duhigg of the New York Times writes, " Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things, like prenatal vitamins and maternity clothing" (nyt.com).

To a certain extent, as shoppers we are aware (and even happy at times) when companies pay attention to what and how we buy things. Amazon.com shows me what I've recently viewed and even offers nice suggestions of things I might be interested in. Sometimes this has helped me see a greater variety of merchandise and enabled me to make a better-informed decision before I buy a product. Target and other retailers print out coupons tailored to an individual's shopping habits, so we get discounts on the things we are already in the habit of buying. One way that online retailers, especially, create a panoptic system is by giving consumers a chance to write reviews of merchandise, analyzing the merits and faults of products, and letting other consumers interact with each other as they look and buy. Products and manufacturers are being watched by consumers (and product reviewers) and the products, the pricing, the benefits, and the faults are all out in the open. When I buy online, I ALWAYS read the consumer reviews and make a judgment largely influenced by those in the system who are watching products/companies and critiquing those products, all for the benefit of other buyers. In this sense "the disciplinary mechanism will be democratically controlled, since it will be constantly accessible 'to the great tribunal committee of the world'" (Foucault 207). The discipline for companies results in how their products are viewed, purchased, and ultimately become profitable or unprofitable.

One feature I use a lot in consumer reviews is the "most helpful" function. On amazon.com one can comment about a comment. Unfair reviewers, those who are vulgar, or whose product-bias corrupts a truly informative review are chastised and given a "thumbs down" or unhelpful review. So consumer reviewers are also aware that THEY are being watched and judged as competent, unbiased, informative reviewers. For some products, the "most helpful" customer comment has been marked as "helpful" hundreds of times, a few over a thousand times, on amazon.com. These most helpful reviews generally have good grammar/punctuation, list both pro's and cons, are very detailed, are identified by amazon's "real person" ID service (which I could get into even more...), and are also very thorough. In a sense, online customer review systems prove Bentham's claim to be true that "benefits to be obtained" are "Morals reformed - health preserved - INDUSTRY INVIGORATED" (qtd in Foucault 207, all caps used because I can't italicize in this app). Amazon.com's extensive customer reviews function a bit like Paris and London in the 18th and 19th century where "this unceasing observation had to be accumulated in a series of reports and registers. . . . And, unlike the methods of judicial or administrative writing, what was registered in this way were forms of behavior, attitudes, possibilities, suspicions--a permanent account of individuals' behavior" (Foucault 214). Foucault was talking about police reports, but it seems to work well in an economic setting as well.

Bullying Grandma: Punishment and Spectacle

Today while I was on the elliptical machine at the gym, I saw for the first time the viral video of junior high kids mocking a bus monitor that has made it into the news recently. First off, it is sad to see that kind of cruelty displayed by children, especially to a nice, old lady like that. It is a sad example of youth's insolence, ignorance, and pettiness.

The main thrust of the boys' comments made fun of the woman's weight, looks, and seeming poverty. I looked for a transcript of the video and was unable to find one. This kind of immature, narrow-minded behavior is nothing new for junior high kids, but what is interesting is the popularity of the video and the community response to its existence. For a time on the bus, the monitor seemed surrounded by kids that were taunting her. She was an object of ridicule and seemed to passively accept and endure what the kid were throwing at her. Granted, there was not much she could do to MAKE them stop, but she could have moved or enlisted the bus driver's help. Her hands were largely tied by the strict rules governing how much school authorities are allowed to discipline unruly children.

The boys' crime was filmed for us to see, but in their minds the woman had committed a crime, of not fitting their ideal notion of beauty, slenderness, or even respectable age. In a sense, the boys are representatives of a culture which does prize youth, slenderness, and a narrow definition of beauty. And they were publicly condemning the guilty party, in their minds. The boys' actions were a kind of public punishment or emotional torture for the crime of being old, overweight, and poor. In the chapter  "The Spectacle of the Scaffold" in his _Discipline and Punish_ Foucault writes that "public torture . . . must be spectacular, it must be seen by all almost as its triumph. The very excess of the violence employed is one of the elements of its glory" (34). The boys went on for ten minutes; it was not just a comment or two that was quickly let go by the tormentors. They also captured their punishment on video and put it on facebook. They made fun of the bus monitor in public on the bus, then showed their handiwork to their online community. (I'm not sure how it got on youtube; I think a facebook friend did it to show how horrible the boys were). The video shows the bus monitor sitting on a bus seat by herself, and one can hear the voices of several boys in seats surrounding her. However, with the exception of one boy who pops on the screen for just a second, we don't see the punishers, only the punished. What many in society see as the real crime is only heard on the video, not seen. For the tormentors, her "body, displayed, exhibited in procession, tortured, serve[s] as the public support of a procedure that had hitherto remained in the shade; in [her], on [her], the sentence had to be legible for all" (Foucault 43). I'm sure those boys had conferred several times to poke fun and discuss what they saw as deficient in the woman. I'm also sure that many viewers, while maybe not willing to participate in the public, punishing act, felt the same way those boys did toward the woman.

However, ultimately, the spectacle was reversed and now the boys are on display for culture to see. We judge their impertinent, hurtful actions and rush to help a victim who did not deserve the punishment she received. It is interesting that in way, the film which recorded such cruel acts, made a perfect video that people would love to hate, a video that "went viral" and was viewed by millions, and a video that ultimately made entertainment for our culture. News stations still consider it newsworthy. Now, people have raised money to help this woman, not only go on a vacation as was the original intent, but now to maybe retire or start a foundation. Foucault does mention that if the public torture and punishment is too harsh, then the spectators may rebel against those inflicting the penalty for the crime. In a sense, this is maybe what happened. Clearly, the boys' sentiments do represent a large portion of American middle class culture: a distaste for the poor and a narrow definition of beauty that can be harshly exclusive. However , they were so harsh in their public punishment of this woman, that bloggers and news agencies pounced on them to show how they were too harsh, too disrespectful, and too hurtful.

My Man Card

So a friend of mine works as a secretary for a few weeks every summer for an office of nuclear engineers and scientists. One of her jobs is to take care of catering/food for office snacks, meeting appetizers, and lunch meals. I came across this facebook post this week, and laughed in light of our focus on gender theory and Winterson's Written on the Body. The idea that a guy might lose his "man card" or manhood because he is eating fresh fruit (instead of a hearty steak and baked potato??) is kind of laughable.

It seems that one of the ways that man's gender is constituted is through a set of rules pertaining to food. Ideas exist that men should not care about the calories or fat content of their food; we should eat big, hearty meals, salads are for chicks, meat should make up a majority of our meals, and (apparently) fruit is not manly. Over and above the food expectations, there is also a conceptual identification of what it is to be a man, the "man card," and breaking the conventions of manliness can get one temporarily banished from the club or brotherhood of man. These cultural expectations are so ingrained that a very common joke about losing your "manhood," acknowledges that there are rules, and an exclusive club, to which mainstream men belong, and that one can be ostracized or expelled from this group if the rules are broken. Your man license can be revoked.

Judith Butler cites Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger and writes, "the surface, the skin, is systemically signified by taboos and anticipated transgressions; indeed the boundaries of the body become . . . the limits of the social per se" (167). The male body, seen historically as a more pure than a female body because it is not penetrated (in heterosexual relationships) and because it does not leak (menstruate), can become "contaminated" or "polluted," according to Douglas. Douglas writes that there are "pollution powers which inhere in the structure of ideas itself and which punish a symbolic breaking of that which should be joined or joining of that which should be separate" (qtd. in Butler 167). Others have noted that AIDS was seen by culture as the pollution resulting from a "boundary-tresspass that is homosexuality"; the male body which is not supposed to be penetrated and so was seemingly punished with the "gay disease" (Butler 168).

In the example above a male gets mocked by a woman for contaminating his body with a food that doesn't fit the hearty meals of the man stereotype. He is polluting himself and being punished by a woman who is perpetuating the binary man/woman constructs of gender. My friend recognizes this, and so does the commenter who sees that woman as "reinforcing [women's] second class citizenship." It is interesting that the male commenter unabashedly notes that he lost his man card long ago and voluntarily removed himself from the club. I think that American culture has given women more stringent rules regarding their beauty, but--as has been said in class--maybe men have stricter guidelines regarding what it is to "be a man" or hold a respectable place among those of his gender.

I feel some of that pressure every time I have car trouble and can't fix it, or find a household handy man problem I can't repair, or find myself ignorant of a sport that others have been watching with interest. Interestingly enough, one area where I find that I do not feel the pressure of normalized male gender is in eating healthy food in order to stay fit. Which means that I am ultimately as baffled about the comment above as my friend who posted about it on facebook.

Pink and Blue: Gender Constructed

So, most academics and feminists argue that gender (separate from sex) is socially constructed. They say our notions of what is manly or feminine are based on things that we are taught by parents, shown on TV, experienced at school by teachers and students have also been told what being a "man" or a "woman" truly is. One example of gender construction that seems to make some sense to me is how culture has decided that the color pink is for girls and the color blue is for boys.

Joel, my oldest son, went through a phase where he really like pink. It was his favorite color for about a month (along with red). I remember pausing to think about how I wanted to handle this desire of his. It wasn't a big deal; he wasn't doing anything that went against the normalized idea of male gender. I mean, he could have been asking for a sequined tutu or a Hawaiian Barbie to play with ; ).
 I let it go for awhile, but I definitely heard others tell Joel that pink was a girl color and blue was for boys. In class today somebody looked up the origin of this aspect of gender construction, and it seems that this idea of blue for boys and pink for girls reached its height around the middle of the 20th century. Apparently it was marketed that way to the American public. Pink has definitely become more accepted for guys to wear, but I don't know of any straight men who would buy a pink phone or get a pink bicycle for their son, even if it was asked for by the kid.

What I find interesting about the pictures above (and yes, my son is the one holding his diploma upside down...) is that
1.) A 5 year old is wearing a bright pink shirt at an age when many parents are in the process of perpetuating the male/female norms of blue and pink, respectively.
2.) Two of the boys (mine included) are wearing shirts that have some lighter, salmony reddish tones that might be considered pink-ish.
3.) That little boy in bright pink is not really a part of the group in either photo.

It is probably just coincidence that a boy who is not very close to my son and his friends happened to be standing there when I yelled to the group around Joel, "Get together and smile for a picture."But it is interesting to note that the kid who is on the edge of dressing conventions for little kids doesn't seem to be accepted as part of the group. I don't know the kid, and after asking Joel, he doesn't have much to say about him either. The boy in bright pink seems a little emblematic of those people in society who are often rejected or marginalized because they do to conform to the "heterosexual framework" preserved by "a binary restriction on gender identity" that Judith Butler is writing in reaction against.

Butler posits that gender is performative, "and just as a play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives" (277). If this is true, then it seems that several of these kids in the picture have been given scripts that challenge the notion that pink is for little girls. However, the ones that challenge this more subtley (Joel's shirt is blue and light-red, and many would call Miles's shirt plain red) seem to be more accepted. Or maybe they reject the overt performance that flies in the face of accepted gender norms.

Really, they are just kids who put on the clothes their parents tell them to wear. They may have some input if a kid likes a certain cartoon brand or color, but for the most part, the children are a reflection of how their parents' perform or construct gender. Unfortunately for them, kids are generally stuck with what parents put on them, and they have to cope with what is out of their control. I've seen 5 year olds show their new shoes and brag about the new spiderman shirt they just got. Inevitably, Joel will see others get new stuff that he wants and then come home and ask me for it. However, I've also heard my son mention new clothes that his female friends at preschool wear, and I remember several times when he would tell me about their new clothing, and then add, as if part of the dialogue of his script, "But I don't want Disney princess shoes, Daddy. Those are for girls." He repeats/performs the lines he has been taught.

What about men's body image?

I was just finishing a  workout in the FHSU fitness center when I noticed a surface filled with magazines for people to read while they worked out on the cardio equipment. Many of the issues dealt with health and physical fitness, and this particular issue of Men's Health drew my attention. We've talking in class about body image as it relates to race and the female gender. But I thought this cover of Men's health, along with the accompanying article titles, was worth mentioning in this body journal.

Susan Bordo writes about a societal ideal of slenderness that many women (and men) feel is part of what it means to have an attractive body. She mentions that anorexia is a severe, albeit unconscious, statement a woman makes about feeling like her appetites, and the very space her body takes up, are constrained by society. She also mentions that women are expected to embody the traditionally masculine values of control, determination, and self-mastery. She notes that these two constructions of femininity and masculinity intersect, creating a double-bind. At this point I read that intersection as a kind of blending of the masculine and the feminine on what it means to be beautiful as a woman.
However, it seems that the same blending of masculine and feminine is also being applied to male ideas of attractiveness. I haven't read much on this subject, but I can try to extrapolate some things from Bordo. It seems that part of what is traditionally tied to a man's body image is his strength, his size/height, and his work and usefulness. But the first headline I noticed from the magazine was "What Women Find Sexy." It seems that instead of being displayed in the work/professional sphere, Men have come to be seen on the front of magazines as sex symbols and objects to be admired. Instead of working out, running, or even swimming, the man on the front of the magazine has been "dunked" in order to look more attractive. He is not a swimmer; he is a professional basketball player. 

In this sense, the active athlete being asked to take a static, passive position in order to look "sexy" seems something that is traditionally asked of woman instead of a man. Granted, there are headings on the cover that claim to show men how to "Get back in Shape in 17 Days" and "Get Bigger Arms Fast," but the heading at the top of the cover, above the title of the magazine, is "Special Lose your Gut Issue". This title is couple with a man with incredibly defined abs, an 8-pack. There seems to be a growing expectation of men that we look a little more like this guy on the cover of Men's Health. And it's not just the size of the muscles that matters, but also the chiseled, well-defined, abdominal muscles that show we can control our appetites and our waistlines. If I were to flip Bordo's point that women feel physically constrained by American culture to have smaller bodies and take up less space, the I might argue that men are expected to be large, to be tall, to have our muscles bust out of our shirts, and to have the presence of a fully padded football player wherever we go. I've heard many women/girls say that they could never be with a man that is shorter than they. But clearly there are parts of men that women and culture want to constrain and keep downsized.

Of course, where did I see this magazine with the sexy, muscular, male athelete on the cover: at the gym. I was there working on my body, to keep it fit, thin, strong, and well-shaped. In some respects I work out  because I want to be healthy and feel good. However, I'd be lying to myself if that was the only reason I put in the tremendous effort to tear down my muscles, rep by rep, only to have them knit back together, stronger than before. The visual result is definitely a big part of why I do it. I know I get positive feed back from people, male and female (my wife included), when I am fit, strong, and "cut." And the 6 pack...I'm working on.

The Heavy (Panda) Bear

This weekend the movie Kung Fu Panda was on TV. I watched some of it with my kids and with some friends after lunch. It reminded me of the poem Susan Bordo inserts at the beginning of her book, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. The poem by Delmore Schwartz, called "The Heavy Bear," explores the relationship between the body and the true self. The poem characterizes the body as an unwanted, heavy, encumbrance with base, animal desires that inhibits expression and cripples relationships.

 In Kung Fu Panda, the protagonist--Po--is an overweight Panda Bear who is accidentally named the "Dragon Warrior," a legendary fighter who would bring peace to the land (and the heart of a kung fu teacher). He initially fails in his efforts to learn martial arts and to embody the legend foretold about him (supposedly). He works for his father, a noodle restaurant owner, and struggles with his weight.

Po begins his training in earnest, but loses heart as his peers and teachers doubt his potential. Po is overweight, slow, uncoordinated, and untrained. In an emotionally charged scene (for an animated movie) with his teacher, the teacher asks Po why he hasn't left the school/palace. Po responds by saying that anything was better than returning to what he was before, an unhappy, overweight, restaurant waiter. Susan Bordo's explanation of the historical "construction of the body as something apart from the true self and as undermining the best efforts of that self" ring true for Po in that moment. Since his youth he had dreamed of being a hero and a master of the art of Kung Fu, but his body, his very species--he is continually questioned about being a fighting panda--prohibits this expression of his true self. Humorously enough, the teacher realizes that Po just needs the proper motivation (food) in order to make his training more successful. In one of those motivational training sequences put to music in fighting films, Po completes his training, developing his own style that makes use of his mass, his belly, and his proclivity for stuffing his face with food. And in the end, he does become a hero who masters his body, accepting it and learning to use its attributes for him instead of letting them work against him.

I doubt this story would work very well for a woman, however. The pressure of society and media to remain slender, especially for women, ensure that roles like these in movies are by-and-large filled by men. Bordo notes society's expectations of the active/passive dichotomy within gender: males are active and striving; women are passive, waiting for men to act. While we have many examples in media of women being proactive and independent protagonists; it seems a minority of women do so by embracing overweight or heavy bodies. Bordo states, "representations of men and women eating . . . exhibit a dualistic pedagogy instructing women and men in very different attitudes toward the 'heavy bear' and its hungers: women's appetites require containment and control, whereas male indulgence is legitimated and encouraged."

Spectacle, Deception, Confession

I'm keeping a journal that records observations of the human body and connects those images/observations to "body criticism". This week we are focusing on Foucault's _Crime and Punish_. I have just recently seen the movie _Man on a  Ledge_, and the film contains some of the elements Foucault discusses. Below is the official UK movie poster, chosen because I liked the tag line on the British poster better.

The poster shows a man on the ledge of the 25th floor, looking down at the street where he has threatened to jump in order to kill himself. Below on the street level are a crowd of spectators, the media, police rescue officers, and (because the jumper is believed to be dangerous) SWAT team police present in order to shoot or apprehend the man on the ledge.

Foucault notes that in classical systems of justice torture and execution were necessarily made public spectacles in order to reassert the power of the reigning monarch in the face of an offending criminal, make "the guilty man the herald of his own condemnation," and give the condemned an opportunity to publicly confess or bring to light new revelations relating to the crime. In the case of suicides, many are done in private without the public spectacle of a jumper who draws spectators and puts a mangled body in their midst. Choosing this form of public suicide may one last gasp of a hopeless person who has failed to assert the necessary control over life to make it worth living. Choosing to make a spectacle of the suicide not only shows a person trying to (for a moment at least) reassert control in reaction against himself-as-failure, but also satisfies Foucault's notion that for justice to take place the guilty must take part in their own condemnation. In suicide, especially in the case of a jumper, this happens all too willingly. In some cases, suicides may occur due to the revelation of shameful or illegal behavior. If a person cannot face a trial or live with the public ignominy, his suicide becomes a self punishment

What makes this apparent suicide attempt interesting is that the man on the ledge is an already-convicted felon who has recently escaped prison. He was sentenced to prison for 25 years but escaped. Instead of running to his freedom in another country, the convict shows himself to authorities and to the world through a very public form of attempted suicide--he makes a spectacle of himself. The police show up and must convince the jumper to forego his own self-inflicted punishment before the state can impose its own justice. In the movie we learn that the jumper is a former cop who was unjustly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. His suicide is a sham, a purposeful spectacle designed to prove his own innocence. In essence, he puts on his own show in order to  re-try himself and put to right a corrupt segment of the justice system. Ironically, the crowd he draws to watch his suicide attempt is a noise cover for a small explosion that his friends cause to break into a vault in a neighboring building, yet another crime necessary to shed light on the original injustice.