In an earlier post, I talked about some pantless pigs, and noticed the number of cartoon picture book animals who are similarly pantless. Now here’s a shaker set in which both the figures are pantless, but only one of them is shirtless: Surprisingly, it is the male who wears a shirt–at least if I amContinue reading “Discriminatory Pantlessness”
Category Archives: Gender
Scarfs Make the Man. And the Manly Bear.
Like the pigs in my last post, these creatures are also wearing headgear and scarfs: What I find particularly interesting here is that wearing a hat and a scarf is merely a generic condition for one of these two, and not all surprising. A hat and a scarf is what snowmen often wear, and IContinue reading “Scarfs Make the Man. And the Manly Bear.”
Pantlessness
One of the ways in which salt-and-pepper shaker sets humanize the figures they depict who are not in reality human beings is by means of clothing. They have hats on, or scarves, or shoes. I thought it might be interesting to look at some sets in which that happens, in a series of posts beginningContinue reading “Pantlessness”
Bath, Beneath, and Beyond
Continuing on with shaker sets that imply an invisible beneath, there is this pair: Once more, the shakers represent something that is standing in water, this time two bathers. We see only the top third or so of their bodies, but knowledge of the way things usually are allows us to assume that the expectablyContinue reading “Bath, Beneath, and Beyond”
A Coupla Chicks Sitting Around
After generalizing about there being no same-sex pairs in my salt and pepper shaker collection, and then being surprised to find all the many male pairs I’ve been discussing in my posts over the last week or so, I decided it was about time to see what I could find in the way of femaleContinue reading “A Coupla Chicks Sitting Around”
Ambiguously Gendered: Batting for Which Team?
This shaker set is not necessarily ambiguously gay–more like ambiguously gendered. Its two baseball players (who each look a little like stereotyped angry codgers wearing too much eyeliner), might be either both male or both female or a combination of one male and one female. The shaker on the left wears a pink hat, whichContinue reading “Ambiguously Gendered: Batting for Which Team?”
Ménage à trois petits cochons
Since I’m on the subject of pigs on top of other pigs (see my last post), consider these: As you can tell from the expression on his/her face, the pig on the bottom either is not happy about being piled on or is so happy about it that it’s put her or him into aContinue reading “Ménage à trois petits cochons”
Ambiguously Gay Pigs and Kitties (or Bears)
And yet more sets of ambiguously gay male pairs! Two more pairs, in fact. I’ll talk about them together here because they are surprisingly similar to each other. First, these are these two: They are pigs, clearly, cute chubby-cheeked smiling pigs. And even though they are wearing pink (a pink jacket in one case,Continue reading “Ambiguously Gay Pigs and Kitties (or Bears)”
Bøsse: In Danish, Both ‘Shaker’ and ‘Gay’
Having opened the possible closet of implication hidden in the all-male sets of salt and pepper shakers I’ve been looking at in my last few posts, I’ve found myself wondering if indeed there are any out and openly gay shaker sets in existence. A little bit of Googling led me to this pair: According toContinue reading “Bøsse: In Danish, Both ‘Shaker’ and ‘Gay’”
Adam and Steve After All
This post stands as a warning about never making a generalization. In my last post, commenting on how salt and pepper shakers represent the gender of the characters they represent, I suggested that “once gender has been signified . . . then it is always, as far as I can tell, one shaker of oneContinue reading “Adam and Steve After All”
Perry Nodelman 