We have talked a bit about how much money can be made by making us feel insecure about our bodies (and minds!). We are made to feel so afraid of being "deviant" that this tactic works--if we were not so afraid of difference, we would not be so willing to spend to make ourselves "normal." Even the most informed consumers are left feeling doubt, when we have a constant barrage of messages telling us we are not measuring up to the ideals.
Unilever came up in class a couple of times, and I thought a few of you would appreciate this.
This is a clip from Steven Colbert's show, The Colbert Report. Here he discusses how Unilever socially constructs the problem of "unattractive armpits" and offers us a Dove product to save the day.
Dove (owned by Unilever) is a really interesting case. As was also pointed out in class, they were among the first companies to jump on the bandwagon when there was a public outcry against Photoshopping. The following commercial was beloved, and spread around like wildfire--they wanted women to believe they were on our side. And instead of making us feel bad about ourselves, they were going to save the day....by selling us their product. Was that progress, or more of the same clever marketing?
Here is a great podcast I found a couple of years ago, that really talks about this new type of marketing--selling us female empowerment as a product, with profits still the ultimate goal.
Here are a couple other perspectives, and critiques of these, and similar, marketing ploys.
For this section of the course, we are talking about how some people get labeled "sick" for the way their minds work. This is an extremely difficult topic, with much emotion and controversy wrapped up in those labels. It seems that some behaviors people used to shrug off as somewhere in the range of "normal" are now considered problematic. And some behaviors that used to be seen absolute as a sign of mental illness (like homosexuality) are no longer perceived that way (at least by most).
For some, getting a label of a mental illness has been life-saving and affirmative. Not only does it offer them an explanation for whatever symptoms they have been experiencing, but it also offers a chance at treatment. And, because we rely so heavily on insurance, receiving an official diagnosis is often a necessary step for getting therapy and/or treatment. Being given a label has also meant that individuals facing similar issues, barriers and concerns can form community together, and bond over their common experiences. With all of our technological advancements, we keep learning more about the body, and our brains--so are these new and expanded labels helpful? Are they getting us closer to the truth?
One of the downsides to getting a label of mental illness is the stigma that comes with such labels. Such a stigma is potent, because, as we have discussed about labels, they come with a whole package of assumptions. We see people with mental illnesses as "sick" but what else comes in that package--sick? Crazy? Unstable? Dangerous? What happens when your mental illness becomes your master status? Once you have been labeled, are you seen the same by society? Do you still have the same opportunities as everyone else? Or do your choices become more constrained?
One of my favorite examples of this quandary--should we accept this label or not?--is in a really fascinating story of Emanuel Frowner, from the outstanding podcast Radiolab. In the story of the Frowners, the father of the family refuses to believe that Emanuel has any problems, but his other son can see that Emanuel has textbook symptoms along the autism spectrum. Dad wants to avoid Emanuel being treated differently, but his brother wants him to get help--what is ultimately the best thing for Emanuel? The story is moving, and even the comments on the web site are telling about how difficult these decisions are. The clip is about 19 minutes, and is well worth a listen (sorry about the ad!).
The Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) is called "the bible" when it comes to diagnosing mental illness. The DSM-V is scheduled to be released in May 2013 and the process of updating it has been nothing short of intense. Right now at least 8 conditions considered "disorders" will be removed. Various groups have lobbied, protested or fought in a myriad of ways to get their illnesses labeled, so they can get health care, or removed altogether. And those groups are infighting with each other, because some want the label to access health benefits, and others are fighting the stigmas. Should this be how diagnoses are made? By political lobbies and activism, or are decisions made based on sound scientific evidence? And who pays for that scientific evidence--it really gets that messy. On top of everything, many of the people charged with updating the new DSM-V clearly stand to make a lot of money on the very changes they are voting on--should this conflict of interest, which impacts up to 70% of the panel members, be allowed?
For your fourth blog post, you will do your best to disentangle all of this in regards to an "illness" of your choosing. You can choose something that used to not be labeled an illness, but is now, or something that is no longer considered an illness. Or something that is currently going through a surge of awareness, and heightened diagnoses, like autism or ADHD (both of which we will begin to discuss in class). Really, it can be any illness you want to know more about. More than giving a history, you are going to give us an analysis of what has been involved in the process of this illness gaining, or losing, that label. You are going to tell us the academic story of that illness.
Choose something that has been deemed an "illness" either informally, or formally in the DSM. Not necessarily eyelashes--try to take on something with broader implications. Give a brief history of the diagnosis, or medicalization of that illness, then give a sociological analysis of the illness, using questions like these:
What were the behaviors or attributes that were seen as deviant, and how did they become seen as deviant/normal?
What was the process of medicalization (or demedicalization?) for this illness?
Who were the major players in the decision-making process, as far as you can find?
What parties stand to gain from the diagnosis?
What parties stand to lose from the diagnosis?
Are the people that will be impacted by the label part of the conversation, at all?
How did/does information spread about this illness?
What were/are the roles of social institutions in creating/maintaining the "sick" label?
What are the consequences (positive and negative) of having this diagnosis?
Are some groups more or less likely to be diagnosed with this illness?
What are the underlying social constructions of race, class, gender, size, ability, sickness, mental health, age, beauty, normal, deviance, sexuality, and so forth that impact this illness, and/or its perception?
Once this label is assigned, do we as society take any responsibility for the care of those who are labeled? Should we?
Who benefits from this illness being seen as an individual problem?
What are the possible social reasons for the existence of this illness?
A thorough post will include as many sides of the discussion as possible, to try to show just how complex this all is, and will do a really solid job of connecting to the concepts and materials from the course to their examination. My standards are only increasing; if you have any doubts, make sure you visit the writing center. At this point we should be past any typos or citation errors. Remember you must utilize and cite at least three of the assigned course materials, and you must EXPLAIN sufficiently how they connect to your analysis.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few suggestions, and some links to some places to start your thinking (also, of course, look at the required readings). Once you choose one, if you need some guidance, feel free to email me and/or set up a time to talk--I am always happy to bat around ideas with students. You will probably find you need to go back into the deviance blogs, so you can make sure you are getting a wide representation of perspectives and voices on the impact of these deviant labels(see the list on the right side of the page).
This is not necessarily reflective of what is "out there" but is just pulled from my personal collection I have gathered over the past few years of teaching this course.
81 Words (This American Life podcast on how 'homosexuality' came to be taken out of the DSM--amazing! Could help with any project, for understanding the politics of the DSM)
After Spring Break we will be continuing our discussions on the social construction of "sick" and what we consider to be individual vs. societal issues.
For March 20, we will take a slightly different look at violence than we did at the beginning of this section when we look at the concept of self-harm. What happens when we want to turn violence inward, and cause ourselves harm? Is that okay? Should we be able to legally do whatever we want to our own bodies? If we do cause ourselves harm, is it because we are "sick" or is it a valid form of self expression? Is it the result of other social constructions around gender, and so forth? What causes some people to self harm? Are some people/groups more or less likely to participate in self harm? We will be talking about several types of behaviors that have been considered "self-harm" including cutting (and related behaviors), Body Integrity Identity Disorder and eating disorders.
We will complete this section on March 22 with a discussion on drug and alcohol use. Why are some drugs seen as "dangerous" while others are seen as viable recreational opportunities, with wide public support? With any drug, why does one level of consumption get perceived as "normal" (to varying degrees) while another level of consumption gets labeled as "sick"? Who gets to decide when you have crossed that line? What groups benefit from some drugs being made legal, and others kept illegal? Who gets to influence policy decisions? What are the advantages and disadvantages to seeing drugs and alcohol as a medical issues? What about seeing them as deviance? Which drugs, if any, should be controlled? Is that a medical, or criminological decision?
Read "Hey Don't Blame Me...Blame The Booze" by Robert L. Peralta, available in your textbook.
Read "OxyContin: A Prescription for Disaster" by Inciardi and Goode, also available in your textbook.
In this section of the course we are going to discuss mental illness in a few different ways. First, we are going to discuss behaviors (such as physical violence) that society seems to think of as individual psychological issues. Is violence the result of "sick" people, or is there something about our social constructions contributing? Then we are going to tackle the diagnosis of mental illnesses--what should be considered "normal" and what is "sick"? What are the advantages, and disadvantages, of being diagnosed as mentally ill? How have definitions changed over time? Are some groups more or less likely to be diagnosed as mentally ill?
In this section we will talk about the concept of medicalization. As I talked about in my last post, there is a lot of money to be made by cosmetic companies and the diet industry, if they can make you feel bad about yourself and sell you a solution to a host of socially constructed problems. Another group that stands to make a lot of money off of our "problems" is the medical industry, including pharmaceutical companies. Medicalization is the framing of socially constructed problems as "medical issues" so that the medical industry can offer a solution, through a diagnosis and/or treatment. Technological advancements mean so much good news--we now know so much more about the brain, and our bodies than we could have imagined. But some of those advancements have led to more categorization, and more placing of judgement on those categories. Sometimes instead of our body flaws being seen as a cosmetic problem, they get framed as a "medical" problem--that is medicalization.
For example, take eyelashes. Some people have short eyelashes, some people have long eyelashes. Have you ever thought of that as a problem? Whether or not it is a problem, there is a medical solution--you can get a prescription for a product to make your eyelashes glow. Commercials about this product medicalize eyelashes--they frame short eyelashes as a medical problem, which labels it first and foremost as a problem, and secondly, something that needs to be fixed. Good news: they can sell you the solution. Just go tell your doctor to write you a prescription.
For February 23, you are reading some different perspectives on physical violence:
Read the Fox and Levin article about serial killers, in your textbook.
Read the Kimmel and Mahler article about school shootings, in your textbook.
Read the Gilligan article "Shame, Guilt and Violence" available on Angel.
For February 28, continue reading about physical violence:
Be prepared to watch and critically analyze Tough Guise in class. Even if you have seen it before, watch it with your "deviance" lens. The Film Review will be due Sunday, March 4.
On March 1, we talk about violence when it gets turned inward and becomes self-destructive. Is suicide bad? Is it deviant? Is it noble? Should it be allowed, legally or socially? Who should be able to make those decisions?
Required:
Read "The Desire For Death" by Joiner, in your textbook.
Read "A Poet Crusades for the Right to Die His Way" by Fisher, available on Angel.
Read "Death With Dignity" by Dincin, available on Angel.
Optional:
Watch "The Suicide Tourist" (55:00). This is an episode of PBS's Frontline with the tagline "A story of struggling to live ... and deciding when to die. Is this a choice everyone should have?"
On March 6, we start to tackle the problems with diagnoses. How do we decide what is normal vs. what is sick? Who gets to make those decisions? Categorizing a host of symptoms as a sickness comes with rewards and consequences--maybe you can finally get help, or your insurance will now pay for a treatment, or you can build community with others like you. But you also have to take on a label, and we devalue those we see as "sick" ...so what is the best option? Why are so many behaviors that used to be seen somewhere in the spectrum of "normal" now seen as "abnormal" and is that advancement, or policing? Why do some illnesses almost become a "fad" and suddenly surge in diagnoses?
Read "Being Sane in Insane Places" by Rosenhan, in your textbook.
On March 8 we will explore one particular diagnosis that has generated much controversy, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). We will discuss who is invested in seeing these behaviors as problematic "symptoms" and what the consequences are of the diagnosis. This will be preparation for your Blog Post 4 (details coming soon!).
Read "The Emergence of Hyperactive Adults as Abnormal" by Conrad and Potter, in your textbook.
We have talked quite a bit about the "ideal man" and "ideal woman" this semester. At the end of class today we started to touch on how our images of the ideal contain expectations for what men and women are supposed to look like. How realistic are our ideals? Should all women be rail thin, with big breasts? Should all men be muscular? Where do those ideals come from, and how do they relate to the other social constructions we have for race, class, gender, sexuality, size, ability, and so forth? What do we mean by "fat"? How has that definition changed over time? As I would like to explore in this post, are those ideals even realistic? If we are all being held to a standard, how possible is it for any of us to reach that standard?
It is such a well known practice to use Photoshop to alter images, the United Kingdom has controls in place, calling the use of such techniques "misleading."
While being overweight has different social consequences for men than women, there is still a lot of pressure on men to display masculinity a certain way, through their appearance. As your classmate pointed out, men get grief for being too skinny. They also get grief for being too fat, as we saw in the ads from the first day of class. Just like you see before/after pictures to "motivate" women to buy products, you see before/after pictures promising impossible results at a cost for men. How realistic are those?
As some of your clever classmates pointed out today, there is a LOT of money to be made selling people the solutions to their insecurities, so there is an investment in keeping people insecure, as well as fabricating new reasons to be insecure. These messages--that we should feel shame if we are fat, or fear that we will die lonely if we are short--are part of the slow drip we receive our whole lives, reminding us we need to be normal at all costs, and fear that which is deviant.
Language evolves. The meanings of words change over time. In the image above, the word "gay" meant happy, and the rainbow did not have the same connotations it does now. Words, and how they are used, are another example of social constructions. The meaning of the same word can vary over time, by location, by context, and by the person saying/hearing it.
For your third blog post, you will be looking at blogs written by people who have been labeled deviant, and you will teach us what they think about language. Not language in general, but how some words that relate to deviant labels have value attached to them. Some groups are asking us to stop using certain words (such as "the r word"), while other groups are reclaiming (often called reappropriating) words (such as "queer"). For your post, you will research the history of a word or phrase, and find out deviant bloggers (members of deviant communities) are saying about that word. These words or phrases could have come from identities or assumptions about gender, race, class, sexuality, gender identity, occupation, ability level, size, or anything else that marks a person or group as "other" from the default.
If you think about most of the insults we throw around at each other, they can often be traced back to a group or status that is considered "deviant" in our culture. When we do not like something, we may call it "lame." That word, as innocuous as it seems, has a meaning--to be lame is to have difficulty walking. So when you say something is lame, you are referring to a physicality that would fall under the umbrella of disability.
Think about the word in the image above--gay. To be gay meant to be happy (well, it still does), but in the 1940s (according to the Online Entomology Dictionary) it started to also be used as slang for homosexual. If you look at the word "gay" now, it is a pretty safe word to use to talk about someone who identifies as a gay male--and in fact is considered "more updated" language than calling someone homosexual. But some members of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning) community feel that calling anyone in the community "gay" is lumping everyone together too much, because it erases gender and individual identities (such as lesbian, and bisexual) and one's gender identity (e.g. being transgender) has NOTHING to do with their sexual orientation (such as gay, lesbian or bisexual). You also very frequently hear "that's so gay" used as an insult, so there are several campaigns asking people to stop using "gay" in a negative way. So for some people, "gay" has been reclaimed as a positive word. But for others, "gay" should only be used to describe gay men, and is otherwise insulting, and for others still, "gay" should only be used in reference to someone's sexual identity, and only in positive or neutral ways.
For your blog post, choose a word or phrase that is currently, or has been, used in the United States an insult that refers to a group that is perceived as deviant. You have seen examples in class, or you can listen around for ideas, or feel free to come talk to me. You could also start here.
Once you have chosen the word or phrase:
Explain the history (entomology) of the word or phrase. Some words will be easier to research than others--do the best you can.
What used to be the connotations?
What are the current connotations?
Who is more or less likely to use this word or phrase?
What are the underlying social constructions in that word or phrase?
What communities are impacted by the use of this word or phrase?
How do members of the relevant communities feel about the word or phrase? Are some people reclaiming the word? Are others asking us to stop using the word?
Is it a word that is more or less acceptable to use if you have a certain deviant label (you are a member of that community)? For example, in the LGBTQ community, some people use words like "fag" or "dyke" to describe themselves or others in the community. If you are not part of the community, however, you may be sanctioned for using those words--at the very least, those same words may be seen as insulting.
This is not meant to be exact checklist or outline for your paper, but you should find a way to answer each of those questions in your thoughtful, academic analysis.
Explore the Deviance Blog List on the right side of this screen for ideas, and for research into the power of the word/phrase on the communities impacted. These blogs may not give you the exact information you need, but can hopefully get you started and thinking in your search.
Remember, blog posts should be between 600 and 1500 words, and citations are necessary. See blog post tips, if you do not remember. You must also integrate and cite at least THREE of the assigned readings/sites/videos from the course materials.
Note: as we will be learning, some of these words are very loaded! You are wading directly into controversy, insults, and people's humanity. Please be respectful in your analysis, and how you choose to discuss the word or phrase in your blog. People may stumble across your blog, and it is not our goal to traumatize anyone--be kind, compassionate and professional.
For the last three days of this section, we are going to be discussing other types of deviant bodies. We are going to discuss our obsession with size, and the beliefs we have about overweight bodies. Then, we are going to discuss bodies that are seen as disabled, and the limits of our beliefs about what constitutes "ability" and "disability."
As with all of the groups we discuss this semester, members of the fat and disability community are both challenging us to think about how we define "normal." In our images of ideal men and women, we have very specific ideals for what we think bodies should look like, and how they should function. If you look around, you will see that almost all aspects of our culture is based on an assumption that we meet the ideal, or pretty close. Look at the classrooms on campus--do the chairs, desks and rows make assumptions about your body size and shape? What are they assuming about your physical abilities? Next time you go to a store, look--would you be able to get into the store, if you were in a wheelchair? Does the layout of the store make assumptions about your body, in size and ability? If they sell clothing, do they sell clothes that would fit any type of body, based on size or ability?
Both weight and ability are a master status, so when you are not the ideal size (which has nothing to do with averages, or reality), or have a visible disability (which has nothing to do with your actual capacity), you are seen first and foremost by that status. Your actions and words get put through the filter of assumptions we have about fat and disabled bodies. For example, in both communities, there is a perception that when you are fat or disabled, you are asexual. Mainstream society has a hard time believing you can be attractive, attracted and sexual. You are considered deviant if you want to have sex with someone fat or disabled. Why? What are the underlying assumptions and social constructions? How does this relate to our ideas of "ideal women" and "ideal men"?
On February 14, we will talk about fat bodies (I use the term "fat" in reference to the fat acceptance movement). We will ask where our beliefs about people who are fat come from, what that means for the lives of those who receive the "fat" label, and the consequences of the stigma that comes with that label.
Required:
Read The Stigma of Obesity by Goode, in your text.
Watch two videos (below). The first one is a discussion on the obsession with celebrity weight loss. The second is a trailer for the PBS documentary called FAT: What No One is Telling You.
On February 16, we begin talking about people with disabilities, and our assumptions behind that label. What constitutes "abled" or "disabled" and who gets to choose where to draw the line between those two labels? Some people get from point A to point B by walking. Others roll. Who says one way is better? How does all of this work with our images of the ideal man and woman? What are the consequences of being labeled "disabled" in our society? What do we think we know about people, based on their disability as a master status?
Required:
Read You're Not a Retard, You're Just Wise by Taylor, in your textbook.
Watch the video "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds" (below) from Dr. Temple Grandin. Grandin is a scholar and professor who has autism. She talks about how there are many ways of communicating, and understanding, and knowing, and how her autism allows her to understand things that non-autistic brains could not.
On February 21 we will finish this section of the course by watching the film Murderball and completing our discussion of what it means to be able-bodied. Be excited to see this documentary--not only will it blow you away, but the star of the film Mark Zupan will be coming to WSUV as the Marquee Diversity speaker on March 7! Here are the details. Reserve your seats now!
