Age Differences in Reactions to Ageist Memes

Abstract: Memes on social media can carry ageist messages and can elicit reactions that are both emotional and self-evaluative. The present study investigates age-related differences in nine discrete emotions and in the evaluation of when individuals have been or will be their best selves. Participants (n = 360) representing young (m = 26 years), middle-aged (m = 39 years) and older adults (m = 63 years) were randomly assigned to view either non-ageist (animals) or ageist (e.g., incompetent older people) memes. After viewing memes, we assessed nine emotional reactions (i.e., fear, anger, sadness, happiness, anxiety, discomfort, disgust, surprise, enjoyment) and Best Self evaluations. 

Younger and middle-aged people reported more intense emotional reactions to memes than older people, with the exception that older people reported more discomfort and disgust in response to ageist versus non-ageist memes. Younger adults were less surprised by ageist memes (vs. non-ageist) and for all age groups ageist memes (vs. non-ageist) elicited less happiness and enjoyment and were less likely to be shared. With respect to evaluations of one's Best Self, older individuals were more likely to report being their best selves in the past, while after viewing ageist memes, younger individuals were more likely to report being their best selves in the future. Emotions of disgust and discomfort were related to identifying one's Best Self as further in the past. The current study adds to the literature on the impact of ageism by examining age-related differences in the emotions and self-evaluations experienced when confronted with memes on social media. (Kahlbaugh et al., 2024)

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- Kahlbaugh, P., Ramos-Arvelo, J., Brenning, M. & Huffman, L. (2024).  Age differences in emotional reactions to ageist memes and changes in age of one's Best Self. Journal of Aging Studies, link

- photograph by Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) via

Becoming Old, Becoming a Stranger

Abstract: We start with the observation that aging gerontologists often engage in two distinct discourses on aging—one public and one private. This separation entails “othering,” which reproduces agism and stigma. Based on personal experience, insight from colleagues and writers, and concepts from symbolic interaction perspectives, we argue that becoming old to some degree involves becoming a stranger. Before reaching old age, both of us have been in the position of strangers due to social experiences that left us “off the line” or “on the margins.” 

Examples are crossing social borders related to nations, class structures, gender, race, health status, and generations. Our stories illustrate how aging is more than personal. It is interpersonal—shaped by social history, policies, interdependence in relationships, and the precariousness of old age. Such phenomena often show sharp contrasts in the interpersonal worlds and social experiences of women and men. Reflecting on our own journeys as life course migrants leaves us acutely aware of both the social problems and potential promises of aging. (Hagesta & Settersten, 2017)

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- Hagestad, G. O. & Settersten, R. A. (2017). Aging: It's Interpersonal! Reflections From Two Life Course Migrants. The Gerontologist, 57(1), 136-144.
- phtotgraph by Garry Winogrand via

The Many Changing Meanings of "Snowflake"

In the early 1860s, the term "Snowflake" was used in Missouri to refer to a person who was opposed to the abolition of slavery. The so-called Snowflakes hoped that the civil war would not put an end to slavery and were contrasted with two other groups, the Claybanks (who wanted a gradual transition out of slavery) and the Charcoals (who demanded immediate emancipation for Black people). 

In the 1970s, snowflake became "a disparaging term for a white man or for a black man who was seen as acting white".

Chuck Palahniuk used the expression in his book "Fight Club" published in 1996 in a different context. A member of an anti-consumerist project tells another member: "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone, and we are all part of the same compost pile." In its 1999 movie adaptation, the line goes like this:

Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not the beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap.

Palahniuk was probably not the first person to use this metaphor, of each of us being a unique snowflake, uniquely beautiful and each worth treasuring (via). Now snowflake is a slang term for a young person (the generation that became adults in or after the 2010s) with "an inflated sense of uniqueness", a rather extreme sense of entitlement and who is easily offended and shows little resilience. Snowflake became "the defining insult" in 2016 (via and via).

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photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Every second person in the world ...

"Every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes."

World Health Organization

photograph by Garry Winogrand via

The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism

Abstract: Through an in-depth analysis of bestselling “how-to-succeed” books along with popular television shows and well-trafficked “mommy” blogs, The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism demonstrates how the notion of a happy work-family balance has not only been incorporated into the popular imagination as a progressive feminist ideal but also lies at the heart of a new variant of feminism. Embraced by high-powered women, from Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg to Ivanka Trump, this variant of feminism abandons key terms, such as equal rights and liberation, advocating, instead, for a life of balance and happiness. 

What we are ultimately witnessing, Catherine Rottenberg argues, is the emergence of a neoliberal feminism that abandons the struggle to undo the unjust gendered distribution of labor and that helps to ensure that all responsibility for reproduction and care work falls squarely on the shoulders of individual women. Moreover, this increasingly dominant form of feminism simultaneously splits women into two distinct groups: worthy capital-enhancing women and the “unworthy” disposable female “other” who performs much of the domestic and care work. This split, not surprisingly, transpires along racial, class, and citizen-immigrant lines. The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism thus underscores the ways in which neoliberal feminism forsakes the vast majority of women, while it facilitates new and intensified forms of racialized and class-stratified gender exploitation. Given our frightening neoliberal reality, the monumental challenge, then, is how we can successfully reorient and reclaim feminism as a social justice movement. (Rottenberg, 2018)

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- Rottenberg, C. A. (2018). The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism; link
- photograph by Garry Winogrand (Beverly Hills, 1979) via

Trends in Loneliness Among Older Adults from 2018-2023

In January 2023, the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging carried out a survey asking US-Americans aged fifty to eighty questions about loneliness. One in three adults (34%) reported feeling isolated from others, a greater proportion than the 27% in 2018. Among older adults the percentage was higher (37% compared to 34% in 2018). 

One in three older adults (33%) reported infrequent contact with people from outside their home (14% once a week, 10% every two to three weeks, 9% once a month or less). The feeling of isolation was much more common for those who reported fair or poor mental health (77% vs. 29% of those reporting good mental health). They were also more likely to report feeling a lack of companionship (73% of those with poor mental health vs 33% of those with better mental health). Lack of companionship was also more of an issue among people who were unemployed, lived alone or had an annual household income less than 60,000 dollars. Chronic loneliness can have a negative impact on mental and physical health, and on life expectancy (via).

- Malani P, Singer D, Kirch M, Solway E, Roberts S, Smith E, Hutchens L, Kullgren J. Trends in Loneliness Among Older Adults from 2018-2023. University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. March 2023. Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7302/7011
- photographs by Garry Winogrand via and via

How does it feel to be a problem? W. E. B. Du Bois on the unasked question.

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, -peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards -ten cents a package -and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, -refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, -some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The "shades of the prison-house" closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch the streak of blue above.

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the N*gro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, -an American, a N*gro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American N*gro is the history of this strife, -this longing to attain selfconscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does not wish to bleach his N*gro​ blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he believes -foolishly, perhaps, but fervently -that N*gro blood has yet a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a N*gro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of self-development. (...)

W. E. B. Du Bois, excerpts from "Strivings of the N*gro People" (1897)

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photograph by Gary Winogrand via

The Complex Relationship between Skin Colour and Sun Sensitivity

Background: Eumelanin, the primary pigment in human epidermis, has a well-established photo-protective role. It can confer a protection factor of up to approximately 13.4 in some individuals. However, the protection eumelanin affords is not absolute and, further, the susceptibility of human skin to the harmful effects of UV radiation is more complex than skin pigmentation alone. 

Objective: Our survey explored the lifetime prevalence of sunburn in people of African Ancestry based in the UK (Black African or Black Caribbean). 

Results: A significant number of respondents, 52.2% (n=222), reported a history of sunburn. Interestingly, there was a significant increase in frequency of sunburn in those with a lighter skin tone (self-classified from dark, medium and light – 47.3%, 53.5% and 71.4%, respectively). In total 69% reported that the episode of sunburn occurred when they were not using sunscreen, and another 10% could not recall whether sunscreen was used. A large proportion of respondents (59%) indicated that they had been sunburnt while away from the UK in hot/sunny climates, raising the question of whether intermittent sun exposure at high UV indices is a key factor in sunburn risk for those living in temperate climates. 

Conclusion: Our findings do not support the hypothesis of a simplistic relationship between skin colour and sun sensitivity and encourage us to re-examine this relationship and its implications for public health promotion. It also adds to a body of evidence revealing the need for more up-to-date and appropriate systems to assess the risk UV radiation poses to diverse populations. (Bello, Sudhoff & Goon, 2021; literally)

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- Bello, O., Sudhoff, H. & Goon, P. (2021). Sunburn Prevalence is Underestimatein UK-Based People of African Ancestry. Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology, 14, full article: link
- photograph by Garry Winogrand via

That one can love another...

"That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand."

Stephen Fry

photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Narrative images: A Sunday in Central Park Zoo, 1967

“In the photograph, we see a white woman and a black man, apparently a couple, holding the product of their most unholy of unions: monkeys. In projecting what we will into this image - about miscegenation, our horror of difference, the forbidden nature of black men with white women - we see the beast that lies in us all.” 

Hilton Als

"I think part of the aim was to unsettle people's ideas, whether his own or other people's. To move people out of an unquestioning space and to some less settled space in which the authority of rules and structures was broken up a bit."

Eileen Hale, Garry Winogrand's widow

"(...) there is one photograph in “The Animals” that resonates more deeply than others. This picture shows, in medium close-up, a black man and a white woman. The man wears a jacket, a shirt and a tie. She is blonde and sports a head scarf. The man and the woman are each carrying a baby monkey. The monkeys, by implication, are the product of miscegenation: that is, born of parents who defied a natural law - the marriage of black to white - and whose only natural progeny could be… animals."

Hilton Als, The Animals and Their Keepers

"(...) And so, one Sunday, on an early spring day about a year after we’d met, Garry and I found ourselves walking through the Central Park Zoo. I was 20 or 30 yards ahead of him when I noticed a handsome couple walking toward me—they looked like fashion models, in their 20s, both well-dressed—improbably walking with a pair of chimpanzees who were as immaculately attired as they were (the animals even wore shoes and socks). A New York City piece of strangeness, it seemed to me, strange enough to take a picture. So I did.

Then, bang!, I felt myself being pushed in the back away from this odd little group. A real shove, unfriendly, hard. And, of course, it was Garry, camera already up, making pictures, who’d done it. (...)

By now, both chimpanzees were off the ground (as my picture shows, one had been toddling between the couple when I first saw the group), and I finally noticed that the man in the little quartet was black, and the woman white and blonde. I’d already recorded that fact with my eyes, I’m sure, but what it may have meant, or could mean, in a photograph, was something I hadn’t had the time or the consciousness to process.

Garry Winogrand, however, had obviously processed the fact: where I saw only the possibility for a joke that, at best, touched on the crazy-quilt nature of city life, you could say that Garry, by not so much seeing the group itself but instantaneously imagining a possible photograph of it, placed meaning, particularly as it might gather around the question of race, at the very center of what he was doing.

In other words, quite apart from whatever Sunday pleasure or notion of self-advertising had actually brought that couple together with those two animals, Garry’s quick mind construed from their innocent adjacency a picture (or the projection of one) that could suggest the improbable price that the two races, black and white, might have to pay by mixing together. He was speculating, of course, playing an artistic hunch, but a large and important enough one that he felt it was worth pushing his friend aside for. So he did what he had to do, and then, a moment later, I answered by making a picture of him standing by the same family group as they continued their stroll through the zoo. (...)"

Tod Papageorge, 2014

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- Papageorge, T. (2014). About a Photograph: New York, 1967, Garry Winogrand. Aesthetics of Theory in the Modern Era and Beyond, 2, via

- photographs by Garry Winogrand via and via and via

Life Expectancy & Ethnicity

In Brazil, in 1950, the life expectancy at birth was 47 years for whites and 40 years for Afro-Brazilians. The seven-year gap remained unchanged fifty years later despite Brazilians experiencing improvement in life expectancy rates in the late 1990s (70 vor whites versus 63.5 years for Afro-Brazilians).

In Australia, life expectancy (based on 1996 data) of an Aboriginal person is twenty to twenty-five years less than that of a non-Aboriginal.

In the U.S., indigenous Americans and Alaskans have a life expectancy that is five years lower compared to the general population (overall population: 76.9 years, whites: 77.4 years, blacks: 71.8 years, indigenous: 71 years) (Torres Parodi, 2005).

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- Torres Parodi, C. (2005). Racism and health. In K. Boyle (ed.) Dimensions of Racism (67-81), via
- photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Save the date

The Vienna University of Economics and Business is organising "THE WU Gender and Diversity Conference 2022 Diversity, Diversity Management and Intersectionality in a Global Context - Dynamics and Realignments" where I will be presenting my paper: 

Woman or old? On the intersection of age and gender and the gaze of youth in Western feminism. 

24- 25 March, conference programme: link

Abstract: The concept of intersectionality is intertwined with the critique of white feminism’s tendency to treat women as one homogeneous group turning a blind eye to the impact of other identity factors and the complexity of discrimination. Gender on its own is regarded as an insufficient explanation of the discrimination women experience. While questioning the monolithic understanding of the feminine has become more common in debates, discourses are rather about heteronormative, cisgender, white ideas. Age is not part of the public discussion, academia shows little interest. 

This paper examines the intersection of age and gender. Both are primitive categories and rapidly evaluated, but they differ in weight. An old woman is more old than woman, it seems, which has implications. It makes her invisible as a woman – for the general public and for Western feminists – and less protected. When older women die from homicide, for instance, the cases are not treated as femicide but gender neutral elder abuse which is not followed by a strong emotional response, calls for action or hashtags. Western feminism mainly focuses on aspects like childcare, abortion, gender pay gap, objectification. Eldercare in the family is not identified as a feminist issue even though it disproportionally affects women, neither are lower pensions although women constitute a massive part of the elderly poor, just to mention two examples. While there is awareness concerning the male gaze, the gaze of youth is ignored. Finally, cultural aspects are discussed to better understand how deeply ingrained ageism is. 

Using an intersectional lens is a chance to make Western feminism more inclusive. A concept of the whole life is needed to make sure all women benefit from feminist advances, no matter what age. (Moazedi, 2022)

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- Moazedi, M. L. (2022). Woman or old? On the intersection of age and gender and the gaze of youth in Western feminism. THE WU Gender and Diversity Conference 2022 Diversity, Diversity Management and Intersectionality in a Global Context - Dynamics and Realignments, 24th to 25th of March, 2022.
- photograph by Garry Winogrand via

The Jena Declaration and the decency not to use the term "race"

Excerpts: From the beginning, the idea of human races and their existence has been linked to an evaluation of these supposed races. Indeed, the notion that different groups of people differ in value preceded supposedly scientific work on the subject. The primarily biological justification for defining groups of humans as races – for example based on the colour of their skin or eyes, or the shape of their skulls – has led to the persecution, enslavement and slaughter of millions of people. Even today, the term ‘race’ is still frequently used in connection with human groups. However, there is no biological basis for races, and there has never been one. The concept of race is the result of racism, not its prerequisite.

On 9 August 2019, we marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Ernst Haeckel, former professor in Jena, dubbed the ‘German Darwin’ and probably the best-known German zoologist and evolutionary biologist. With his supposedly scientific classification of human ‘races’ into a ‘family tree’, Ernst Haeckel, the founder of phylogenetics, made a fateful contribution to a form of racism that was seemingly based on science. The position of human groups in his tree of life was based on arbitrarily selected characteristics such as skin colour or hair structure, presented from a phylogenetic point of view. This resulted in these people being viewed in a particular sequence, which implied that some groups had higher or lower status on biological grounds than others.

(...) Despite, or maybe precisely because of the close connection between racism and the supposed existence of races, it is the duty of science and thus also of a scientific society such as the German Zoological Society to evaluate the possibility of human races being a reality. The question is whether races in general, and races of humans in particular, are a biological reality, or whether they are pure constructs of the human mind. For the influential taxonomist Ernst Mayr, the existence of human races was a ‘biological fact’ (Mayr 2002), at least before the colonial age. The justification for his view is still reflected in the common concept that human races correspond to ‘geographical types’ that we also find in other species and that are based on many criteria. An alternative to geographical types of humans that correspond to races did not seem possible to Mayr, although he came out clearly against any kind of racism.

For geographical races (or subspecies), Mayr generally emphasised the necessary ‘taxonomic difference’ between geographically separated populations of a species. This places the concept of ‘race’ somewhere between the concept of population (which due to its existence as a reproductive community, actually corresponds to an individual in the philosophy of science) and that of species. Today, this taxonomic difference is predominantly determined through genetic distances. However, determining which taxonomic difference or genetic differentiation would be sufficient to distinguish races or subspecies is completely arbitrary and thus also makes the concept of races/subspecies in biology purely a construct of the human mind. This does not mean that there is no genetic differentiation along a geographical gradient. However, the taxonomic evaluation of this differentiation (as race or subspecies, or not) is arbitrary. This is even more strongly the case for humans, where the greatest genetic differences are found within a population and not between populations. (...)

The division of people into races was and is first and foremost a social and political classification, followed and supported by an anthropological construct based on arbitrarily chosen characteristics such as hair and skin colour. This construct served – and still serves – to justify open and latent racism using supposed natural circumstances and thus to create a moral justification. (...)

The linking of features such as skin colour with characteristics or even supposedly genetically fixed personality traits and behaviours, as was done in the heyday of anthropological racism, has now been soundly refuted. To use such arguments today as seemingly scientific is both wrong and malicious. There is also no scientifically proven connection between intelligence and geographical origin, but there is a clear connection with social background. Here too, racism in the form of exclusion and discrimination creates supposed races.

However, racism continues to exist among people. In the 20th century, racial research, racial science and racial hygiene or eugenics, as seemingly scientific disciplines, were only some of the excesses of racist thinking and action.

Simply removing the word ‘race’ from our daily language will not prevent racism and intolerance. A feature of current forms of racism is precisely the tendency in far-right and xenophobic circles to avoid the term ‘race’. Racist thinking is perpetuated through terms such as selection, maintaining purity or ethnopluralism. However, the term ethnopluralism is nothing more than a new formulation of the ideas of apartheid. Designating ‘the Africans’ as a supposed threat to Europe and attributing certain biological characteristics are also in the direct tradition of the worst racism of our past. So, let us ensure that people are never again discriminated against on specious biological grounds and remind ourselves and others that it is racism that has created races and that zoology/anthropology has played an inglorious part in producing supposedly biological justifications. Today and in the future, not using the term race should be part of scientific decency.

Jena Declaration

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photograph by Garry Winogrand (1965) via

Skin Tone and Humiliation at the Airport

"I live in Berlin and every time I go back home to Nottingham I get singled out at East Midlands airport – which is pretty small – often by a plainclothes policeman who takes me aside (after standard passport control) and questions me about why I’m in Nottingham and where I’m from and who I work for and what I do etc. It’s extremely humiliating because no one else gets taken aside and I’m always singled out. I have tried various different non-terroristy outfits to no avail.



When I tell the border police this is my home and I’m visiting my mum they usually need a lot of convincing, and also talk to me really slowly as if I’m an idiot, though they are fully aware that I’m a British citizen. To be honest, I don’t really get it: I booked the flights a long time in advance and I do the trip regularly, I don’t understand why I have to be regularly humiliated in this way every time I go home." Belal, 27

"Flying back from Belfast to Manchester after visiting my then girlfriend in Northern Ireland – I was selected “randomly” as I left the flight for further questioning (I was the only non-white passenger). I was questioned as to why I was travelling to Northern Ireland and asked whether I was employed. I was allowed to leave with a timid apology after declaring that I was in fact the parliamentary researcher to the shadow secretary of state for business innovation and skills, and that I could call John Denham MP to confirm if they’d like. 

Initially I was a little embarrassed, as I was taken aside when I got off the plane while all the other passengers walked past me – so it was all in full view and, being the only ethnic minority on the flight, I could only imagine what other passengers were thinking. 

I’ve known a few other ethnic minority people who’ve had similar. One of my friends was profiled and she works for the Department of Education, and my other friend was stopped in New York when trying to attend New York Fashion Week with his job with Victoria Beckham. It was particularly telling when I was an adolescent because my father is quite obviously Indian, whereas my mother is of Irish/Parsi descent and therefore very fair, and there was a difference in how they were treated by security until they realised they were together." Uzair, 26 

"I’m mixed-race (African-British) born and raised in Britain, with a British passport and without any criminal record or anything that might legitimately flag me up for extra security concerns. But despite this, I tend to get extra pat downs every time I go through security. I’ve also been called to one side when about to board flights, and when at the check-in desks and passport desks as well.

The worst case of this was flying Manchester to London and then on to New York, where I got an extra search at each security checkpoint. I was also pulled to one side each time we boarded a flight (after they’d checked my documents and seen my name), and then on arriving at New York, the passport checkpoint carted me off to sit in an extra security section along with people who regularly travel to Cuba and Colombia.

After a couple of hours waiting around there, they searched my suitcase and found some sheet music (I play music as a hobby). We then had a very strange conversation where the security agent was seriously asking me if the sheet music was some form of code. They also asked me a bunch of questions about how long I planned to stay in the US, what work I do, whether I knew anyone there. It was pretty nerve-wracking, particularly as I really started to feel like they might not let me enter the country because the wait to be processed took so long.

When I’m travelling with white people with Anglo-Saxon-sounding names, they never get the extra security checks but I do. I half expect it now because that’s the world we live in. I don’t think the people carrying out the checks are genuinely racist on the whole (maybe some are), but most are just following orders as best they know how.

The problem is when the orders aren’t clear or the staff are under pressure to perform and do not want to miss someone they go overboard trying to do their job partly because cognitive bias and stereotypes are inherent to how we function. We’d all probably benefit from their getting training or support to overcome that. 

I automatically budget in extra time to go through security because I expect to get some form of extra hassle every time I fly. It’s telling that I’m pleasantly surprised on the rare occasions when I don’t get extra attention." Katie, 32 (The Guardian)

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photographs by Garry Winogrand via and via and via

A Specific Vulnerability

"'Black Lives Matter' simply refers to the notion that there's a specific vulnerability for African Americans that needs to be addressed. It's not meant to suggest that other lives don't matter. It's to suggest that other folks aren't experiencing this particular vulnerability."
Barack Obama



photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Design Doing Gender

No matter if razors, barbeque sauces or low-fat products, the consumer's gender is anticipated and inscribed into marketing and packaging guiding consumer choices, reflecting, reproducing and constructing gender norms by placing men on one side and women on the other. In her article, Petersson McIntyre (2019) sees packages as "objects that play an active part in gender performativity", objects that do/perform gender and "create notions of what is masculine, feminine, and even gender-neutral".



Design, according to many scholars, can never be gender-neutral. Nevertheless design discourse shows the tendency to regard objects as neutral ones that only follow principles of form and function. 

 
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- Petersson McIntyre, M. (2019). Gender by Design: Performativy and Consumer Packaging. The Journal of the Design Studies Forum, 10(3), 337-358.
- photograph by Garry Winogrand (New York City, 1966) via

It takes wealth to make wealth...

Income is primarily earned in the labour market. Wealth, however, is mainly accumulated by the transfer of resources across generations. In other words, it takes wealth to make wealth. A further, and not really surprising, distinction is that wealth is far more unequally distributed than income. In the U.S., the "median black household holds just ten percent of the wealth of median white household, and while blacks constitute thirteen percent of America’s population, they hold less than three percent of its wealth."
(Darity et al, 2018)



- Darity, W. Jr., Hamilton, D., Paul, M., Aja, A., Price, A., Moore, A., & Chiopris, C. (2018). What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap. Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity Insight Center for Community Economic Development, link
- photograph by Garry Winogrand via

Body Language Reading and Gender

Generally speaking and not considering cross-cultural differences, women seem to be more sensitive to non-verbal cues and more proficient in recognising facial emotions than men who tend to be better at recognising emotions from voices. According to Sokolov et al.'s study (n=34) carried out in Germany - and consistent with conclusions of previous studies - angry emotion is recognised better than happy emotion. However, some tendencies could be observed based on the participant's gender:

Males outperformed in recognition of happy knocking (p < 0.015), whereas females excelled in recognition of neutral knocking (p < 0.016) and tended to over-perform in recognition of angry knocking (p < 0.07).

The authors conclude that there is a gender effect which again is modulated by the emotional content.

Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how recognition of emotional expressions revealed by body motion is gender dependent. To this end, females and males were presented with point-light displays portraying knocking at a door performed with different emotional expressions. The findings show that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. This effect, however, is modulated by emotional content of actions: males surpass in recognition accuracy of happy actions, whereas females tend to excel in recognition of hostile angry knocking. Advantage of women in recognition accuracy of neutral actions suggests that females are better tuned to the lack of emotional content in body actions.

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- Sokolov, A. A., Krüger, S., Enck, P., Krägeloh-Mann, I. & Pavlova, M. A. (2011). Gender Affects Body Language Reading. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, link
- photograph taken in New York in 1970 by Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) via