Contemporary perceivers encounter highly gendered imagery in media, social networks, and the workplace. Perceivers also express strong interpersonal biases related to targets' gendered appearances after mere glimpses at their faces. In the current studies, we explored adaptation to gendered facial features as a perceptual mechanism underlying these biases. In Study 1, brief visual exposure to h...

It has recently been claimed that a particular form of intimacy, ‘the pure relationship’ is increasingly sought in personal life. For a couple, ‘the pure relationship’ involves opening out to each other, enjoying each other’s unique qualities and sustaining trust through mutual disclosure. Anthony Giddens (1992) postulates a transformation of intimacy in all personal relationships with radical ...

Responsive to perceived high risk of HIV infection by sexually active youth, several South African sexual health-promotion campaigns have used media targeting mothers, instructing them on how sex should be talked about with their children to 'risk-proof' them. A Foucauldian approach to the normative apparatus of family-sexuality-risk finds mothers positioned as pivots between 'public' (health, ...

This article moves beyond previous attempts to understand health problems in the lives of professional lorry drivers by placing the study of drivers' health in a wider social and cultural context. A combination of methods including focus groups, interviews and observations were used to collect data from a group of 24 lorry drivers working at a large transport company in the United Kingdom. Empl...

This article investigates the extent to which the emerging trend of do-it-yourself anti-ageing skin-whitening products represents a re-articulation of Western colonial concerns with environmental pollution and racial degeneracy into concern with gendered vulnerability. This emerging market is a multibillion dollar industry anchored in the USA, but expanding globally. Do-it-yourself anti-ageing ...

In South Africa, high pregnancy and infection rates show that many teenagers are having sex, and that they are not adequately protecting themselves against undesired pregnancies and disease. Sex education is usually taught as part of the subject area Life Orientation. In a qualitative study of 25 Life Orientation teachers in the South African Free State Province, we used semi-structured intervi...

This chapter explores the use of a feminist website that raises awareness about issues related to Lebanese women. By uniting women’s voices via blogging, story narration, and comic strips, the Nasawiya feminists strive to challenge the hegemonic discourses that currently constitute the reality of women from Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon. The author inspects the discourses in that spa...

Culture specifies standards for women’s and men’s body appearance and display. In Western cultures, these standards are both concentrated and ubiquitous in the media, represented as gendered body ideals for citizens to aspire toward. Because gendered body ideals are revered, individuals try to construct and portray their body consistently with these ideals. Furthermore, because gendered body id...